Talking through Hamelin

[Jesy Blue]

I just did it on my kitchen table... yeah I am SOOOO bad at geometry (how do I even play this game properly?), it fit fine and it wasn't even close.

Looks like I have to find a new pastime because I can't just lay back and mock Winged Plague any more.  Emailing my shop cause they're still doing curbside pick up on the weekends.

[SoulGambit]

You can actually fit up to 6 scheme markers if they are perfectly placed.

[Jesy Blue]

..... how?  pictures please if you could.

Also, I've been rolling around in my head an idea of taking the Emissary into Plague.  I could get another Don't Mind Me model on table, more auto scheme marker dropping, Regeneration on Hamelin, healing to follow up my silly Hard To Kill Stolen thing I do.

But that is 5 Rats worth of Soul Stones!

[Adran]

If you make a hexagon with each marker 4" from Benny then they should be just more than 4" apart.  A regular hexagon is made of 6 equalatiral triangles ( all 3 sided equal length). These would be formed by Benny and 2 markers. In this case the triangle needs sides of greater than 4" +2(15) mm and less than 4" +15 mm +  20mm, When you allow for the model and markers bases. So it's possible, but you only have a 5mm leeway in placing. 

 

EDIT -  I failed to check some fundimentals. Benny is not on a 40 mm base. limit is 5 markers

[Zebo]

I've tried to measure this and I've failed each time. I cannot see how it's done. 

[SoulGambit]

Make a triangle with two markers and Benny, with Benny at the top. Put a marker 4" to Benny's right and Benny's left. Put another two markers above Benny 4" apart.

Note that a Marker must be within 4",  not completely within. As long as it is grazing the aura by a hair, it applies.

4 or 5 markers are f a r more realistic and have enough leeway to account for most but not all terrain.

[Adran]

I can't work out how to add a picture. But its possible in principle.  The picture I wanted to add was a hexagon split into 6 Triangles. Each edge of the Hexagon is the same length, and is also the same length as the distance from the middle to each corner.

4” is 101.6 mm. For ease I’m going to use 102mm as my distance because it is then more than 4”

Each line needs to be at least 4” + 2*15mm long (132mm) to allow the markers to be placed more than 4” apart. If you do this then the lines from the middle of the scheme marker to the middle of benny are also 132mm long.

Because Benny has a 40 mm base, and the scheme marker has a 30 mm base, this means that the gap between the two edges of the base is 132 – 15 – 20 = 97mm.

So you can place Benny in the middle of such a hexagon and a scheme marker at each corner to get 6.

 

EDIT _I was sure Benny was 40mm. At 30 mm  then geometry says its not possible to get 6 markers.

[Zebo]

 Benny has 30mm base

[Adran]

39 minutes ago, Zebo said:

 Benny has 30mm base

DOH! I was sure he was 40.

Ok Ignore me, you can't do 6 markers. 5 is the limit.

 

[Jesy Blue]

5 hours ago, Adran said:

DOH! I was sure he was 40.

Ok Ignore me, you can't do 6 markers. 5 is the limit.

Oh he SHOULD be on a 40mm base with that damn coat...... but alas no.

So yes, you can do 5, but the placing is so specific it's just not worth it.

 

[RisingPhoenix]

  

8 hours ago, Adran said:

 

EDIT _I was sure Benny was 40mm. At 30 mm  then geometry says its not possible to get 6 markers.

 

Wow, he is.  Hah.  I've got his box sitting on my assembly table too.  

[Zebo]

5 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

Oh he SHOULD be on a 40mm base with that damn coat...... but alas no.

So yes, you can do 5, but the placing is so specific it's just not worth it.

 

I've found to be quite easy in the first turn. 

In the rest of the turns, as the game advances and rats die, it's not really worth the work. Markers are gonna be dropping everywhere. 

[trikk]

On 5/21/2020 at 10:20 PM, Zebo said:

I've found to be quite easy in the first turn. 

In the rest of the turns, as the game advances and rats die, it's not really worth the work. Markers are gonna be dropping everywhere. 

if you use Weary Road from Emissary you can have a 6th one

[Azahul]

You can get a little crazy with a Prospector and a Rat King. Have the Rat King Interact and use Rat Problem to summon a Rat Catcher. When the King dies from the summon, have Benny discard a card to throw down another scheme marker on top of the one it placed with the Interact action. Then have the Prospector Interact, Appraise the corpse (for ~1/4 chance of another scheme marker), and if you have a 6 of Crows in your hand you can choose not to get the Soulstone and declare Malifaux Mining Law for another extra scheme marker. It all fairly consistently nets me something like 6-8 Rats from Benny's first turn.

[trikk]

After a few games with Hamelin I'm seriously considering if having Benny is necessary. I found the new Hamelin to work better if you just lure the enemies and blow them up with Bleesing Disease. The whole setup for Benny seems counter productive sometimes

[Adran]

I don't think Benny is necessary. If you want to play that way, you can, and it has some useful advantages, but its not the only way to make plague work. (Its probably not the best way, but that sort of engine was so useful in M2e that its natural to try them in M3).

[Azahul]

I'm a big fan of Benny myself. It's not like you can't include all the components that make Lure/Bleeding Disease work as well as him, Plague is a pretty cheap keyword all things considered so you get to have your cake and eat it too. Prospectors are pretty much my favourite models to babysit him and make the engine tick, since they're generating value from the backlines anyway and don't lose out on much by taking the Interact action.

 

But I'm weird and love Benny in Parker too (so many rats, so much card draw), so take that with a grain of salt.

[daniel sprayberry]

Hello everyone, 

New to Malifaux as a whole and I picked Hamelin as my main master because rats. I keep rats as pets so it was just destiny. I run Benny basically as a matter of course but after playing a game or two for a month here is what I've come up with. (also understand much of my impressions are through a lens of complex system and chaos theory as I am currently researching the two systems for school)

 

Hamelin is a logarithmic master, and with logarithmic growth there are points of catalyst where the "ball starts rolling" for lack of a better term. I've experienced it to start mid way through turn 2. Given his lore and personal basis I go the summoner route and use the blight late game. I strongly agree that Hamelin is a time intensive master. I would say in a competitive situation inform the other player of your need to move quickly. I have found that sling shoting Rat Kings is much better than the mass of rattos. They just sow so much chaos in the other crews plans. A fast Focused 4+ rat king is a force to be reckoned with. Generally, I'll throw it at the other crew and let it sit there till its near my last activation. Basically, this stalls or diverts the other players anchor point. The only time this is not a good strat is against hand manipulating crews. (seriously Wyrd Loyal Rats should be a 6+ flip giving Benny an tentative 60% chance of going off handless). On that note it would make more sense to me for Blight to translate to injured at the end phase or something else like that as invasive organisms rarely are the thing that kills the host but its the expenditure of resources that kills them. I would imagine something like that would put Hamelin in line with contagion graphs when plotted against damage output or "ground gained" which would be an interesting thing if anyone had the time and care to plot lol.

I like Hamelin he's one of my favorite masters lore wise I hope to see him be more prevalent and see myself master him.

Cheers Gents and Ladies   

[daniel sprayberry]

On 5/21/2020 at 12:52 AM, Adran said:

If you make a hexagon with each marker 4" from Benny then they should be just more than 4" apart.  A regular hexagon is made of 6 equalatiral triangles ( all 3 sided equal length). These would be formed by Benny and 2 markers. In this case the triangle needs sides of greater than 4" +2(15) mm and less than 4" +15 mm +  20mm, When you allow for the model and markers bases. So it's possible, but you only have a 5mm leeway in placing. 

 

EDIT -  I failed to check some fundimentals. Benny is not on a 40 mm base. limit is 5 markers

I assume you mean without any help from like the prospectors or Emissary as with Mining Law I have been able to get 6-8 down fairly regularly  

[ShinChan]

2 minutes ago, daniel sprayberry said:

I assume you mean without any help from like the prospectors or Emissary as with Mining Law I have been able to get 6-8 down fairly regularly  

Most of the people use the Prospectors to generate SS from turn 1, so they're stunned and they aren't able to declare triggers. However, it may be worth to skip the SS generation in turn 1 as long as you have 1-2 6+ in your hand.

 

[Adran]

1 minute ago, daniel sprayberry said:

I assume you mean without any help from like the prospectors or Emissary as with Mining Law I have been able to get 6-8 down fairly regularly  

Yes, if you can add a marker by a non interact method then you can expand that number.

I think you can get crazy numbers out if you put the effort in, as you can use his "loyal to the end" to get more markers out in the area, which in effect is letting you use an action to cycle a card each activation. (bonus marks in that if you try hard enough you take make the actions you use come from rats so you don't even lose much in terms of actions to do it). 

 

[daniel sprayberry]

4 minutes ago, ShinChan said:

Most of the people use the Prospectors to generate SS from turn 1, so they're stunned and they aren't able to declare triggers. However, it may be worth to skip the SS generation in turn 1 as long as you have 1-2 6+ in your hand.

 

Yeah I know but I tend to use them as marker gens. Summoning with Hamelin hasn't been very soulstone hungry so I've found making rats tends to get me more value.

[daniel sprayberry]

2 minutes ago, Adran said:

Yes, if you can add a marker by a non interact method then you can expand that number.

I think you can get crazy numbers out if you put the effort in, as you can use his "loyal to the end" to get more markers out in the area, which in effect is letting you use an action to cycle a card each activation. (bonus marks in that if you try hard enough you take make the actions you use come from rats so you don't even lose much in terms of actions to do it). 

 

Well loyal to the end is once a activation I think and maybe its my meta but the rattos tend to be taken out in groups, cards for days tho

[Adran]

5 minutes ago, daniel sprayberry said:

Well loyal to the end is once a activation I think and maybe its my meta but the rattos tend to be taken out in groups, cards for days tho

Certainly if its the enemy doing the taking out. If you're the one killing them, its under your control how many die at any given time

[daniel sprayberry]

2 hours ago, Adran said:

Certainly if its the enemy doing the taking out. If you're the one killing them, its under your control how many die at any given time

*mind blown* i honestly didn't even think of that. So long as an attack doesn't say enemy only, or via rat bomb or something similar. However, my general experience thus far, and again may be due to my locals meta, is turning them into rat kings is most value creating. However, I did just play a Jack Daw crew, first time playing him, and he made Benny almost useless. Got raked over the coals but I had 20 stones devoted to the rat factory in Benny and 2 Prospectors so maybe a little change up or more data is in order.