Hamelin Questions

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

ok ive read his main fluff. and i have some questions

1. Why do players hate hamelin, i keep seeing people be negative about him and his crew?

2. Is hamelin completely dead, or is he co-habiting with with the tyrant, plague

3. is his dog undead? 
 

4. does hamelin have independent thought? 

5. Why do all the other tyrants hate him? 

6. is it right plague was an alchemist before his ascension to tyranthood? 

[Adran]

28 minutes ago, Mr Oogie Boogie said:

ok ive read his main fluff. and i have some questions

1. Why do players hate hamelin, i keep seeing people be negative about him and his crew?

2. Is hamelin completely dead, or is he co-habiting with with the tyrant, plague

3. is his dog undead? 
 

4. does hamelin have independent thought? 

5. Why do all the other tyrants hate him? 

6. is it right plague was an alchemist before his ascension to tyranthood? 

1 some people dislike facing him in part because of the number of models they face and the time it can take and in part the feeling of inevitability.  A good hsmlin player can play the turns as fast as any over crew, but a learning player can easily spend ages on each turn.

It's a bit like some people dislike facing Tau gun lines, tyranid swarms or invulnerable space marine's. 

2 we don't know although it seems plague is in complete control of the body.

3 yes

4i don't recall seeing any since he met plague but I can't remember everything.

5 I think tyrants all hate all other tyrants. Although he might have more hatred because of what he does to their followers. 

6 No idea. 

[RisingPhoenix]

1.  M2E Hamlin was a giant bag of BS.  He was head and shoulders above the other outcast masters, to the point where it was almost comical.  Then they nerfed him a bit and gave him a huge powerup upgrade to make sure he remained nuts.  So a lot of people have him down as "that BS master" like Nicodem or Sandeep

2.  Lore has been pretty vague, probably just Plague running the ship.

3.  Yes

4.  I don't believe so.  

5.  Plague doesn't seem particularly well liked. All the Tyrants are fighting for ascension - if one ascends the rest will probably be destroyed by the ascended in short order - but even given that Plague doesn't seem to have many friends.  It might be that his role in most stories is "that disaster that everyone works together to destroy."

[Rabbitknight]

Between the theme, and some lingering NPE resentment from 1/2e, and the fact that Plague is written as a jerk, he's hard for people to like. Though I'm a particular fan of him.

The original Hamelin was devoured by Plague's vermin when he fell into the prison beneath the sewers. Hamelin's body is just a shape that Plague takes, formed of vermin, because it's "easy," he has changed the face over the years though.

Plague first tried to rebuild Nix as a vessel before Hamelin fell, but Nix's spirit was too loyal to Hamelin, which is why he still follows Plague despite Plague having no direct control of Nix.

None of the Tyrants like each other but there's particular resentment toward Plague because he tends towards plans that "steal" from other Tyrants rather than building himself, Siphoning off the Red Cage, weakening opponent's followers, stuff like that.

OG plague was an alchemist, but that term gets weird in Old Malifaux, just because of the godlike powers available then.

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

see i like plague lol. i like his his attitude lol. out of all the non-bayou charactors his fluff is what appeals to me most (not the models, the models are ok but i prefer amalgam models.) but i love the idea of plague. 

 

sp hes the bloke that no one likes,  even the other tyrants will work against him with each other. he must have been a nasty piecve of work before he ascended lol. i heard that his crew are extra squishy  (i just got the 2E boxset second hand - no cards) 

 

i wondered why people i told seemed not too pleased by my purchase lol

[Morgan Vening]

On 11/16/2021 at 7:02 AM, Adran said:

1 some people dislike facing him in part because of the number of models they face and the time it can take and in part the feeling of inevitability.  A good hsmlin player can play the turns as fast as any over crew, but a learning player can easily spend ages on each turn.

It's a bit like some people dislike facing Tau gun lines, tyranid swarms or invulnerable space marine's. 

There's also the issue of the "big hits". Bleeding Disease not having a cap means that if a model gets 4, 5, 6+ Blight tokens on them (and no way to remove them), their time on the table is limited, especially as Nix and Hamelin both have it at Stat 6, WP often being the less likely to be a 6+, and a tie being all you need.

Often ignored is how much investment is needed to put that much Blight onto a model, or that it's only three models that can do really make that model dead that way (one using Master AP, one that's easily killable if you go after it, and Nix who's a pain in the ass).

If you know about it, you can mitigate it some. Spend some resources on not having Blight land, have a model that's racked some up start scheming out of LOS of the Bleeding Disease models, etc.

But early on, the frustration with having a big model get killed with 2-3 AP (again, ignoring the AP needed to get all that Blight on) was considered by some to be problematic.

[RisingPhoenix]

On 11/15/2021 at 2:04 PM, Mr Oogie Boogie said:

see i like plague lol. i like his his attitude lol. out of all the non-bayou charactors his fluff is what appeals to me most (not the models, the models are ok but i prefer amalgam models.) but i love the idea of plague. 

 

sp hes the bloke that no one likes,  even the other tyrants will work against him with each other. he must have been a nasty piecve of work before he ascended lol. i heard that his crew are extra squishy  (i just got the 2E boxset second hand - no cards) 

 

i wondered why people i told seemed not too pleased by my purchase lol

He really isn't OP at all in 3E (in fact I'd pick up Yannic's box and Benny to avoid him being a bit of the opposite) but 2E Hamlin was really one of the worst play experiences in addition to being OPAF.  He could, for example, take a bonus action to summon two stolen, have both stolen activate and sacrifice themselves for rats, have the rats twine together into a rat king, have the rat king sacrifice itself for the rat catcher plus a rat, and the rat catcher could activate.  That's something like 6-8 activations off his friggin bonus action, which meant that you were basically guaranteed to take your entire turn after they did.  It also meant that every round you'd spend about 10 minutes on your side of the board playing with your plastic and completely ignoring your opponent... then you'd take your actual turn.  Needless to say this does not endear yourself to, well, anyone.  And really made people just associate Hamlin with long periods of time spent playing with their iPhone while their opponent went.    

Then he got Blight Pits which were 50mm markers he could move around to rapidly stack blight on models (also without interaction), so yeah that made people happy too.  Just remind them new Hamlin is annoying, but not nearly to the level of M2E Hamlin.  

[Mr Oogie Boogie]

i wish id been playing malifaux in 2E cos i would have deffo used him lol 

[Adran]

Of course first edition Hamlin ( master version) was more of a npe experience than the M2E version, with him untargetable by ht 1 models ( so every gremlin if you were unlucky enough to have picked them as your crew)  as well as basically immortal with the ability to hire a really strange combination of models. 

[RisingPhoenix]

1st edition was such a weird time.  Like there were no power budgets to masters, some of them were absurdly OP beyond all recognition, others were basically fat enforcers. 

Gremlins weren't even a faction when it started, they were just a dumb thing Outcasts could do.  But then all the outcasts masters couldn't hire things from other masters - Leveticus couldn't hire Som'mer or Viktoria's models, and same for those two and each other's or Levi's (Levi's pool was mostly resser and arcanist models).  Hamlin was a continuation of this theme, and was also wackadoodle. 

Hell Viktoria didn't even really have models, there was just a bunch of mercenaries that other factions could hire and so could she.  

Wacky wacky time.  Leveticus was so broken.  All I remember about Hamlin was none of us could work out what he was supposed to do looking at his cards and he had like 500 models you had to buy to play him.

[Azahul]

On 11/17/2021 at 5:51 PM, Morgan Vening said:

There's also the issue of the "big hits". Bleeding Disease not having a cap means that if a model gets 4, 5, 6+ Blight tokens on them (and no way to remove them), their time on the table is limited, especially as Nix and Hamelin both have it at Stat 6, WP often being the less likely to be a 6+, and a tie being all you need.

Honestly the Wretch is even better at it than Nix and Hamelin, since opponents can't cheat against her attacks. But yes, it's worth noting that most Blight comes from melee attacks and Hamelin's crew hits pretty dang hard in melee (Rat Kings will usually hit for Moderate 4 thanks to Strength in numbers, for example), so by the time Blight hits 4-5 you've probably nearly killed it anyway. It's way easier to punch someone for 9 damage with Hannah than get a 9 damage Bleeding Disease (I've done the former in about every other Schill game I've played, I've done the latter exactly once and I play Hamelin as much as all my other Masters combined).

 

Not sure I agree that Benny plus Yannic is a winning combination. I love Benny, but Yannic feels very low value and inefficient in the crew.