Hookers

it doesn't have to be all my resources for a turn. they are resummoned the very next activation. i thought the key was killing the ratcatchers but they come back so easily that even they don't matter to hamelin. ok i'll admit that i was playing gremlins. but i wasn't summoning stuff to mindlessly throw at rats. if you just try to kill stuff without worrying about what it is 90 SS isn't that tough. the rats just resummon to themselves. every time a skeeter activated that's at least 6 ss probably more. it adds up pretty quickly. also he ended the game with 40 SS of models, not 40 actual rats. this game was about a month ago, and i'm not going to bother to add up the actual cost but my list was something like: som'er 2-3 skeeters pigapult 2 gremlins 2 slop haulers taxidermist 2-3 stuffed pigs however many SS that leaves me with i had an assembly line of summon and kill a gremlin, summon a stuffed pig from the corpse, toss it across the field at hamelin. of course the pigapult itself is insignificant (i know its for fluffy reasons but in this case it just seems to add insult to injury), so i tried to shoot at nix the one chance i got, and otherwise just shot at ratcatchers and stolen and did damage with the blasts. nix made a bee line for the pigapult and had one turn where he was conveniently completely in a forest that i couldn't shoot him. the game was pretty much over once he got next to the pigapult. som'er did get a nice shot off on hamelin with either the red joker or dumb luck for 10 dg. hamelin had 9 wd left and with his last SS flipped moderate to stay at 1 wd. som'er was promptly made insignificant and then killed by rats anyways the so the insignificant didn't even matter. my last ditch effort was focusing a rat who was kind of close to hamelin with my last gremlin, actually hitting it, getting severe, and then pulling up a tenth of an inch shy of hamelin. as far as killing hamelin i also only partly had the opportunity because he was going for his master specific scheme. he is normally a lot more careful with him. i knew i had to get to 1.5 x 35 in order to get it because i was pretty sure nothing of mine was going to be left. fortunately i sacrificed a lot of my own stuff as well so i think he only killed 25 pts, if that. 90 pts, 40 left. obviously that wouldn't happen in a game where i didn't just kill rats for the sake of it. it's just a crazy number that isn't hyperbolic at all. warpigs are a waste of time. they just get made insignificant. the pigapult is definitely the key for gremlins i can't imagine not taking ratcatchers because they turn 2 pt models which are justifiably cheap because they are slow, into fast with an unprecedented 6 (0) actions (twice that of the coryphee's super instinctual) inb4 lolgremlinssuckagainsthamelin no wonder you hate him. 1) i know 2) that isn't an excuse, no other match up in the game comes close to being like that 3) despite that, its not actually as bad as people think. gremlins are the masters of doing non-targeted damage because any time they have to pass a targeting restriction against anything, they will fail it my first game against hamelin was with gremlins and i actually flipped contain power. i didn't reflip simply to see if it was as bad as everyone was saying. it was, but i learned a lot about him and how he works. my position is not that he is over powered or unbeatable. most crews have ways of dealing with him. you just have to go really far out of your way and it tends to suck the fun out of the game. Seamus can walk all over him, but it doesn't make the game any more enjoyable. even if you didn't change how you play at all, simply playing against hamelin feels like a giant waste of time. so much time is spent doing stuff that isn't flipping cards and having fun. also most of his mechanics break the game in a way that doesn't enhance the gameplay and is frustrating. he is set up to trick you into doing things that will only hurt you, and designed to not rely on cards. because of this his most powerful abilities are simply actions and do not require you to even flip cards. turning half of the (0) actions into spells would take a lot of the frustration out of it, and make it seem like the hamelin player is actually doing something. like i said i have a fairly long write up on all of the ways that i feel like hamelin makes the game not fun, breaks it in a way that is not obvious, and leads opposing players down non-optimal paths. a lot of him is "complexity for the sake of itself" rather than complexity that makes it interesting or fun or novel. i've watched the debates about him for awhile and have held my tongue, but no longer could because of the amount of frustration he brings to the game, especially for new players (which is probably the exact opposite of what wyrd intends to do). to reiterate, i think hamelin is bad because he makes the game not fun, win or lose. if you beat hamelin you don't really care and are more like "where did my day go?" if you lose to hamelin you feel like there wasn't much you could've done differently, and that your opponent didn't really seem to do much either. to hamelin fate is meaningless. but so are suits, cards in general, his own minions and even what his opponent does at all.

yes, because they come back. they drop a rat when they die. so they really only cost you 2 rats. plus you are getting rats from the stolen as well, so you don't even need to be killing other models to keep the train going, but since you are anyways, it's pretty easy. i killed that many points of models because i was bombing the crap out of rats. didn't change anything but 10 SS of pts for slaughter out of one blast ain't bad. so over the course of the game i killed god knows how many rats and stolen, and 3 rat catchers. Hamelin had 1 wd left and 0 ss. he still pretty much had everything he started with +/- rats and stolen.

in all honesty, the people that you play games against, do they enjoy it? if they do, are you abusing the crap out the rats? it looks to me that they are just as many people saying that hamelin sucks as there are defending him. and the ones that are defending him are pretty much just saying "he's not that bad. if you are good you can beat him." you like hamelin. that's cool. its looks to me that sandwich also loves him, and wants to be able to play him but can't in good conscience because of frustrating mechanics. i think for everyone one person who posts on the forums there are 10+ who play malifaux at their LGS who do not post. i wouldn't be so quick to call it a minority. it looks at least 50/50 to me. i think after he's been out a little bit this will change.

rules as written that is how it works. "until the end" of the encounter means it ends at the end of the encounter. VPs are calculated after the end of the encounter, or at the end of the encounter. Either point in time is after "until the end" of the encounter meaning the effect will not still be active.

yeah you just deploy them more than 4" apart. you still keep an activation advantage throughout the game because as your opponent is losing models you are gaining them.

Your opponent will definitely get slaughter. But you will probably still win by getting your schemes and denying their's I killed 95 points worth of models in slaughter against him. He still had 42 on the table (not including the 10 points for hamelin) in a 35 point game. Took 3 and half hours and ended mid turn 4. Last time i played against him. also, out of curiosity, why wouldn't you start with 2 ratcatchers?

i think this is because sandwich was playing hamelin a lot before he had come out, and no one else did. he isn't super intuitive to play as either. its a simple thing to be told, but takes a little more to figure it out by yourself. if you play him like you play other masters he will seem lackluster. you really just have to abuse the crap out of the rats and their potentially limitless activations.

Edit: :ditto: he essentially says the same thing that I do if you're one of those people that goes to the internet forums to, you know, read stuff, but then are all like tl;dr only because the best trigger in the game is Calculated Luck though, haha as to the meta-debate, i don't think you should debate a topic in a thread that was asked for there not to be a debate in. but clearly you can debate anything anywhere, and if its worth being debated then I guess that's ok. really a good debate starts with ... oh... ahem... right.. as far as hamelin is concerned, my issue with him is not the power level. if he were the worst master in the game I'd still think he is horrible for it (maybe less so because people wouldn't play him and you wouldn't have to worry about it). he takes too long to finish a turn. even an experienced player. first turn: move a rat. opponent goes. move a rat. opponent goes. move a rat. opponent goes. draw a card with a wretch. opponent goes. move a rat. opponent goes. move nix straight ahead no matter what strategy or schemes you have or the terrain layout. opponent goes. move a rat. opponent goes. move a ratcatcher within 6" of all the rats. slaughter. place each rat into base to base with a previous rat before removing it. opponent goes (to get a sandwich or something, maybe watch some tv). do something irrelevant with hamelin. opponent goes (but is probably out of models by this point) move a rat that has already gone. opponent goes (to contemplate suicide in the bathroom). move another rat that has already gone and all the rats that are now close enough to be companioned. move your other ratcatcher up. slaughter. take the time to place each rat into base to base with a previous rat before removing it. move all the rats again. that's turn 1 and assuming your opponent has played against hamelin before and did not make the mistake of trying to kill anything (i almost said rats, but really its anything. if you are trying to kill anything its a waste of time) turns 2 through until the opponent gives up repeat the EXACT SAME STEPS every time, for every strategy and scheme, except with more rats and they'll be of course attacking stuff in the mean time. if hamelin were the worst master in the game he would be just as frustrating and mind numbingly painful to play against. in a 95 minute timed match for a tournament? fugidabowdit. you'll get to turn 2 and it will probably be a draw. this is with the hamelin player going as fast as he can because he definitely would have won. he will probably even forgo slaughtering rats sometimes (which otherwise there is never a reason EVER not to) just to try and get to turn three so he might have stake a claim or something. he is also bad because he is a giant n00b trap. everything that a player thinks is a good idea, just isn't. he quite simply tricks you into playing even more at a disadvantage by playing into what he wants you to do because it appears like a good idea. i have a pretty long write up with all of the ways that his crew does this but i'll leave it at that for now. sandwich has a really good guide on how to play hamelin well. here is mine: put hamelin in the corner. let the rats kill everything. the end. now it's not as nuanced as sandwich's, but will still win you at least 9 out of 10 games. Really its the same strategy, he just wants you to have a little more fun making stuff insignificant, obeying masters, and ruining everyone's day with a nix bomb. the slightly ironic and joking tone of my post aside, flame away. i defended him at first too, essentially on the grounds of "well he's not that good. I could beat him." the thing is that doesn't matter. he just sucks. he is not fun. that is way worse than being overpowered.

the viks pretty much got the "hit stuff in the face" thing covered, so hamelin adds a little bit of Wp manipulation to the team and works really well to cover your bases against some crews

sums up my thoughts pretty well also

I can get on board with that

wasn't a knock against you, more that hamelin does way more damage in practice than on paper. he is not intuitive to a new player at all, but as soon as you do it once (or are told what to do ie. (0) slaughter to get 3+ activations with most of your crew) it's really easy to pull off because there are no requirements, it is equally effective against everyone, and useful in every situation

that's awesome. a malifaux tattoo never occurred to me. if i were to get a malifaux tat it would be the jack daw art on the cover of book 1 in black and white. i think the puppet version of the symbols for the suits are pretty cool too, especially the crow and the ram. who's your favorite master? you could probably find an artist to take inspiration from the concept art in the books and do an original piece, which would be pretty sweet. as for the reservations people are having about tattoos they aren't really warranted as much in today's society (might be different in england). TV shows, etc. have popularized their use by the general public, and they aren't just for sailors and criminals anymore. if you want a tattoo get a tattoo. they are cool. there doesn't have to be some super special meaning behind it, you just have to be able to enjoy it. the most important thing about getting a tattoo (more so than subject matter, placement, or any of that) is finding a great artist and taking care of it during the healing process. do not skimp on the artist part. you get what you pay for. you are paying to have art drawn permanently onto your body you want it to look good. it can be the most special tattoo in the world for your great grandmother that was super nice and left you all her belongings, but if it looks crappy you aren't going to like it no matter what. as long as you don't get it on your face, hands, or neck it doesn't matter even if you regret it later because it won't show if you don't want it to. for awhile i made sure that no one could see any of my tattoos even when i was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. now i have a sleeve (you just run out of space eventually haha) in any situation where it matters/would be frowned upon because you have a tattoo you will be dressed in a way that no one will know anyways. it won't restrict any career options either.

Lady J yes, Hamelin no. Hamelin is not really a beginning crew, not because his strategy is so complex that it can't be understood, but because he goes against how every other master plays and a lot of the core mechanics of the game, so he's not really a good master to learn with or to be able to transition to other masters from. Also out of the box Lady J will destroy Hamelin. Without rat catchers his power is very limited, even if you proxy rats. Against Lady J for a beginner i would recommend any of the book one masters except Leveticus (Ramos, Rasputina, Lillith, Pandora, Zoraida, McMourning, Seamus, and Viktorias. Nicodem, Marcus, and Som'er can do fine as well but will be a slight uphill battle against her in my opinion. I left out the other guild crews assuming you guys would want to play different factions.)

yeah what Sandwich said. This exact thought is why I have such a problem with how Hamelin works. Things like this are spread throughout his crew but some are more obvious. He has tons of things that make you think that it is a good idea when in fact it is not. He is a giant n00b trap and the fact that a person who has a lot of experience with the game can fall in to one even makes it worse. It is a very bad idea to think that starving Hamelin cards will give you an advantage. His crew is designed to not care about cards. None of the spells require a suit. His rats always have a + flip. If he has a good card in his hand he will play it immediately and get it back into the deck. His control hand will always be 5-6 terrible cards. He has no incentive to discard so he will keep the bad cards from being in his deck, since he will never want to cheat with them. Seriously, after every game look at his hand. It sucks. The cards he has in his hand are literally irrelevant. Every other crew is design to make use of cards. If you don't use your cards you will lose, against any opponent. Hamelin just has a mechanic to trick you in to not using your cards because it seems like a good idea to keep cards out of his hand. The card he just drew would've been what he used to attack you, or make you insignificant. It makes no difference to him. Except when its a bad card now he doesn't have to worry about it, but having cards in his hand doesn't really help him as much as you would think. With 5-10 rats getting 3+ activations a turn he goes through his deck insanely fast. The attacks all get + flips so even faster now. He simply does not care about cards. As for the OP, I'm kind of surprised anyone is having a problem dealing damage with Hamelin. I guess for a new player killing your own models doesn't seem intuitive, but once you are simply told "hey, kill your own models and they will get to activate at least 3 times" it's pretty easy to execute. Rats do tons of damage. After the first one goes its a minimum of 2 damage per attack, with easily 30-40 attacks a turn. The wd they have to take to teleport is meaningless as well because they will just be slaughtered immediately after that. Yeah pretty much his only weakness is getting slaughter against him. I killed 95 SS of models and he still had 40 SS on the table (not including Hamelin) and it was a 35 pt game. So slaughter is pretty much in the bag. But if he stops you from completing just one of your schemes he will probably still win.

meh neverborn smeverborn. 3 Wp crews and lilith, big whoop. they are still living for the most part. the biggest thing for them was that nightmares aren't living. ... oh and you're just minding your own business... and... OMG ALPS WHY SO SLOW?! NEGATIVE FLIPS! IT HURTS! gremlins have a hard time with them but i don't see why other factions would have an overly difficult time. in fact outcasts as a whole can deal with them fine. gremlins just don't like having to look at their Wp. ("what's the Wp on that?" "....um.... do i have to tell you?")

the masters are of the same power level, they are just good at different things and when you put one's strength against another's weakness it shows more clearly. just because x can beat y most of the time, doesn't mean they have different power levels because y beats z and z beats x. all equal power level. i know that is part of the issue being discussed in this thread: rock, paper, scissors. every game is like that. its a good system. malifaux deals with it the best in my opinion because they let choose what to use after you know what you are trying to do. your mission is to cut up this stuff. crap i only own paper and rock, i haven't bought scissors yet! well rock would be terrible, i'll use paper and have a solid chance. also marcus has an activation long obey that prevents the opponent from activating that model and can be used on masters. it has very little restrictions (controlled detonation on a spider swarm... ouch). marcus is a jack of all trades, which isn't as straight forward to use or obviously powerful. some strategies are extremely easy for him, some are harder, you know... like every other master in the game.

the lacroix's are nasty for sure and give you the option for someone else to lead the crew other than somer i have a ridiculous amount of gremlins, probably about twice what i need. after somer's and ophelia's boxset, i would get a hog whisperer, a blister of piglets, slop haulers, taxidermist and stuffed pigs. that will be tons of variety for almost all situations. i have twice of all of that, and while that gives me the ability to go all pigs, or all gremlins, i find most of the time i do a little of each. 2 warpigs can be nice but thats almost half the crew for two models, and the times where they really have an advantage over just one are kind of sparse so basically just get one of everything haha. if you really want every possibility you could ever have get two of everything, but that will be pretty expensive. if you don't want to spend that much i would recommend both boxsets and a blister of slop haulers.

there's actually not a big difference at all. since you want to focus on the masters for balance anyway, having two masters could easily be seen as having two armies, with the bonus of being able to share models. a giant is about the only thing you can share between goblins and ogres. if you play warhammer with the same list every time you will be at a disadvantage. hands down. you will run into armies that you would not be able to beat if a 5 year old were playing them. the difference is that is how gw intended it to be. the game is designed around a competitive system where you do your best guess, or bring the most balanced force you can think of, and hope you never throw scissors against rock. malifaux is designed where in a competitive environment you can definitely run into rock, paper, scissors and have a bad matchup but if you choose to own more than one master you mitigate that substantially. you can make a worse case scenario for yourself where you essentially both throw rock and play it out from there. if you are playing competitively there is nothing more you could ask for, and it is great game design. if you are not playing competitively then this thread does not matter at all because as has been said all you have to do is be nice, and look at your pretty models which works equally well in every game system ever made and does not even require rules. if find it ironic that you have this position that "imperfect balance with every master is bad design, and i don't want to have to buy more than i can play with" when your fantasy armies are ogres and goblins which are historically the weakest factions. if i started off playing ogres i would think whfb is the worst game ever made. if you show up to a tournament with pretty much any given ogre list you will not have a chance against 90% of lists you face. you will probably only beat the O&G players. you can certainly choose to play malifaux like that as well, but you are deliberately putting yourself at a disadvantage and will be hard pressed to find any sympathy. malifaux's design is more expansive and open than GW's which gives you the option to play it like a GW game, but lets players go beyond that if they choose. you can stick to one master, one list, and one set of models that exactly equal 35 pts if you want, which will essentially make malifaux play like any other game out there. the problems that exist with balance in every other game will come up in the exact same way. but the designers of malifaux have fixed those balance issues by letting you pick who you want to play after you know what you are trying to do.

this is a good example in that it represents the worst case scenario possible honestly in this situation i would just tell them to ignore the targeting restrictions. that would probably give ophelia a slight upper hand, but hamelin could have enough fun with their low Wp that it would probably even out. per the talk about actual dollars, malifaux is a good bit cheaper than a majority of the other games out there. the actual dollar amount you spend is not the problem it is the perceived effect of $ = power. there is mr. suitcase in every game. i won whfb tournaments owning the bare minimum number of models needed to even field 2250 pts. however i was very specific in the models that i bought. i bought the good ones and didn't buy the bad ones. i still chose my army based on fluff and feel and personal appeal though. but given my army choice, there are simply models that are not worth owning for every army in warhammer (they just switch up which models those are each new edition and armybook release). the appeal of getting new players into the game is that with 30-40 bucks you have a crew and can play. the problem with that is the starter boxes are not balanced, so when a bunch of new players start play some feel left out because when they are all equal and no one knows what they are doing they simply don't have the same tools. the starter boxes are not balanced because a) i don't think they ever tried to, and the models needed to balance some of them did not exist at the time. as other people have pointed out, another problem with the practical application of balance is that players generally tend to feel attached to a certain master, and not a certain faction. but the game is balanced around the factions being equal. ressurectionists and the guild are very easy to move models around from master to master and have pretty similar feel to each of them where if you like one you will probably like at least another one. arcanists and neverborn can fairly easily as well but to a lesser extent, and outcasts of course have almost no synergy with each other. for casual play, as it was said earlier, all it really comes down to is not being a jerk. new players will really need some guidance if they are only playing starter box size games. even in groups that start off "in a vaccuum" the early adopters will enjoy the game regardless most likely, become good enough to win even the slightly unfavorable match ups, and then recognize those match ups and help the new players that they bring in. for competitive play, all you really need is 2 masters and a handful of models. that's it. tl;dr the truth is the game is really balanced very well, and at worst balanced better than every other miniature game that i know about. *side note about the worst match up in the game currently hamelin v. gremlins: none of the book 1 match ups even come close to this one (even just starter boxes). i finally got to try it out and it is indeed very difficult (even flipped contain power and didn't reflip just to see how bad it could be). warpigs alone simply are not the answer. the pigapault is the way to go for sure, although it is extremely unfortunate that it is insignificant as well. however with Wp 10 you can shoot down the rat catchers with relative ease (and then using blasts hopefully to exterminate some rats). once they are down a warpig and somer will have a fighting chance against hamelin himself, but don't forget to use all the pulse and blast damage you can first to whittle him down.

Marcus and Sommer are two of my favorite masters in the game. I play with only book 1 gremlins routinely and there are people who think that they are broken (in a powerful way. especially when its about to hit the fan in turn 3 or 4 and they don't have a hand). Sommer's crew excels at having creative ways to get around targeting restrictions, but I have yet to play against Hamelin so I can't really speak to that. As far as matchups are concerned, Gremlins are not a faction, Outcasts are and I don't think anyone could argue with a straight face that there's anything in the game that Outcasts as a whole can't handle. Sure the game is not balanced around you and your buddies all having just a random starter box, but it never was intended to be.

haha that sounds like a tactic that plans on doing a lot of weak damage

what marcus lacks in attacks he can make up in 3 headed tigers

haha awesome!

no counters is a bummer, but i would say that their obvious use is mostly against crews that would be giving you counters anyways. i don't really want to be shooting 2/3/4 at stuff with armor. i think they are a cheap way to keep the guild honest. i'll probably use them more than most though, i tend to not focus on summoning as much and i dont like needing a 7 just to take a shot (that will probably miss) with crooked men