Cedar

If we count all factions, I'd say it's either Perdita or Ramos Box, followed by Ophelia, Von Schill and Victorias. All these boxes have one thing in common - they are not just boxes of master+totem+hench+3 minins bu the offer something more (Even Victoria's, since she has additional henchman in the box). For Neverborn best out-of-box is probably Lynch (although he has only 5 models which costs 21 Stones total), as Illuminated are solid minions, or Titania's- Autumn knights are simply amazing.

@PositronMike I played few games as Parker with more than 7 models but I prefer to have one big beater more than two cheap activations. Could you post me one of your crews with 9 activations? i'm really curious about it. And since Dead Outlaws are now available I might give Parker another chance. My other problem with Parker is fact, that range of his abilities are weird - from 12" gun range to 4" discard range. It can be hard to find best position for him.

For schemes, I suggest Parker or Hamelin. I prefer Hamelin, since he is more durable, offers better activation control and he can deal enormous amount of damage (few times I had dealt more than 8 damage with his Bleeding Disease- usually people don't focus on removing Blight and they don't mind getting few stacks of it, so damage from Bleeding Disease or even Rat Catchers is sometimes ridiculous). However, he is very difficult to play at the beginning and has no movement tricks. Parker on the other hand is very mobile, can deal decent amount of damage, but he is very card hungry and requires enemy scheme markers to work. He suffers from low activation count, low amount of cards and lower potential damage and resilience than Hamelin, but he is very mobile and versatile master. I suggest going Parker if you want to focus on 3 different masters, as he can forgive more mistakes than Hamelin. For your killy master I'd suggest Viktorias over Levi - if you are playing them in scheme pools focused on removing models from the table, they can do much more than Levi, however he is more versitale master with higher activation number (thanks to Waifs).

There is also fourth curse, the Suffocating Injustice - you can find it on Jack's Emissarcausesbecomes attached to enemies with Emissary basic attacks and it forces opponent to suffer 2 damage each time they cheat a diel AND it increases damage suffered from conditions and abilities other than Suffocating Injustice by +1 which mewns that other curses will deal 3 damage instead of 2 and Jaakuna's aura and Curse of Covetous applied by Dead Outlaws will deal additional point of damage.

One of my opponents is regularly playing 3 changelings and a trapper. How to deal with them? I tried to use A&D or my own snipers but my attempts failed miserably. I appreciate any help.

Von Schill is tank - at least this is his design, but he has only 1" of engage so it is very unlikely that he will tie multiple enemies in combat. He lacks something like Challenge or even Raging Challenge granted by Ironsides' Emissary. He can use Finish the cur to kill low WD enemies, but if something has Hard to kill and 2 WD the attack won't do much. I think, that increasing his threat range to at least 2", giving him some nice (0) ability (like challenge/raging challenge) and making attack from finih the cur to ignore hard to kill would help a lot.

Has anyone tried Emissary with Jack? Additional curse is nice (especially since it increases damage suffered from drowning/firing squad injustice by half) and he is pretty mobile even without free push from Jack. Unfortunately his damage output is low, so hiring someone like Rusty/Taelor/Johan is probably a good option. What do you guys think about Emissary in Jack's crew?

I've heard that Hamelin did pretty well during ITC. Anyone has any clue who was playing him and what crews did he bring?

I play mainly as outcasts, and our totems are pretty good except in some cases, but Karina is not worth the cost, same as student of conflict. Lady Ligeia is too fragile for a model that wants to be close to enemy, and Malifaux child have better synergy with masters like Kaeris or Sonnia rater than Outcasts. Steam trunk would be fine if it would get Freikorps characteristic and accomplice, so it could move to the right spot, then accomplice his friend to heal/remove markers or burning.

Maybe Tyrant's faction? After Titania's release from prison, Tyrants decided to unite their strengths to kill her (and other opposing forces, such as Guild, Neverborn or Levi) so they wouldn't interrupt their struggle for ultimate power?

I have an idea about playing Legion with Prince for reinforcements tokens and increasing their resilience by Active Defenses Armor. I agree that 12 points is almost half of Scrip from one commander, but I hope they are worth it.

I was thinking about Commander Pledge, plus Kassa and what is more important - Steel Legion (My favorite unit in the entire game right now), but Electrocutioners are also very interesting.

I'd play with nix, alyce, librarian or lazarus instead of ama in that list. Mad Dog gets better with every model that has sh attack like Rusty or Lazarus, while nix helps spread blight and librarian heals your models (in that list you have 3 models with htk which makes librarian even better).

Since tier list for each player is different, based on their own experience and meta at their LGS, at first I should describe my local player base and tournaments so rest of users of Wyrd forums will have a better perspective. Most of players in my region are Neverborn (approximately about 1/3 of player base) and due to their large number first places at tournaments are scored by them. Most common tournament type is 50ss fixed faction, although about one tournament per month is fixed master. Most popular masters are, in terms of factions: Guild- McCabe, Sonnia, Ressurectionis- Seamus, Nicodem, Arcanists- Sandeep, Rasputina, Neverborn- Pandora, Collodi, Outcasts- Leveticus, Victorias, Gremlins- Som'er, Ulix, Ten Thunders- Shenlong, McCabe As you can see, most of popular masters are very aggressive with many ways to deal damage or buff offensive capabilities of their models. In about 8 out of each 10 games I play as Hamelin (as blight Hamelin or other builds), rest- mostly as Levi and sometimes as Tara. So my tier list is: Tier 1 (masters that have advantage over others in almost any situation and can do well in almost any scheme pool): Leveticus, Kirai, Sandeep Tier 2 (masters that have advantage in many scheme pools, sometimes even bigger than Tier 1 masters, but are vunerable to counters): Som'er, Hamelin, Dreamer, McCabe, Marcus, Sonnia, Reva, Shenlong, Kaeris Tier 3 (masters with slight advantage over others in certain scheme pools, vulnerable to counters or without many ways to deal with certain threats): Perdita, Ulix, Wong, Ophelia, colette, Nellie, Zipp, Mc Mourning, Molly, Lilith, Pandora, Lynch Collodi, Misaki, Nicodem, Rasputina, Jack Daw Tier 4 (masters without special advantages over others and with some disadvantages): Lady Justice, Hoffman, Seamus, Yan Lo, Von Schill, Tara, Ramos, Mei Feng, Tier 5(Masters that are significantly weaker than other masters in almost any scheme pool): Lucius, Ironsides, Zoraida, Mah tucket, Brewmaster.

I agree, the best way of playing him is to counter enemy schemes/strategy and slowly gaining VP. I found that schemes which earn VP at end of the match (and FFM due to A&D) are best suited for him. Recently I played a game with Interference,FFM, Accusation, Mark for Death and Tail'em in the scheme pool. Taking Hamelin, Nix, A&D and creating few rats won me the game, with final score of 10-2 as my opponent was unable to finish any schemes and he gained only one VP from Interference and second one for killing marked Rat King.

I play blight centred list a lot, but there are only few reliable sources of blight and I'd like to see few more (maybe some thematic beater for Hamelin or some models with ranged attack with taint trigger).

Well I agree that due to his utility he shouldn't be to deal large amount of damage, but some improvement in this aspect would be nice.

In gg 17 he is more powerful than he was before, but you need mulitiple high ss models to make him work. For me he is in top 3 Outcast masters with Jack and Levi. If he gets more reliable source of damage somehow (new upgrade maybe) he would be among top tier.

Unfortunately Rat Kings are not very good minions compared to other models within same price range. Wokou riders (who are nothing spectacular) have better attack and are more durable than Kings, same goes for Shastar Guards, Iluminated, Thralls, Hanged, Jorogumo etc. Their stats are low and their only advantages are ability to summon other models and (0) action. I think that they have cost of 8 because 4 rats or rat and rat catcher have same cost, altgough their stats are more close to 6 ss model.

I play Hamelin as my main master and I found that he is either super strong against certain masters and super weak against others. He has advantage over almost any non-summoner due to lot of activations, Obeys, Pipes and preventing enemy charges, which is great advantage against any assassin master(well, maybe not against Victorias unless you hire Anna to prevent place effects), but his rats are weak and not so useful again any master who can summon something to fight (like Ramos, Molly and Kirai) can easily beat you. His damage is very, VERY irregular, since he relies only on Obey and Bleeding Diesease and power level of these attacks depends on enemy models or Blight condition respectively. I hope that in new book he'll gain some new reliable source of Blight( like Nihillist version of Rafkin or Sebastian) which would increase his damage potential and mitigate some of his flaws.

I think that Ressers are one of toughest or one of easiest matchups for Hamelin, depending on enemy master. Most dangerous master against him is probably Spirit Molly, since she can summon model and kill stolen with same action and Datsue-Ba summons spirits from stolen or rats. In that case, you should play crew with decent amount of high SS models, like A&D, Killjoy or DE. Same goes for Horror Molly and Kirai. Other dangerous opponent is McMourning- he can kill your rats just by standing near them and turn them into new hounds in the process. His DF and WP is 5 and he has only soulstones and hard to wound to survive alpha strike from your killjoy and other beatsticks. I found Nicodem, Yan Lo, Reva and Seamus to be one of the easiest matchups for Hamelin, since rats and rat kings aren't living models so they don't drop corpses to allow enemy to summon models. Yan lo usually runs elite crew with ancestors and he is very fragile during first two turns so if he didn't buy upgrade with incorporeal he is easy target for killjoy or other models with high min damage. Reva is very fragile on her own, and can be easily killed by your heavy beatsticks. In case of Nicodem, bringing Taelor and Specialist can help a lot - without corpses he can't do much. When facing Seamus, you can always have him in your LoS thanks to Rats, so his back alley will be less efficient. Regardless if he took bag o'tools or sinister rep tie him in combat with Taelor or A&D to force him to waste AP on disengaging or trying to till you with bag. Belle are one of bigger problems, but you can lure your models back thanks to pipes or just lure belles to kill them.

I thought that hamelin has advantage over ulix since pigs have low wp and can take charge as (0) so hamelin can obey them to charge other pigs or haulers. I guess I was wrong and this is difficult matchup:/

Could you write something more about that match? I'm going to face Ulix soon so I want to know what to do and what models are good against him.

I think that Emissary can be great since it changes other undeads to horrors and grants them fast.

He is my usual model to take along with a&d against gremlins or other hamelin, pandora, dreamer or Molly in fixed master tournament. Lots of simple df duels are serious danger for these masters or in case of gremlins- against 90% of faction. If your deso engine is hurt, just activate it early, heal back the wounds, then obey him when he is hurt again to strike back and heal agaagain probably with obeying him first to take focus so you can cheat damage for severe. And remember, it doesn't matter for heal how much damage the model actually was dealt but how much was flipped or cheated during damage flip. You can also obey a&d for taking 3 times Industrial Age action just for draining yours opponent hand or dealing few damage.