Necromorph

Kaeris, coryphee and shikome are great damage dealer for Marcus....and than theres the giant-six-armed-bear-of-death coming soon. Waldgeists are great support models, and Silurids and Night terrors are great objective grabbers. Lots of versatility with Marcus.

Yeah, Marcus rocks, I'm totally in with TM.....

/roar.....

Well, that was satisfying.

Keep in mind, most if not all of the book 1 masters are getting resculpts, unfortunately, since they love to mess with levi players, we probably won't see his until august, but it will be coming.

I can say that I feel your pain though, I hate the entire Collodi box, and I was really looking forward to him, but then I saw the models and was instantly put off. Now, if just one or two of.the sculpts had been off, I probabaly still would have picked him up, but I don't like any of them, and that was enough to stop me.from buying his box (for now). It was a bit easier for me to say no, because I already have a lot of crews, but part of me is still dissapointed every time I see the box sitting on the shelf at the LGS.

Great write up, and I agree that we need more threads like this.

As magic sort of mentioned, focusing on catchers only works if you have catchers on the table. Many hamelin crews don't rely on rat swarms and use other thisngs like Canines and night terrors for objectives / cheap units rather than the typical rat swarm.

If this is the case, then focus on nix and stolen, then hamelin himself.

Indeed, I've only played a couple games woth him, but I'm enjoying him a lot. Granted my model list is a bit bigger and more flexible, but yeah he's a blast.

They are an alternative to a rat swarm. They allow you to control activations, and are generally better for keeping up with hamelin. Besides, they're not -1slow like rats and they'll turn into rats when they die anyways assuming they're close to hamelin.

Sure, hamelin can be not fun to play against for new players, but that shouldn't discourage people from playing him...if anything, learning how hamelin ticks might be very useful for new players in the long term.

I just don't like this trend of someone starting a thread about picking up hamelin , and everyone feels the need to indirectly scare them away by saying that no one will want to play against them. I hate the dreamer and most Guild, but I'm not.going to steer a new player away from those crews if that's what appeals to them.

I feel like there's this unspoken effort to curb the amount of.hamelin players in the world, but less for other masters who are just as powerful...kinda F'd up.

Voted Tuco because I absolutely love that model, but I feel like Nekima would be more obvious.

Although, Imagine a Henchman upgraded, SS using Coppelius running around with Dreamer and Hoffman..

Also, those infinite loops are a way to kill time, say, in a tournament, which is really a low blow.

For skeeters, you could change the wording of Larvae to have a clause like "Target frendly gremlin or pig model..." or something like that. Not sure how the rule is exactly worded, but something that would basically target anythying in your list aside from another skeeter.

For rats, like I said, it's as simple as adding another rule,

Swarm Mentality (who knows, just throwing something out there)- Rats killed by a Yellow Teeth strike are not effected by the Voracious Rats ability.

Though this would still allow you to kill a rat to heal all other Vermin, even if you don't get a free rat out of it, haha.

The more I see Levi played, the more I disagree with that. Especially with the ability to use Collodi, but even without it, Levi is nearly on level with, if not actually on level with, The Dreamer, Hamelin, Kirai, Lilith, and Hamelin. Even without Collodi, he is nasty in the hands of a good player. Add Collodi and his crew is pretty much broke.

Eh, I feel like if a crew like kirai or dreamer can bide their time and wait for levi to kill himself off, they can easily move in and sweep up the waifs. Without levi the crew kind of falls apart as not many of his minions (apart from A&D, SPAs, etc) have much synergy together, and will be fairly easy to pick apart.

Like I said, haven't played against the dreamer much with levi, but I say that as someone who does very well with Kirai, and have seen what she can do to his crew. It's not autolose by any means, but its going to be uphill for him.

Let us know how that tactic works, there's a lot of Ss to be generated there. I haven't tried things like that as of yet because I've never needed the extra Ss that badly. Everyone plays him differently, but I find I don't need more than 2-5 with him, especially if I'm using JD, since my opponents won't be cheating much, you won't need as many stones. I usually on use them for high priority minions and masters.

As for the dreamer alpha strike, I don't think that levi has a whole.lot that will save him against a good dreamer player. I haven't had much experience against the dreamer with him, but a lot of the book 2 masters give it to him pretty hard, with the exception of Hoff. They're all fast enough to get to his waifs and kill them off after he's activated. Not that he can't win or anything, but he's definitely at a disadvantage.

Waifs are pretty $$$$$$$$ poor at casting, I generally don't unless I know I can.

Ss miners are nice, reasonably priced hitters that can also be used for objective grabbing. Levi can also give them a crow to their cb so they can hit their trigger automatically and gain some Ss off of the enemy.

The guardian can be great for keeping both waifs and alyce alive depending on the situation. I guess the reason why I use them is really only against guild. A guild crew with 2 austringers will ruin your day real quick....they are the ultimate anti-levi minion. The guardian helps.keep your waifs alive so levi can do what he does best. Other than that I wouldn't really use one, just against guild, but that's just me, I think austringers are worse than stitched...bird-f$&%ing bastards.

Basically, the infinite turn is a dick move, they need to make it so that they don't come back off of other rats attacks, simple fix and allows other crews with obey and such to eliminate some rats.

An issue I have is when you start messing with a masters core mechanics.

You want to change some wording on abilities, fine, but once you start messing with a masters code mechanics, that's a sure fire way to see a master fall apart and be easily exploited.

- I think changing bully to have a clause like "Gremlins without the insignificant characteristic are not effected," would be nice.

- Emptiness not effecting SS flips is good.

- Impetuous only effecting attack flips is good.

- Making lure citizen a spell.

Stuff like that, which we've already mentioned. Once you start messing with the core wording of things like Nihilism, Bully and Voracious Rats, I predict things going downhill quickly.

Very solid start there, Magic. Only thing I would at least consider initially is a guardian, a watcher and a SS miner, other than that you look like you're on the right track.

**Evil Grin**

@ Cain

Thats why you can always just use ILure for the 2nd ap to avoid that.

@ the Nihilism point.

I don't agree that it should have a range, or if it did it would have to be pretty damn huge. The issue whither being able to hire h1 and insig is in a way a means to diversify his crew selection but it can also be a hindrance. That's ALL HE HAS...and not many of his choices (aside from a rat swarm, and nix situationally) can hit worth a damn save desperate mercs and Kade. That's the point, he makes all of his piddly minions more valuable in terms of objectives.

I would agree with some of that. Namely,

Emptiness not effecting Ss flips.

Wouldn't mind bully not effecting gremlins.

Lure citizen being an easy cast spell.

I think Impetuous was intended to be used with nix so that you could still get straight flips with them, but I agree that it doesn't need to be for dg flips.

However, I don't think Voracious rats needs its range reduced.

Those 3 changeable would at least make him more.manageable, while not.effecting his bottom line.

Voted alyce, but Misaki would be a nice and probably more likely choice.

Jose ftw.

I can't wait to try out Kaeris!

On the subject of Von schill, I haven't used him with Marcus but I have a lot of experience with him, so on speculation I can say that he probably wouldn't be bad with marcus. Granted, he's more expensive than Kaeris but here's some pros:

Solid ranged support with plenty of dg and triggers.

Mobile as hell, which is great because it helps him keep up with Marcus and support him in close.

Lots of buffs (not all of them are Korps specific) and Augmetic Jump is great for a hit and run style of crew (shikome and rattlers and such).

Slow to die on a Ss user is amazing, he'll stick around for a while.

As for a comparison between him and Kaeris, I can't say. His cost is an issue, but he brings a lot to the table. Kaeris can probably pump out more hurt in general, but Von Schill is.much more valuable in terms of.overall support. I'll have to try them both out and see.

Basically how I feel, rancor. Sure, negative play experiences aren't the desired intent, but what makes them so negative is their innate design. Many of their core abilities/units/spells are what causes the negativity, but they're all designed to work in concert. You start changing abilities and you risk toppling that master into uselessness...like taking a leg off a tripod.

Any tweaks would have to be incredibly minor, otherwise you'll have to overhaul his entire crew (and I say that in regards to Hamelin, stolen, catchers/rats and Nix, as they're designed with quite a bit of specific synergy in mind).

I believe it's been clarified that he can be hired by her. From what I've seen, model specific hiring rules usually overrule broad, master specific ones. Like Levi not being able to hire Coryphee.

For 25ss gremlins, I just started with Ophelia's box, and a pack of Slop Haulers, seems to work just fine.

Well, I did it, I bought Marcus.

So, I already have a few beasts from other crews, and I really like the Rattler, though idk how well it will do most of the time. I also bought Kaeris' box, because I've been looking for an excuse to do that for a while and when I read she worked with Marcus that pretty much sealed the deal...so In sum...this is what I'm looking at as far as models I own for him.

Guild hounds x2

Silurids x3 (on loan from a friend with 6 haha)

Night Terrors x2

Shikome x2

Rattler

Kaeris (and her box contents obviously)

Student of Conflict

Canine Remains (are they still beasts? can't remember)

Jack Daw

Von Schill and his box

Misaki

Desperate Mercs x3

Various other mercs (taelor, hans, etc)

I think that's about it as far as what I own that would be compatible with Marcus. Aside from Waldgeists, which I plan to get anyways for lilith when her alt comes out, what more should I get. Molemen seem useful, but the cats I'm not so sure about. I've seen them used a bit and they never seem to do much except kill one model and die...not really my style. I'd assume that following would work pretty well for my purposes

SS Miner

Mech Rider

Coryphee

Molemen

Geists

Rogue Necro (i'll need it for my ressers so wth not?)

As I said, I like the Cats, but I don't know how much I'd like them, but what other models would you say would work with what I have?

Edit: Really looking forward to the mauler...idk why, since it's very slow and simple, but I just think it's the fact that it's a giant 6 armed bear...that and with a student of conflict it seems a bit more dirty haha.

Hmmm, id say he could do with a tweak or 2 to make him less of a pain to play against, but I still stand by the notion that he's far from unbeatable.

Experience against him is key. Many of my group at the LGS don't have nearly as big of an issue with him now that were all more experienced and they have had a lot of games to try stuff out against him. The problem is that despite being able to best him, he is still not very fun to play against even if you do manage to win. Though the same.could be said for other masters like Pandora, who also have a reputation for being a negative play experience, does a negative play experience mean that they should be fixed? Sure Hamelin could probably use a couple rules tweaks, but then again, so could all of.the book 2 masters, but is the.fact that its no fun to play against him give more weight to the claims of.him being broken?

And before anyone says a sarcastic "yes", I think that the whole mindf&%k aspect about him and Pandora are part of the reason why they seem so strong, theyre just frustrating to play against and it demoralizes people into not.wanting to try, but its not a deciding factor for substantiating how broken they are.

Yeah I wouldn't say auto include, but maybe like 70-80% of lists...at least I use her about that much.