Something seriously overpowered with Haemlin

[Raintar]

So in my personal tier list I find that Haemlin was rising higher and higher so I wanted to test him out 1v1 vs the #1 at the time which was the Dreamer.

Haemlin is good for a ton of different things, sacrificing to draw cards, severe damage 9 melee attack, fate is meaningless and inevitable truth to name a few.

But as I was playing the game we realized a combo that both players previously overlooked, and the combo I'm talking about is understand the soulless combined with bully. Understand the soulless make a model insignificant for the encounter and bully means that insignificant models cannot target him. This means that he can make any unit unable to hit him which is INCREDIBLY overpowered, you would have trouble killing him even if he didn't have this combo with his stolen hiding behind the rest of his list.

With the combo he is basically unkillable, all he needs to do is Understand the Soulless your best units and at that point you won't be able to kill him, oh and also don't forget to buy 8 soulstones to make sure it goes off for sure. Once you make their entire army insignificant not only can they not attack you but you basically have already won the encounter. But don't forget that Haemlin also makes your rats significant leading you to win just about every encounter in the book.

This seriously needs to be looked at because it makes Haemlin legitimately unbeatable.

[Ratty]

In a lot of the Strategies an Schemes insignificant doesn't matter. So if your up against Hamelin take Schemes that you can complete if your models are insignificant.

[hippieshopper]

Yeah, the only thing that is a bit 'o.p.' is when he's against someone who relies on counters.

On the other hand, someone that uses AoE is going to hand him his ass on a silver platter.

There's someone I know that likes to abuse the RoE. Therefore, most people don't like to play against him. Again, most people who use counters.

Eg; Nico, Ramos, Levi, and Lillith (to an extent). There is really know way to get around the 'doesn't leave counters' and so everyone gets shafted pretty bad on that.

Hamelin, for the most part, is just a pit of sadness, anger, and bitchfits right now. I suggest we wait a little bit and have some Rules Marshals and maybe a well placed errata smooth him out before people try to use him.

[Wodschow]

Sorry.. But it really is beyond me why Hamelin needs to be discussed in 5~6 different threads.. All of them more or less stating the same things.

Your 'new-found' combo is clearly part of his original and intended design, with so many ways for his crew to make enemy models Insignificant.

I feel it necessary to point out that you do not win a game of Malifaux simply by killing the opposing master.

I have yet to play him myself, but I find your claims of his 'overpowered-ness' hard to believe.

He is still the sole model from Book2 that I'm most eagerly anticipating.

- On an entirely unrelated side note.. You're quite consequent about calling him Haemlin rather than Hamelin (in this thread aswell as the others), is this some sort of pun? Because I don't get it at all! xD

[hippieshopper]

Yes, his job isn't just to "kill everyone else".

He works by throwing wrenches in the opponent's cogs...

I hate seeing these "OMG o.p. threads"

[gunpowder saint]

I'll put my two cents here.

Sonnia Criid

keep everyone grouped up, and resist, and reflect every spell he casts. and if you can't resist it or reflect it. Counter it. Over all he's nothing to someone who can dispel or remove effects.

[tenabrae]

None of Hamelin's methods of making model insignificant are foolproof, or even easy to pull off. He's new, he's different and he's no Pandora.

[Ratty]

I think the real issue is people look at Malifaux and think oh here is a cheap game to get into I only need to get 5 models and I can play. which is fine to get started with, but you will keep hitting your head against Masters you can't go against. To play sensibly you need a couple of Masters of your chosen faction and a variety of minions to choose from. Otherwise you are going to get opponents you have a problem with or Strategies that are really hard to deal with.

As a ressurectionist player you could choose to take Kirai, she is not bothered about counters to much and Spirit Becon is a place. You can always summon a significant spirit to take objectives late in the game and you have the movement to keep him out of Hamelins way.

[tenabrae]

keep everyone grouped up, and resist, and reflect every spell he casts. and if you can't resist it or reflect it. Counter it. Over all he's nothing to someone who can dispel or remove effects.

They aren't all spells... If you blow all your cards counterspelling (and he's good enough reflect won't likely work, and he can effectively multi-obey so all your stuff in a nice clump is begging him to have your witchlings detonate each other or whack sonnia with their spellswords), his stolen can walk right up and sac itself to make one of your models insig.

[gunpowder saint]

They aren't all spells... If you blow all your cards counterspelling (and he's good enough reflect won't likely work, and he can effectively multi-obey so all your stuff in a nice clump is begging him to have your witchlings detonate each other or whack sonnia with their spellswords), his stolen can walk right up and sac itself to make one of your models insig.

if you group them up you can counter everything he throws at you

now you don't have a hand and if he sacs the Stolen to make me insignificant then I'll cast "Dispel Magic" and remove the effect. Overall if he makes me insig. I'll just dispel it with my Witchling Stalkers. his totem can't cast spells to save her life so those spells are easily avoided.

[Rathnard]

Like many things, Hamelin is indeed powerful if you ignore the strategies/schemes, give him unlimited soulstones and play against a goldfish.

Hamelin has some nasty tricks, the most obvious of which is Understand the Souless. But he's far from unstoppable. If you can deal with the Rat catcher then blast and pulse effects will wipe out what minions he has pretty quickly. Most of Hamelins best tricks rely on a Wp duel, so Immune to influence models can cause him alot of pain. There are ways to get around it of course (specifically via a stolen) but that's where, you know, strategy and tactics come into play, for both players.

[karn987]

Like many things, Hamelin is indeed powerful if you ignore the strategies/schemes, give him unlimited soulstones and play against a goldfish.

Hamelin has some nasty tricks, the most obvious of which is Understand the Souless. But he's far from unstoppable. If you can deal with the Rat catcher then blast and pulse effects will wipe out what minions he has pretty quickly. Most of Hamelins best tricks rely on a Wp duel, so Immune to influence models can cause him alot of pain. There are ways to get around it of course (specifically via a stolen) but that's where, you know, strategy and tactics come into play, for both players.

*claps* Rathnard you are always a voice of sense and logic, well said.

@Raintar: This combo is well known and has been talked about in the past. It's not that bad. How is it really any different then just killing the model? Sure it takes less AP in most cases, but compare it to Pandora's trigger. All this tops you from doing is getting Haemlin, his crew is still toast. They can still get their Strategies and Schemes in most cases.

Most crews don't put all their eggs in one basket. LCB Vs Haemlin is an extremely interesting match up. But I've beat'n him 60% of the time with the Dreamer against an opponent I consider quite good. I know my strategies for beating him and I know other people have theirs. Raintar, your the only one really crying out about this.. .doesn't that make you think maybe you are wrong? Maybe you just need to look at how you play against him and take the advice that people are giving you.

Yes, Haemlin is nasty, but he is beatable by far. This combo is 100% fair. It is nasty, but its about all he has to ward of the mega uber models of the game.

Haemlin (like Dreamer) is no meaner then any other master and has his good match ups and his bad ones. If he was unfair and unbeatable, he would not have made it out of play testing. He also would have pages of people crying out at him to be cuddled and someone from Wyrd would have popped in to let everyone know it's going to be ok. But none of that is happening. I truly appreciate your opinion on this, but I also truly believe you are wrong and I've backed up my understanding in 4 out of the 5 Haemlin is OP threads so I'm not going to do it again.

[Ratty]

I do think that most of the Hamelin threads have been about his rules being confusing more than overpowered. I do hope they errata him even if it's to split Voracious Rats into 2 seperate powers. This would stop it clashing with RoE.

Aura of Pestilence :aura6" no model may summon anything but Malifaux rats as a reaction to models killed in this aura. models do not drop Scrap and/or Corpse Counters.

Voracious Rats: When a model is killed within 6" of this model Summon a Malifaux Rat in base contact with it.

Edited November 4, 2010 by Ratty

[Ratty]

ofc if it's meant to be affected by the RoE normally, something along the lines of

Voracious Rats. If a model is killed within 6" of this model summon a Malifaux Rat in base contact with it. The summoned Malifaux Rat discards any Corpse or Scrap counters dropped by the killed model immediately.

would be a clearer wording.

[Sandwich]

The issue I have isn't with the wording, specifically.

It's with the fact that he can stop anyone and everyone from getting anything at all.

Though Leveticus works similarly with his Steampunks and isn't all too bad to work around, so I'm certain there's a way to kill Hamelin without any issue.

[Raintar]

You can't lose to anything with Haemlin, he makes your best guys insignificant and you lose. Stop saying Sonia Criid, it's stupid, the rats don't matter and they keep coming back, counterspell is the one of the few counters to Haemlin and it has a huge drawback of discarding your hand.

LCB doesn't really have a chance against him, Haemlin makes LCB insignificant with his Ca 7 vs Wp 5 and then when it goes off you lose.

THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO AGAINST THE COMBO. If he makes your entire army insignificant you can't win the game because you can't kill Haemlin and then he walks around doing 9 damage on every attack and utterly destroys your army by himself. My crew doesn't matter, I'm using 10 Canine Remains, when they die, they become rats and significant rats at that. They don't even need to do anything, they just do a little bit of damage here and there and watch Haemlin run around the board invincible to everything your opponents have. And when the rats die, they only become more rats, so really it's a waste to even think my crew matters at all.

Maybe if you play the master and think out my ideas you will understand what I'm talking about instead of trying to refute anything I say as I say it only because you can on an internet forum.

[hippieshopper]

Actually Sonnia is far from stupid.

Let's say for example that your opponent really is dumb enough to let you make them insignificant.

Sonnia is the queen of blasts, she doesn't have to hit you she just has to murder one of your lackeys near Hammy. Same with Raspy, or anyone with super sweet AoE...as I said earlier.

As it was said earlier as well, take schemes that can be won regardless of insignificant.

No one master is truly overpowered, if you find some gray area with a loop like that it's good to report it so that it can be fixed. If you yourself complain about it and exploit it then it just makes you look bad.

Honestly, you did have a few valid points, but you completely blow them out of proportion.

PS: Have you ever read your signature, Rain. This is hilariously ironic.

[gunpowder saint]

Sonnia is not stupid, your ignoring the fact that all I need is a five of anything to dispel insignificant. Thus starting the whole cycle over, even if he made ALL NINE Models insignificant. I activate Three Witchling Stalkers and thus Eight out of Nine Models are now no longer insignificant. All his work just went down the drain

and that's if I DON'T counter those spells. Raintar you're feeling a little bit frustrated and I don't believe your really searching for the truth anymore. I think you just want to be proven right :\ sort of like what Buddha said.

"in an argument the moment you feel anger, you no longer care about the truth"

[tenabrae]

if you group them up you can counter everything he throws at you

now you don't have a hand and if he sacs the Stolen to make me insignificant then I'll cast "Dispel Magic" and remove the effect. Overall if he makes me insig. I'll just dispel it with my Witchling Stalkers. his totem can't cast spells to save her life so those spells are easily avoided.

Once you've burnt all your cards what are you going to cheat with when the rest of his crew (which the sensible hamelin player will out activate) starts munching ?

Hamelin's crew is about a lot more than just Hamelin's tricks.

[Werecat]

*Gasp!*

Raintar is saying a model is OP?

Inconceivable!

[Alondir]

Just thought id add, iv played against a Hamlin player and i owned his ass with nico, firing steriod filled punk zombies at the ratcatchers, and then using belles to pull the totem towards me as im delivering the killing blow on hamelin,

i mean its easy done hes def 5 and no def triggers, a couple of cb 13 paired punk zombies should wear dwn his ss cash fairly soon

by using so high cb things your not discarding many cards either, sooo i ask you wheres hamelins hand if ur avoiding using urs

[Rathnard]

I don't see this crew of yours acheiving very much in the way of strategies. If you want to keep the rats returning you need to keep them all within 6" of Hamelin, which gives your crew very little flexibility in acheiving or disrupting strategies/schemes. Most other crews would only need to stay out of their way while they achieve their own objectives.

Of course this all assumes that your Hamelin/rat ball is invincible, which I have serious doubts about.

For one, you're far from guaranteed to cast Understand the Soulless on all the models you want to before they become a threat. You need LoS, you need to be in range, you need to successfully cast the spell and you need your opponent to fail the Wp resist. Individually, each of these might not be so hard, but add them all up and it becomes much less certain.

Insignificant models will still be able to hurt hamelin by way of pulses and blast effects. He can heal the damage, of course, but then he's not actually spending his AP on killing enemy models.

I've already mentioned Immune to influence models - a stolen or wench can help negate that but you can be damn sure that such models will be your opponents first target. You can summon a stolen, of course, but that gives your opponent a full turn to deal with the stolen before it can actually threaten the ItI model.

Furthermore, the rats will only regenerate themselves if within 6" of Hamelin or a rat catcher. Their Wp is pretty poor so crews with access to Lure will be able to pull those rats away from hamelin and pick them off individually.

Then there is the utter lack of activations available to hamelins crew. Once the canines are dead, your hamelin/rat crew will consist of just two activations, leaving your opponent pretty much free to spend the rest of the turn concentrating on wiping out hamelin.

I don't deny that Hamelin is good, and a skilled opponent can probably cause alot of trouble with him. But I'm not at all convinced that he's overpowered either. He's got strengths, but he's got plenty of weaknesses to take advantage of too.

[tenabrae]

Then there is the utter lack of activations available to hamelins crew. Once the canines are dead, your hamelin/rat crew will consist of just two activations, leaving your opponent pretty much free to spend the rest of the turn concentrating on wiping out hamelin.

In a big ball maybe, a rat catcher and 2 rats positioned properly is 5 activations if you just want to sit back to out-activate. Even a single swarm and rat-catcher is 3.

[Rathnard]

In a big ball maybe, a rat catcher and 2 rats positioned properly is 5 activations if you just want to sit back to out-activate. Even a single swarm and rat-catcher is 3.

Fair enough - that's a good point. I was refering more to Raintars proposed Hamelin/10 Canine Remains list. It you can kill off those Canines and the player leaves the rats in a big ball around hamelin (to keep them returning whenever they die)then the hamelin player has two activations. I guess my point was that a Hamelin/rat ball is not nearly as good as Raintar seems to be making out.

[Raintar]

Sonnia is not stupid, your ignoring the fact that all I need is a five of anything to dispel insignificant. Thus starting the whole cycle over, even if he made ALL NINE Models insignificant. I activate Three Witchling Stalkers and thus Eight out of Nine Models are now no longer insignificant. All his work just went down the drain

What's the ability that dispels insignificant, I'm seeing nothing in Sonia's profile that does such a thing. Stalkers do it, and the Ortega's can remove stuff off themselves but Sonia doesn't seem to have anything that removes effects.

@rathnard

I don't see this crew of yours acheiving very much in the way of strategies. If you want to keep the rats returning you need to keep them all within 6" of Hamelin, which gives your crew very little flexibility in acheiving or disrupting strategies/schemes. Most other crews would only need to stay out of their way while they achieve their own objectives.

Agree, usually you can kill their entire crew by turn 5ish so it's not completely true but I do agree with you to a large extent.

For one, you're far from guaranteed to cast Understand the Soulless on all the models you want to before they become a threat. You need LoS, you need to be in range, you need to successfully cast the spell and you need your opponent to fail the Wp resist. Individually, each of these might not be so hard, but add them all up and it becomes much less certain.

Range 12 spell, walk 5, multiple "dummy" activations, blowing soulstones, and fast basically ensures you can get Understand the Soulless off soundly. Not to mention you also have a hand, and if they cheat you actually draw cards.

Insignificant models will still be able to hurt hamelin by way of pulses and blast effects. He can heal the damage, of course, but then he's not actually spending his AP on killing enemy models.

There are not enough blasting/pulsing units in the game where this would seriously matter but generally the only unit that will seriously matter if it has a blast or pulse will be the master and in only particular Rasputina, Hoffman, Criid, the occasional Snow Storm and Ice Golem may give you trouble but they are really weak to lots of little units with low df so just use the rats.

The masters can present a problem and generally you can keep the rats in the back so you don't get blasted off them. But seriously, just go up and destroy them in melee, they all have low df and with your severe damage 9 they are going to get obliterated. Charge in for the first attack and then fate is meaningless for the second attack for 2 cheatable damage flips with severe damage 9. It forces the master to stay back because if they move them too close they will explode.

I've already mentioned Immune to influence models - a stolen or wench can help negate that but you can be damn sure that such models will be your opponents first target. You can summon a stolen, of course, but that gives your opponent a full turn to deal with the stolen before it can actually threaten the ItI model.

When it comes to Haemlin he doesn't need to rely on Understand the soulless, he can melee anything he needs to to death without even trying. There aren't a ton of ItI in the game but for the few just try to melee them, also note that it doesn't make them immune to the obey equivalent of pipes.

Furthermore, the rats will only regenerate themselves if within 6" of Hamelin or a rat catcher. Their Wp is pretty poor so crews with access to Lure will be able to pull those rats away from hamelin and pick them off individually.

A worthy note but Haemlin will generally be in front either making himself immune to your army, or already immune and rocking house. The only time he wouldn't would be against heavy shooting lists, in which the Canine Remains would run up and tie up everything they have that needs to be tied up and then Haemlin can roam free and rock house.

Then there is the utter lack of activations available to hamelins crew. Once the canines are dead, your hamelin/rat crew will consist of just two activations, leaving your opponent pretty much free to spend the rest of the turn concentrating on wiping out hamelin.

See above, a good counter strategy though.

I don't deny that Hamelin is good, and a skilled opponent can probably cause alot of trouble with him. But I'm not at all convinced that he's overpowered either. He's got strengths, but he's got plenty of weaknesses to take advantage of too.

The game is over before it starts when you play against Haemlin with so many lists. It's frustrating, because seriously nothing can beat a player that knows what Haemlin can do. For every thing you have Haemlin can counter it, whether it be Obediance, Understand the Soulless or charging you and then attacking using fate is meaningless for two attacks of 9 damage each. He also draws cards when you cheat so any chance you have at getting on top is going to make him stronger. Edited November 5, 2010 by Raintar