Sandwich's Avatar of Contagion official Discussion

[Sandwich]

So in the last post, I was a bit hasty, fairly unkind and unruly in the words I chose.

So I decided to go on a Hamelin marathon to make or break my point.

All of these games were played versus my girlfriend, who has proven time and time again that she knows what she's doing.

(4 games so far. Versus Colette, Dreamer, Seamus, Rasputina)

Each game was played at 35 SS.

Each game I had a few set of rules I wanted to follow.

1. I would play Hamelin strictly Rules as Written. I would not amend rules to increase playability.

2. I would not manifest in inopportune times. It wouldn't help anything to manifest in the middle of 8 Insignificant melee monsters, so I wouldn't do it.

3. I would manifest at the BEST possible time, knowing each situation made it easy to manifest when it was best to do so.

That said, this is not my Battle Report.

I am building a basis for a conversation that should include ALL aspects of Hamelin, Avatar of Contagion.

- - - -

Manifestation

When theoryfauxing his Avatar, you must remember that his requirements are:

1.) At least 3 enemy models have been made Insignificant.

2.) At least one model has been Obeyed via Pipes, and another model killed by that model.

Both of these requirements can be accomplished by turn 3 easily. Hamelin's crew is slower and will thus be manifesting by at least turn 3. It is actually possible to Manifest on turn 2 against certain fast crews, but isn't really a good idea to do.

It is best to cast (1)Understand the Soulless on their master as Crippling Plague will NOT make them Insignificant.

- - - -

Crew Composition

Hamelin's Avatar shifts focus from being Swarm focused to Blight Focused. His Obey becomes far more lethal, he can do a widespread Nuke that requires all of his AP, he has his Pipes, a heal, et cetera.

But his main focal point is spreading Blight counters far and wide.

Going into these games, I realized early on that post-manifestation The Stolen would become very, very important, whereas Rats would become much more abundant and thus the starting model numbers had to be adjusted.

My crew composition changed slightly to include around 4 Stolen and around 3 Rats, instead of 1 Stolen, 6 Rats as usual.

This worked well in my favor as I had Stolen post manifest that I could then use to set up for Hamelin's Avatar spells, particularly (1)Leprous Dance.

You may still build his crew in any way possible as Focus shifts from being Crew Dependant to chaotic.

- - - -

Cost and Effect

By losing The Void, you must also add Suit requirements to balance out a Ca of 7 and lower CC numbers. The only spell that will require anything higher than a 10 is (All)Tyrant's Judgment which I used once and was absolutely unimpressed. Thus, Hamelin is still going to succeed in 8 out of 10 spell casts and as such the effects of these spells are VERY powerful.

His Wp increases by 1 by really only serves as a taunting number versus other crews. Its just as effective as it was pre-manifestation. This slight increase does, however, all you to conserve higher cards for other things as most Wp duels won't go past 18. (Which at most is going to cost you a 10.)

His Ca remains the same and the CC of all spells are in the same number range, which doesn't matter since you'll more often than not be cheating with a 13 and burning a soul stone.

As such, Hamelin is still a card monsters.

(1)Leprous Dance does require you to discard a Soul Stone (Which is perfectly acceptable) to cast, but when you cast it, chaos ensues. I'll write my love letter to (1)Leprous Dance in a moment.

- - - -

Durability

Hamelin loses about 90% of his survivability. He can no longer survive an onslaught and died in the first game we played specifically because I overestimated my ability to flip cards higher than 5. He's much easier to kill (Because you can actually target him) even with (0)Pestilent Miasma that he dishes out.

However, if he does survive the assault, you're almost guaranteed to heal back any damage suffered with (0)Bask in the Plague.

Another odd realization was that without Indiscriminate Void I subconsciously began playing much more conservatively than usual. This lead to a better game between my lady and I as I wasn't rushing for murder.

His durability goes down by about 75% if I had to roughly judge it.

- - - -

Offensive Power

Hamelin gains a lot in the field of offensive power, although in less than obvious ways. He loses his staff and most of everything else along with it. This loss is recouped with a whole new dirty bag of tricks. Now, in this specific section I won't be listing anything in specifics, as that'll be saved for further down the list, but I will say that his capability to deal damage over a wide area of models is fairly gamebreaking.

His control over other models is incomprehensibly powerful, and how quickly Blight Counters make their way in high numation across the board is almost terrifying to watch.

By the end of the second game all of my girlfriends models were either dead or had 6+ Blight counters on them. Had the game lasted another turn (I flipped a 6) I would've killed her entire crew with (all)A Tyrant's Judgment.

During that entire game my focus had NOT been slaughtering her crew, but capturing objectives (A Line in the Sand)

Every single Wd suffered came from her own models and anything she did to hurt me was either shrugged off or healed quickly.

Hamelin DESTROYS Seamus.

- - -

His Arsenal

After this specific section I have written a love letter. As such, (1)Leprous Dance is not going to be included in the "His Arsenal"

His card has way too many seperate Abilities, actions, triggers and spells to do in a list as I often do. So I will summarise everything as best I can without overextending or leaving anything out.

Hamelin gains a slight buff to his Ca stat in the form of Adaptive Mind. Its nothing new and nothing special. An Ability I believe deserves specific note is certainly Contagious Eruption as it creates a ridiculous chain effect in latter parts of the game. This ability sets up (All)A Tyrant's Judgment by turn 4 (given that you manifest turn 3) and is really kind of unfair.

He is on even ground as a couple other Avatars (Rasputina and Ice Sculptures) but even then I felt that once Hamelin manifested, it was game over for her.

Now I initially questioned the purpose of (1)Frenzied Piping because I was so used to the way I played my Swarm. I unfortunately, and fairly stupidly forgot all about Hamelin's (0)Piper's Swarm which I can understand the (0) cost now. That made these three little musketeers hit like mack trucks loaded with mack trucks. (Which may or may not be possible) and effectively acted like an Alp Bomb of certain proportions.

*******

(1)Frenzied Piping was RaI as currently RaW it is impossible for the rats to accomplish anything.

*******

(0)Bask in the Plague is a clutch heal and nothing more. I used it twice in four games and each time it healed around 9 Wd. This actually is not an overpowered ability, because Hamelin is so easily torn apart by practically any crew, as was said in the Durability section.

Hamelin's (1)Piper's Lure is equally wonderful (especially because of (1)Leprous Dance) I believe I killed a total of around 5 models over a 4 game period, which is pretty good. I never used it to push things away from anyone, only when I knew they were within 4" of a table did I use it.

- - -

(1)Leprous Dance - <3

This spell is so incredibly broken it is hilarious. His entire kit and caboodle sets up (1)Leprous Dance to cause great and horrific deeds. In 2/4 games I boarded my girlfriend by casting this spell once a turn, every turn. Colette and LCB could do NOTHING against Hamelin to stop the spread of blight and the absolute pure unadulterated murder his own models would incur.

Once again, you forgot to include in the description "Non-Master" so LCB charged and wrecked Lilitu right After Lilitu got done murdering a Day Dream my girlfriend had to spend Soul Stones on summoning, after which Coppellius struck and paralyzed LCB, and then Lelu wiped out her Insidious Madness. My rats then swooped in and killed Lelu.

It was complete and utter madness.

Then my game versus Seamus saw Belle on Belle, Seamus on Molly, Molly on Crooligan psychodelic murder. It was carnage and hilarious.

When conserving Stolen, (1)Leprous Dance becomes the most OP and vile thing to happen since Bell Bottom Jeans.

I thought the cost of a Soul Stone would do something to lessen its impact, but by summoning 3 Rats and then promptly sacking one for Drain Soul, I became an unstoppable Obey machine.

-

So there it is, all my condensed initial thoughts.

Hopefully you'll join in on this conversation and make this thread a nexus of great and dandy Hamelinisms.

Edited October 5, 2011 by Sandwich

[magicpockets]

Brilliant post, and I'm surprised at leporous dance as I thought the wp->14 would make it easy to resist - look forward to discussing that

About to crash now so will get involved tomorrow. MP

[Zengar]

Hmm. I'm not a Hamlin player, so I can't speak to the specifics of this post, but I believe you've determined what I'm going to be doing some weekend not to far in the future. I wasn't a big fan of what I saw in a quick read-through of Avatar Leveticus and ended up feeling about on par with your earlier Hamlin post after playing with aLevi once. So now I'm going to have to give him a few more tries to see if I can similarly figure out what I was doing wrong.

[Sandwich]

I just got home and I think my girl and I will play another game or two.

I want to do a guild list versus Hamelin.

[FearLord]

This is so much more useful than the last thread - it reads more like you "get him". I think the majority of avatars (once we're over the "new shiny" phase) are going to end up being occasional options that people will add to their lists on the chance that they need to change up their style, but will frequently not be actively trying to manifest, because it won't always be the best option...

[Sandwich]

So I want to keep this going.

In that vain,

My only problem with Hamelin's Avatar is that it doesn't help him versus crews he already had an advantage with.

I.e. Sonia.

(Or any guild list with a lot of anti caster / ranged minions)

Although it DOES help him out DPS damage heavy crews.