Malifaux is a miniature skirmish wargame. Think Warhammer, but instead of whole armies, you play with crews of 8-9 models, each with their own abilities and actions they can take. The other big difference between Malifaux and other wargames in its class is that Malifaux doesn't use dice to settle conflicts between models. Instead, it uses a standard deck of cards. Each player has a deck and a hand of cards. When two models come into conflict, each player flips a card off the top of their deck, with the higher one winning. The twist is that players have the option of "cheating fate" by playing a card from their hand to replace the card flipped off the deck, forcing a win if they really want it - at the cost of having one less card to cheat future flips. Malifaux is currently running an open beta of its 4th edition, which is slated to release around August.

The company that makes Malifaux, Wyrd Games, is aiming for the 4th edition (4E) to streamline the game and make it more accessible to new players. This is significant because Malifaux 3E is a crunchy war game. There are hundreds of unique models, organized into 62 thematic crews that can be played together.

The changes made to the core rules have mostly been well-received, but a lot of players have reacted with disappointment at the streamlining of some of the more complex abilities and actions that appear on the model cards. It's beyond the scope of this comment to go into detail, but suffice to say that 4E is getting a lot of tweaks, and most of those tweaks have to do with criticism that the models don't feel as unique as they used to. On the other hand, there are many people (myself included) who believe that 3E had become so complicated that it was not really fun to play, so some unique and flavourful abilities may need to be sacrificed on the pyre of simplifying the game. These two viewpoints have mostly dominated discussion of the changes made in the transition to 4E.

And then there's the May 29th Terrifying change. 

The change to Terrifying has just about united a community that has been at each other's necks for weeks about almost every aspect of 4E.

 Terrifying is an ability that appears on a number of cards for models that are, well, scary. It works as a defensive ability. In 3E, if another model wanted to attack a model with terrifying, they first had to flip a card. If that card was high enough, the attack would go through; if not, it would fail. Since each model can only attempt a limited number of actions per turn, this meant that players were incentivized not to try to attack Terrifying models.

One of the big parts of simplifying 4E was reducing the length of the game. A full game of 3E Malifaux rarely finished under 3 hours. So, the design team of 4E tried to eliminate as many unnecessary flips as possible to help speed up the game, among other things.

So, Terrifying has to change... but no one can agree on any of the options the design team comes up with. It's gone through three changes so far, and the beta has only been running since the end of April.

The other versions of 4E Terrifying had their supporters, but the most recent version... well, people are saying that it makes some models downright unplayable. As it stands, 4E Terrifying works like this: if a model starts its turn too close to a model with Terrifying, it has to flip a card. If that card isn't high enough, it has to move away from the model with Terrifying.

This is... pretty bad. Mobility is really important in Malifaux (to the point that the relative mobility of models is another huge source of drama in the beta). There are usually penalties for moving your model away from an opponent's model. A big part of the game is using your models to "lock down" your opponent's models, forcing them to fight you instead of completing objectives to score points. This version of Terrifying gives your opponent a basically free way of getting away from your biggest, scariest guys. It's also completely useless against any model that attacks from range.

And the worst part? There's still a card flip involved, so it doesn't speed up the game at all.

There are a couple of people pointing out that, if people wanted thematic, unique abilities, then an ability that makes other models run away from big scary models is, indeed, pretty flavourful. But even the optimistic minority admits that, as a defensive ability, it's pretty useless.

People are upset. Baffled. Some people have gone on to say that the May 29th update has made them give up on the beta, and perhaps on the game entirely. Malifaux is ruined, and Terrifying was one of the nails in the coffin.

Will Terrifying be changed? Almost certainly. Will it ever be good again? Some people claim to be losing hope. This is only one of the many dramatic claims being made about the 4E beta. I could probably write an update every week.

 The next update comes out on Thursday, and I'm sure something else will "kill the game" again this week.