Hello. I am trying to install M&B on my Mac via Wineskin, the reason being that I want to try doing mods.

Well, the short answer is that it ain't working. I've downloaded latest Wineskin engine and used winetricks to install FULL directx9. Game "works" on the first open (but I still see the dock and the menu bar :/) and on the second time the first window opens, but then crashes shortly after hitting play.

In my research people say to just install a windows steam client into the wrapper and download M&B that way.

Well, I DON'T OWN M&B THROUGH STEAM. I own it through GOG because I (like everyone else on this site) like DRM-Free games.

The second thing I tried was renaming binkplay.exe in case that was crashing it. Got exactly the same symptoms in the same order; works first time, crashes second time.

Any suggestions? I really really don't want to buy it through steam just so I can do modding. If I can redeem the game through steam then alright I'll do that, but I doubt I can do anything of the sort.

If you link your steam account to gog account, you will get m&b games on steam. You can then run windows steam under wine and download the steam version of m&b.

(I'm a linux user but i assume wine works the same way on both system)

I tried this also, but the window just randomly closes after trying to open the game.
This was because playonlinux closed the "windows environment" once the original application closed.
So if you are using playonlinux like I was, just open the configuration panel and then open the game.
Since the configuration panel won't close, so won't your game.