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Hamlin is busted, seriously...


NoahScape

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Okay, so hear me out and please read the entire thing. I will warn you now this discussion will be all over the place because I don't even know where to really start, or how to make this flow correctly. This post might seem angry, but its meant to spark discussion and constructive feedback. 

I guess I'll start with blight itself, and the Bleeding Disease ability.

Bleeding Disease - Target suffers an amount of damage equal to the number of blight tokens. 
WHY!?!?! You don't lower the amount of blight tokens after the damage and its not capped like most other masters/models with a similar ability. So you're telling me I just get blight tokens for rats spawning on me, activating near things, from abilities and failed duels etc... and when I have 7 of them on my master on turn 3 because that's what happened I get nuked by Bleeding Disease for 7 damage and the best I can do is stone it... Oh, and that had the siphon life trigger so 8 damage because why exactly? 

Also... Bleeding Disease is on TWO other models, Nix and the Obedient Wretch, RANGE 12! Oh and if thats not enough, the Wretch can make it so that you can't cheat against the duel because you have blight tokens. So you top deck it, and since its an attack focus can be used on the ability, and its not a gun attack so it ignores friendly fire, doesn't have a damage cap, doesn't remove blight, and it just nukes models. Who thought this was okay in testing, and has anyone else brought this up? If you tell me having these three models, two on a stat 6 one on a stat 5 that you can't cheat against that has no cap on damage with tokens that can't and won't be removed isn't busted, you're kidding yourself. 

Lets not gloss over the general stats/abilities on this Wretch. A 5 SS enforcer that has  Manipulative... okay, def 5 WP 4 MV 5 stealth because of reasons... Tummy aches that means if you have a blight token you can't cheat against this model, ever... Why does this 5 stone model have stealth, and Manipulative, and Tummy Aches with a range 12 ability that ignores friendly fire, cover, and the potential to ignore armor because it also has analyze weakness. 

Bleeding Disease itself needs to be range 8 tops, I'm thinking range 6 and it HAS TO REMOVE BLIGHT TOKENS and IT HAS TO CAP DAMAGE! How did this make it out of beta, GG0, and GG1? I'm guessing no one thought it was good and didn't use it, but its insanely good, and its so good because of the other things I'm about to talk about. Again, Hamlin, Nix, and the Obedient Wretch all have this ability. I don't think Nix should have it at all and the Wretch probably needs a stat decrease or a TN higher than 10. 

Hamlin hands out blight tokens when you activate, ok, he summons rats when enemy models with blight tokens are killed, ok. He has 3 stolen as totems (I'll get to these models shortly) and he can demise off them to heal within 6, doesn't have to discard a card, or anything else, they just have to be within 6. He can just eat triggers by removing blight tokens... do you know how good this is? There isn't a flip, or a card discard. Its basically a super stun aura. Aura 6, yes, but its so good and when he's next to important models or just owning the center of the table its pretty oppressive, but ok. His lure is a stat 7 with a built in crow to hand out more blight tokens... so he can easily at range 12 just lure you and throw more blight on you, which we already talked about being busted with bleeding disease. Then his black staff... stat 6 with a built in crow. 2/3/4 and get a blight token. The crow... gives you 1 injured for each blight token... What?... After turn 3 everyone has at least 3-4 blight tokens on them, some have more. So Hamlin can Lure, throw 2 blight tokens on, hit someone with the staff for 1 more blight, so that 3 blight in 2 activations, and injured 3. After he starts applying the injured, it gets really bad. 

Pustulent Tumors- Target a friendly vermin, non-vermin models within pulse 2 of the target suffers 2 damage and gains a blight token, then kill the target. Mask trigger allows you to take this action again. When this happens to a malifaux rat, which you will have a ton of, it draws a card... the card draw on the rats is insane. So there isn't a duel, you just take the damage and gain a blight token. 

Here is the scenario, 2 rats walk up between two models. Hamlin lures a third closer. A soulstone is spent from the never ending cash of soulstones and a card is cheated to hit the target number from the never ending stream of card draw (we'll get to that), and he blows up a rat, with the trigger to take the action again. 3 models take 2 damage each, each gains a blight, and he does it again on the other rat. Each takes 2 damage with no duel, and another blight. One of the models dies because he had already taken 2 wounds, drops another rat, does it again with the swift action trigger again, does 2 more damage to both models, one more dies and drops another rat, then does it again on the last rat doing 2 more. So thats 18 damage, 4 cards drawn, and all it costs Hamlin was a stone 2 actions, and 1 card. These feels unbalanced, even if there were only 2 models in that area, and 2 rats, one action shouldn't be able to produce 8 wounds with 2 rats and draw 2 cards. 

More on the card draw, rats are cheap, easy to get, and the opponent can't let them survive because they can turn into 7 focus rat kings when you have three of them, or Hamlin just blows them up. Benny can make them pretty easily, they're summoned when models die, but they draw Hamlin a ridiculous amount of cards.

So Benny with wanted criminal, and a prospector with wanted criminal walk into a bar with a couple of rats... Your own model charges a rat, kills it. When you kill it you draw a card for the rat dying, you drop an enemy scheme marker once per activation when a rat dies by discarding a card, the prospector draws and Benny both draw a card from the Wanted Criminal upgrade. So thats 3 cards that the Hamlin player draws, discards 1 card. They drop a scheme marker that can be used to summon more rats, or the prospector can just mine it to at worst draw a card and discard a card, at best drop another scheme marker within 6 inches and draw a card. So at worst, thats 4 cards drawn, 2 discarded, on 2 actions and a soulstone. That can be done twice every turn if you use 2 prospectors, otherwise its 8 cards, 1 soul stone, at worse discard 4 of those 8, and the half of the discards are paying to drop the enemy scheme marker that allows you to draw the card and then summon another rat to repeat the process. It creates a card drawing engine that may be the best in the game when you add in all the other card draw off the other rats that you have. 

Benny's ability should probably be once per turn at least. 

Stolen, you get three of them, 1 stone each. They are MV 4, DF 4, WP 4 with serene countenance and stealth? What? Demise hungry rats... ok thats good. More rats for the insane card draw and blight tokens... YAY. Vomiting disease on this model seems way too strong. Its a stat 5 WP duel and if you have 3 or more blight tokens it gets a positive to the flip with a range of 10, not a gun so ignores friendly fire. The attack doesn't remove tokens, and it does 1/3/4 damage. Keep in mind almost everything will easily have at least 3 blight tokens on it, and this model with stealth (can't target it outside of 6 inches), and there are three of these models. The damage ramp is too good with a stat 5 attack on these 3 models. I know, they're only 2 wounds, but stealth and serene countenance are big time defensive tech items. Oh, and they summon 2 rats when you do kill it so more card draw, and/or rat kings.  

 

The biggest take aways for me with Hamlin is blight tokens need to be removed when damage is sustained, and damage needs to be capped at something. People complain about Albus and San Deep card draw, but this might be better, and the amount of damage that can be done with bleeding disease is broken. Maybe rats should only be drawing you cards when the enemy kills them, but you have to kill them anyways because you just can't let them sit there. 

 

Anyways, I understand this post might seem angry and I may be out of line on a couple of issues, but I don't think so. Offer me your feedback and feel free to add your own thoughts and stories! This is purely to foster discussion and I truly believe making changes to this keyword is needed for the health of the game. At the very least the blight token/damage has to change. 

 
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This is a classic example of everything being assessed from the perspective of the hamelin player playing perfectly and the opponent being a numpty. Its incredibly resource intensive to have happen those extreme end scenarios you've spoken about. Like when you say the model suffers 7 damage, yes but how many sub-par ap were used to reach that number, where were your resources spent that allowed that to happen. It's what turn 3 when this is possible on a consistent basis, you've had 3 turns to mitigate this stack on that particular model and manage the bleeding disease models. 

Any master in the game sounds broken on paper when you don't consider its limitations equally. 

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25 minutes ago, McCabe said:

This is a classic example of everything being assessed from the perspective of the hamelin player playing perfectly and the opponent being a numpty. Its incredibly resource intensive to have happen those extreme end scenarios you've spoken about. Like when you say the model suffers 7 damage, yes but how many sub-par ap were used to reach that number, where were your resources spent that allowed that to happen. It's what turn 3 when this is possible on a consistent basis, you've had 3 turns to mitigate this stack on that particular model and manage the bleeding disease models. 

Any master in the game sounds broken on paper when you don't consider its limitations equally. 

So you have nothing constructive to add that has some substance behind it? Blight is so easy to get on models, maybe you should look again. 

 

I saw this first hand this morning, its very strong. We went through the blight and counted it out, there was at least 45 blight out spread across 9 models, 3 summons. 

 

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I was just indicating that these posts are alot more credible when you've appreciated not only the power but the limitations of these pieces. In substance and In particular here, you said nothing of the incremental nature of blight, it is much weaker early game and then to balance that it is exceptional late game. Without this context sure, 7 damage for 1 ap is excessive, but its meaningless when you're not factoring the investment that takes into it.  

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Hahaha, funny thing, I was actually considering making a topic asking what people see as strong counters to Hamelin. I've been playing him a lot and definitely consider him my favourite Master, and he's been so oppressive in so many games that I'd kind of like to see answers on what my local opponents should be looking for to handle him.

 

On the Bleeding Disease front, I should note that I consider it possibly the least important part of Hamelin's kit. It allows him to kill the unkillable, i.e. models with armour, access to healing, and Soulstones or some other combination of abilities that make attacking them kind of a wasted effort, but usually by the time Blight wracks up to the point that I'd be doing 4+ damage in a single Bleeding Disease I've already killed the target. A lot of the Blight comes from Rat Kings with double positives to damage, meaning my opponent is usually eating three attacks that average at least 4 damage anyway before they have enough Blight for me to consider a Bleeding Disease. Only if a model survives that kind of output do I start to see the lack of cap on Bleeding Disease damage actually start to come into play.

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The counter is you need to alpha his crew harder than you do most other masters.  If you're speaking competitively its on you to appreciate hamelin is weaker in the earlier game and much too strong if you allow him to reach later turns with his substantive force. You must win the attrition game early. 

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Hamelin takes a bunch of ap to get the ball rolling on bleeding disease or summoning more rats.  Blight tokens takes a minute to add to a model.  I usually use Hamelin to lure then whack something with his staff to give something inured 3/4, then have the kids barf all over it.  But killing you doesn’t win games, scoring does.

 

also Hamelin doesn’t like blasts and ressurs.  Straight up bad times for him.

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1 minute ago, McCabe said:

The counter is you need to alpha his crew harder than you do most other masters.  If you're speaking competitively its on you to appreciate hamelin is weaker in the earlier game and much too strong if you allow him to reach later turns with his substantive force. You must win the attrition game early. 

And/Or bring anti-demise tech, pulses and blasts.

Terrain also helps, specially if you can create a bunch of hazardous.

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Interesting. I have certainly seen the alpha strategy work ok, an Ortega crew is the only time I've felt I've come close to losing on attrition. Of course, the one game I've ever actually lost with Hamelin was kind of the opposite, where Titania boxed me into my deployment zone early but mostly played keep away and tried to kill Rat Kings before they could activate more to keep her own stuff alive long enough to score rather than trying to win the brawl.

 

How obnoxious have people found anti-demise tech, exactly? It prevents me from playing Hamelin as aggressively as I would ordinarily like to (as alluded to in the original post, he's absurdly good if you can jam him into the middle of the opponent's crew and shut down all their tricks and triggers and get that passive Blight ramping up), but losing the card draw on rats isn't the end of the world and the only effective anti-demise I've seen requires the model in question to put itself in charge range of Hamelin, and anything in charge range of Hamelin is nearly guaranteed to die that turn.

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Blight itself isn't the issue, the lack of a damage cap, or removal of blight when damage is taken is the issue. What other model does anything remotely like this? Sonnia doesn't remove the burning I believe but burning can be removed with condition removal and assisting with an action. 

 

Blight doesn't have any of those restrictions, and I say again, blight isn't hard to get on models. It was quite easy with Nix and Hamlin themselves, not to mention the rat tricks. 

 

Also, the card draw is still insane and no one has addressed it.  

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Several masters in the game do feel like unbeatable in the first 10 games before you have learnt how to play against them. The best way to learn them, rather than just reading cards, is to playing them by yourself. You may ask your opponent to switch side with you, playing Hamlin and having very first hand experience on his strength and weakness. Sometime a model's weakness is hidden behind the veil until you have chance to get into it.

You may also want to share your faction and mostly used keyword, such that all of us may provide actual advices for you to counter and overcome the issues you mentioned.

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Also you are misinformed on the rat king part

It takes 4 rats for a king. Rats are also summoned already activated and if Hamelin uses his bonus to make a rat king and a single rat is already activated the King cannot activate that turn. If he uses Hamelins bonus aura to put 4 rats in range to tangle. Kill a single rat on your next activation, no rat king. Bring a single blast model and kill all 4 of the rats. If he makes the rat king, kill it before the next turn or just move away from it, both kings and rats are extremely fragile (edit) not to mention the card had max size. Yes card cycling is strong but if you're making him discard lows they are going back into the deck for this/next turn 

 

Also the blight part. His crew does minimal damage without Bleeding disease. gonna use sonnia as a comparison? Sure her burning damage is capped and it can be reduced. But her burning reduces your range AND does extra damage at end of turn. 2 burning makes your assist action 0" perfect for her blasts and her burning keeps working even if she isn't blasting you for burning damage, without Hamelins models his blight does literally nothing, without spending AP models can only gain 2 blight a turn IF they are in range of both Hamelin and one other model. Sure he can focus blight stacking but if he is doing that the model is mostly dead and a damage cap on blight is moot. Not to mention you yourself mentioned that Hamelin can lower your blight to deny triggers, use that. If he is lowering your blight by 3 times every activation you're not gonna have much blight, does it slow you down? It slows him down too, and chances are other crews are gonna have better damage then Hamelin

 

Also card draw? Compared to schtook? Schtook can draw/cycle a card every single activation while doing damage/defending. Since you are only talking about everything working perfectly, both players having 8 models is 16 cards a turn SO STRONG!. Rats have a cap. Ap spend summoning rats is ap not spent scoring, denying, giving you blight and bleeding disease. He has key rat models that you have literally pointed out and they have little defence tech

 

Not to mention we don't know what faction/master you are playing. If you're going to vs someone who plays loads of Hamelin and you don't know Hamelin at all of course you're going to have a bad time because the Hamelin player will get to do everything he wants to do

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4 minutes ago, DeRosa said:

Also the blight part. His crew does minimal damage without Bleeding disease.

Ok, as a Hamelin player, I'm going to have to take exception to this. Hamelin's crew hits hard. Rat Kings should be able to get moderate damage on nearly every attack because they will nearly invariably be spending Focus and often have Strength in Numbers to give double positives to damage, will often be Fast, and have an Onslaught trigger. And that's before Hamelin throws in his bonus action. If the Rat King survives long enough to both activate and get Hamelin's support we're talking four attacks in a turn without Onslaught that are each more likely to do 4 damage than 2. I can often reasonably expect a Rat King to hit for 8-12 damage in an activation, and if I have good cards or have gone into a target with low defence then that's on the conservative side. Once there's even a little blight on the table, even the Rat Catchers are min 4. These models are squishy and the Rat Kings don't hit as hard once they've taken a bit of damage, so there are absolutely counters to this output, but my general impression of Hamelin is a crew that hits like a freight train.

 

And every turn Hamelin will be looking to charge something and apply Terminal and that model will die. Even rats will tear them apart as like as not.

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Well hold on now, I think many people agree von Schook is broken so let's not drag him into this one...

9 minutes ago, DeRosa said:

Also card draw? Compared to schtook? Schtook can draw/cycle a card every single activation while doing damage/defending. Since you are only talking about everything working perfectly, both players having 8 models is 16 cards a turn SO STRONG!. 

 

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6 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Ok, as a Hamelin player, I'm going to have to take exception to this. Hamelin's crew hits hard. Rat Kings should be able to get moderate damage on nearly every attack because they will nearly invariably be spending Focus and often have Strength in Numbers to give double positives to damage, will often be Fast, and have an Onslaught trigger. And that's before Hamelin throws in his bonus action. If the Rat King survives long enough to both activate and get Hamelin's support we're talking four attacks in a turn without Onslaught that are each more likely to do 4 damage than 2. I can often reasonably expect a Rat King to hit for 8-12 damage in an activation, and if I have good cards or have gone into a target with low defence then that's on the conservative side. Once there's even a little blight on the table, even the Rat Catchers are min 4. These models are squishy and the Rat Kings don't hit as hard once they've taken a bit of damage, so there are absolutely counters to this output, but my general impression of Hamelin is a crew that hits like a freight train.

 

And every turn Hamelin will be looking to charge something and apply Terminal and that model will die. Even rats will tear them apart as like as not.

A rat king that can't activate this turn can easily be put below half. Also enemy condition removal is a thing.

And that's also apart of my other point, a rat king beating on someone is probably going to die before blight cap becomes an issue 

 

(Edit) I agree that Hamelin's crew is a crew that hits hard, when you let them. They are a fast fragile hard hitting crew but yes, there are was to slow their damage down 

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Oh I don't disagree, the counter to Rat Kings is to simply hit them first, and Hamelin's counter in turn is to use himself and rats and Nix and whatever else to keep the opponent busy while he gets Rat Kings into position. Therein the game is played. But Hamelin does bring a punchy crew to the table, is more my point.

 

I 100% agree with much of the rest of your post, should have made that clear. In particular the fact that I have normally killed my target by the time their blight gets to any seriously significant levels. With their absurd number of attacks Rat Kings would be my go to option to ramp Blight up on a target quickly, but all those 4 damage hits are more likely to just put the opposing model in the dirt instead.

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2 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Oh I don't disagree, the counter to Rat Kings is to simply hit them first, and Hamelin's counter in turn is to use himself and rats and Nix and whatever else to keep the opponent busy while he gets Rat Kings into position. Therein the game is played. But Hamelin does bring a punchy crew to the table, is more my point.

 

I 100% agree with much of the rest of your post, should have made that clear. In particular the fact that I have normally killed my target by the time their blight gets to any seriously significant levels. With their absurd number of attacks Rat Kings would be my go to option to ramp Blight up on a target quickly, but all those 4 damage hits are more likely to just put the opposing model in the dirt instead.

I was typing alot so my point might have been spread thin, the rat kings are the exception. I should have said the models that rely on bleeding disease have relatively low damage 

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Just to make sure, you're not letting auras stack? I played against Hamelin like that once. I still won, but he did one shot Archie at one point in the game. So if you let auras stack, it does feel quite ridiculous (and is not intended).

Other than that, it might be worth getting some vassal games in playing him. When you see how other people beat him, you'll get a good feel for it (or swap with your opponent and play each other's crews).

6 hours ago, IronmanKC81 said:

Here is the scenario, 2 rats walk up between two models. Hamlin lures a third closer.

I'm skim-reading here, but this seems pretty easy to avoid to me. Why are you bunching up your models against a bubble crew (and why are they even within walking distance of the rats if you don't want them to die?)

Also, that's three activations. What are you doing during those activations? You could be killing the rats (possibly with something that gains a benefit on killing, like Revenant crew - at which point every enemy rat dies for a friendly pyre marker. Very strong for Reva).

If you don't want to give him the extra card draw, you can simply maneuver around the rats instead. They're pretty slow and cumbersome.

The rats are mindless, so you know at the start of the turn where every rat that can cause you problems is.

Rats also give up activation control quite easily (if they're killed before they activate, you get guaranteed last activation which is quite strong). They also tend to give you initiative, meaning you can back-to-back activation them.

Definitely recommend just playing some games with Hamelin to get a feel for his limitations.

6 hours ago, IronmanKC81 said:

Lets not gloss over the general stats/abilities on this Wretch. A 5 SS enforcer that has  Manipulative... okay, def 5 WP 4 MV 5 stealth because of reasons... Tummy aches that means if you have a blight token you can't cheat against this model, ever... Why does this 5 stone model have stealth, and Manipulative, and Tummy Aches with a range 12 ability that ignores friendly fire, cover, and the potential to ignore armor because it also has analyze weakness. 

Against Hamelin you should have a decent amount of ruthless, so that shouldn't be as big a problem. Similarly, you can avoid tokens or get positive flips to ensure you're hitting even through tummy aches. But even assuming the model is immune to being hit entirely, you can use shocks, blasts, and pulses to kill the model.

What crew do you normally play? Perhaps we could give suggestions.

EDIT: as an anecdote, in my last game with Molly... Dead Rider did ~15 damage in a single activation one turn, and the next turn Archie did ~15 damage in a single activation. In both cases the opponent could do basically nothing to prevent it during the activation. 30 damage you can't prevent is a lot. The game is designed to let you do broken things if you set up well and your opponent lets you.

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4 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Just to make sure, you're not letting auras stack? I played against Hamelin like that once. I still won, but he did one shot Archie at one point in the game. So if you let auras stack, it does feel quite ridiculous (and is not intended).

Boy the aura rules were important to learn for this crew. I had the opposite experience, where I was playing Diseased auras correctly in not having them stacked, but didn't realise until a few games in that Voracious Rats did stack. Getting those 2-3 rats per kill can get pretty swingy, especially since they're so often popping out in the midst of the action right where Hamelin is placed to make good use of them :D 

 

Actually, on that note, when people say that you need to alpha Hamelin hard and early, what kind of threats are you talking about exactly and what targets are you gunning for? I'm assuming "gunning" is the operative word, I've had people fling melee models into my deployment zone Turn 1 and often the best case scenario for them is that they kill something minor and then die, giving me a bunch of rats in the process. Are there any melee crews that would be good for this, or is it best reserved for ranged-heavy crews?

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2 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Actually, on that note, when people say that you need to alpha Hamelin hard and early, what kind of threats are you talking about exactly and what targets are you gunning for? I'm assuming "gunning" is the operative word, I've had people fling melee models into my deployment zone Turn 1 and often the best case scenario for them is that they kill something minor and then die, giving me a bunch of rats in the process. Are there any melee crews that would be good for this, or is it best reserved for ranged-heavy crews?

I haven't played him much, but I assume Dead Rider doing his end of turn 2/start of turn 3 nuke (6" pulse blows up a LOT) and Archie doing clean up (save tomes so he is doing blast damage) is where I'd start.

If really going ham I'd also examine something like Kirai as a second master, so I could spam summons into you - doesn't matter how hard you kill them if I can restock every turn.

I'm pretty big on sacrificial models, though. Even masters are sacrifice fodder to me.

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I don't know how much you have faced Hamlin. He is a master that you probably need a set plan against. 

Some of your complaints are describing the dream Hamlin situations. Models standing near multiple rats, and models with large numbers of Blight tokens. These are things the opponent should be trying to avoid. So if an experienced Hamlin player faces someone that hasn't seen what he does, these situations will occur. If you face someone that knows what he does, these situations are much less common.  Blight isn't that easy to get if you are actively trying to avoid it, there are a few auras (3-6" range) and then  there are close combat attacks. Hamlins Lure almost the only way to get a Blight on a model thats more than 4" from you without it activating or you charging. If you compare Blight to something like Poison, its a similar ease to get the poison onto models (using Experimental or TriChi), and it naturally does damage. So whilst it doesn't have the same 1 shot capability, over the course of most games it probably does more damage. 

Yes, Bleeding disease doesn't have a cap. It can do huge amounts of damage. But it can take a lot of effort to do that much damage. You aren't looking at the effort required to get there. 7 damage is fairly huge for 1 attack, but there are several masters that can easily get 5 or 6 damage off 1 attack with less set up, (And Hannah can get to 9 per attack with only a little effort, which largely goes into giving her the focus condition). Those other masters can do it to any model on your crew with little effort, Hamlin has to signpost who he wants to kill. Those other masters have the chance to do it on the first turn. Hamlin has to build up the blight first. 

 

I would offer 2 bits of advice. Firstly replay the game, but this time make sure you have read the plague cards before you face them, so you understand the risks of leaving rats near groups of people. Know when its a bad time to kill a rat, and when its not so bad (Card draw is always good, but if you do it at the beginning of a turn its just card cycle, and probably also costing them activations, and if you do it at the end of a turn then you will at least be reducing the cards draw at the start of the next turn.) Killing multiple rats at the same time also reduces Hamlins options, and  its less bad to make them draw lots of cards in 1 go then that many cards over several activations whilst they might be using them as well. 

Secondly, Try playing a game with Hamlin yourself. It can take quiet a bit of effort to get all that blight out there, and it sometimes feels like you are walking through mud the first few turns, because you aren't doing the same amount of things as other crews. 

 

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11 hours ago, IronmanKC81 said:

Okay, so hear me out and please read the entire thing. I will warn you now this discussion will be all over the place because I don't even know where to really start, or how to make this flow correctly. This post might seem angry, but its meant to spark discussion and constructive feedback. 

I guess I'll start with blight itself, and the Bleeding Disease ability.

Bleeding Disease - Target suffers an amount of damage equal to the number of blight tokens. 
WHY!?!?! You don't lower the amount of blight tokens after the damage and its not capped like most other masters/models with a similar ability. So you're telling me I just get blight tokens for rats spawning on me, activating near things, from abilities and failed duels etc... and when I have 7 of them on my master on turn 3 because that's what happened I get nuked by Bleeding Disease for 7 damage and the best I can do is stone it... Oh, and that had the siphon life trigger so 8 damage because why exactly? 

Also... Bleeding Disease is on TWO other models, Nix and the Obedient Wretch, RANGE 12! Oh and if thats not enough, the Wretch can make it so that you can't cheat against the duel because you have blight tokens. So you top deck it, and since its an attack focus can be used on the ability, and its not a gun attack so it ignores friendly fire, doesn't have a damage cap, doesn't remove blight, and it just nukes models. Who thought this was okay in testing, and has anyone else brought this up? If you tell me having these three models, two on a stat 6 one on a stat 5 that you can't cheat against that has no cap on damage with tokens that can't and won't be removed isn't busted, you're kidding yourself. 

Lets not gloss over the general stats/abilities on this Wretch. A 5 SS enforcer that has  Manipulative... okay, def 5 WP 4 MV 5 stealth because of reasons... Tummy aches that means if you have a blight token you can't cheat against this model, ever... Why does this 5 stone model have stealth, and Manipulative, and Tummy Aches with a range 12 ability that ignores friendly fire, cover, and the potential to ignore armor because it also has analyze weakness. 

Bleeding Disease itself needs to be range 8 tops, I'm thinking range 6 and it HAS TO REMOVE BLIGHT TOKENS and IT HAS TO CAP DAMAGE! How did this make it out of beta, GG0, and GG1? I'm guessing no one thought it was good and didn't use it, but its insanely good, and its so good because of the other things I'm about to talk about. Again, Hamlin, Nix, and the Obedient Wretch all have this ability. I don't think Nix should have it at all and the Wretch probably needs a stat decrease or a TN higher than 10. 

Hamlin hands out blight tokens when you activate, ok, he summons rats when enemy models with blight tokens are killed, ok. He has 3 stolen as totems (I'll get to these models shortly) and he can demise off them to heal within 6, doesn't have to discard a card, or anything else, they just have to be within 6. He can just eat triggers by removing blight tokens... do you know how good this is? There isn't a flip, or a card discard. Its basically a super stun aura. Aura 6, yes, but its so good and when he's next to important models or just owning the center of the table its pretty oppressive, but ok. His lure is a stat 7 with a built in crow to hand out more blight tokens... so he can easily at range 12 just lure you and throw more blight on you, which we already talked about being busted with bleeding disease. Then his black staff... stat 6 with a built in crow. 2/3/4 and get a blight token. The crow... gives you 1 injured for each blight token... What?... After turn 3 everyone has at least 3-4 blight tokens on them, some have more. So Hamlin can Lure, throw 2 blight tokens on, hit someone with the staff for 1 more blight, so that 3 blight in 2 activations, and injured 3. After he starts applying the injured, it gets really bad. 

Pustulent Tumors- Target a friendly vermin, non-vermin models within pulse 2 of the target suffers 2 damage and gains a blight token, then kill the target. Mask trigger allows you to take this action again. When this happens to a malifaux rat, which you will have a ton of, it draws a card... the card draw on the rats is insane. So there isn't a duel, you just take the damage and gain a blight token. 

Here is the scenario, 2 rats walk up between two models. Hamlin lures a third closer. A soulstone is spent from the never ending cash of soulstones and a card is cheated to hit the target number from the never ending stream of card draw (we'll get to that), and he blows up a rat, with the trigger to take the action again. 3 models take 2 damage each, each gains a blight, and he does it again on the other rat. Each takes 2 damage with no duel, and another blight. One of the models dies because he had already taken 2 wounds, drops another rat, does it again with the swift action trigger again, does 2 more damage to both models, one more dies and drops another rat, then does it again on the last rat doing 2 more. So thats 18 damage, 4 cards drawn, and all it costs Hamlin was a stone 2 actions, and 1 card. These feels unbalanced, even if there were only 2 models in that area, and 2 rats, one action shouldn't be able to produce 8 wounds with 2 rats and draw 2 cards. 

More on the card draw, rats are cheap, easy to get, and the opponent can't let them survive because they can turn into 7 focus rat kings when you have three of them, or Hamlin just blows them up. Benny can make them pretty easily, they're summoned when models die, but they draw Hamlin a ridiculous amount of cards.

So Benny with wanted criminal, and a prospector with wanted criminal walk into a bar with a couple of rats... Your own model charges a rat, kills it. When you kill it you draw a card for the rat dying, you drop an enemy scheme marker once per activation when a rat dies by discarding a card, the prospector draws and Benny both draw a card from the Wanted Criminal upgrade. So thats 3 cards that the Hamlin player draws, discards 1 card. They drop a scheme marker that can be used to summon more rats, or the prospector can just mine it to at worst draw a card and discard a card, at best drop another scheme marker within 6 inches and draw a card. So at worst, thats 4 cards drawn, 2 discarded, on 2 actions and a soulstone. That can be done twice every turn if you use 2 prospectors, otherwise its 8 cards, 1 soul stone, at worse discard 4 of those 8, and the half of the discards are paying to drop the enemy scheme marker that allows you to draw the card and then summon another rat to repeat the process. It creates a card drawing engine that may be the best in the game when you add in all the other card draw off the other rats that you have. 

Benny's ability should probably be once per turn at least. 

Stolen, you get three of them, 1 stone each. They are MV 4, DF 4, WP 4 with serene countenance and stealth? What? Demise hungry rats... ok thats good. More rats for the insane card draw and blight tokens... YAY. Vomiting disease on this model seems way too strong. Its a stat 5 WP duel and if you have 3 or more blight tokens it gets a positive to the flip with a range of 10, not a gun so ignores friendly fire. The attack doesn't remove tokens, and it does 1/3/4 damage. Keep in mind almost everything will easily have at least 3 blight tokens on it, and this model with stealth (can't target it outside of 6 inches), and there are three of these models. The damage ramp is too good with a stat 5 attack on these 3 models. I know, they're only 2 wounds, but stealth and serene countenance are big time defensive tech items. Oh, and they summon 2 rats when you do kill it so more card draw, and/or rat kings.  

 

The biggest take aways for me with Hamlin is blight tokens need to be removed when damage is sustained, and damage needs to be capped at something. People complain about Albus and San Deep card draw, but this might be better, and the amount of damage that can be done with bleeding disease is broken. Maybe rats should only be drawing you cards when the enemy kills them, but you have to kill them anyways because you just can't let them sit there. 

 

Anyways, I understand this post might seem angry and I may be out of line on a couple of issues, but I don't think so. Offer me your feedback and feel free to add your own thoughts and stories! This is purely to foster discussion and I truly believe making changes to this keyword is needed for the health of the game. At the very least the blight token/damage has to change. 

 

agreed, dmg without cap and terminal trigger pushes u to stat of 0 and 3 totems with demise on a master, is it fair enough?))

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27 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I haven't played him much, but I assume Dead Rider doing his end of turn 2/start of turn 3 nuke (6" pulse blows up a LOT) and Archie doing clean up (save tomes so he is doing blast damage) is where I'd start.

If really going ham I'd also examine something like Kirai as a second master, so I could spam summons into you - doesn't matter how hard you kill them if I can restock every turn.

I'm pretty big on sacrificial models, though. Even masters are sacrifice fodder to me.

Riders are an interesting one. Generally speaking, I'm pretty happy to see a Rider across the table. Hamelin's ability to deny triggers shuts them down pretty hard, and his Stat 7 Lure can make it hard for them to find safe spots on the table in which to operate. But they are mobile and can run a flank well enough, so it is possible for a cagey rider to play around Hamelin. The Mechanical and Pale Riders are the ones I have the most experience in facing, and their ability to do what they want to do without needing to come near the bubble means I have to actually work if I want to neuter them.

It also does slightly matter how hard I kill summoned chaff, because I'm getting multiple rats out of each kill. I'm already generating a Rat King a turn most turns just with my backline models, every easy to kill model my opponent throws my way is swinging things harder.

31 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Oh, also, pool dependent.

Hamelin's crew seems slow and cumbersome (or am I wrong?). In an ideal pool, I'd just score tons of points without going into his bubble at all.

Not slow exactly, I've gone full speedster in Corrupted Leylines from time to time (a Rat King with Fast that gets a kickstart from Hamelin's bonus can move a Lodestone a cool 23"), but it's definitely optimal to play for points that don't involve the centre of the board.

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