How to deal with playing as Hamelin

[Cthulhurising]

Hey, one quick question. Do blight counters fall off at the end of the turn? I'm pretty sure they don't, but it got brought up in a game tonight and he swore up and down they did. I'd just like another input as I don't have the small rule book... Anyways, onto the main point of this post.

So tonight I had a game where I pulled out Hamelin from the shelf to play him. I was all happy and joyful and in good spirits. I hadn't picked up Hamelin for a few months, and sat down across from my opponent getting ready for a 50 point brawl. The game went on, Hamelin and the Dreamer vs Ramos (I had to take the dreamer to match the points... and admittidly he didn't do a whole lot, I kept him back to guard an objective) The game ended up in a 0-8 victory for my side and he made reference Hamelin was no fun to fight against. That he had to many activations, that he had to many rules, etc.

I know Hamelin is up there with The Dreamer and Pandora for annoying/op masters, but is there anyway to limit his fangs so I don't feel guilty for playing him? I stopped Zorida and Collodi and The Dreamer cause I kept getting this horrible 0-8 victories, but other then Gremlins, there's not a whole lot of crews I really really want to play with my budget, so I'm running out of options.

Quick note- Hamelin was my first purchase for malifaux. Before I knew Rules, story or fluff. I'm an avid fan of rats and at any point in my household we have anywhere between 1 rat/mouse to 24 at a time, we used to raise them. Also being a musician and loving the lore of the Pied Piper, he was perfect for me. Plus, I have a LOT of rats from playing Skaven.

And from what I've read, peoples issues with him is the insignificant thing, which he loses when he goes avatar... seems to be that he switches focus to the blight counters. Is that going to make him more... acceptable to fight against? I don't want to limit what he can do, as I feel like if I ignore his abilities, then I may as well be cheating in my opponents favor. And I know he can be beat, my record against my friends Viks is more losses then wins (He either waits for me to mess up and kill my own rats, getting first blood, or shoots two rats and then runs around the board for six turns and gets a 0-2 win. :/) So I know he's not invincible. I'm just curious as to what other Hamelins do, or how they put up with the hate.

Thanks!

[Kadeton]

I might have more input on this after I take him to our local tournament on the weekend...

In the mean time, the basics (as I see it) of Hamelin's negative play experience are:

1) His crew's activations are too long and complex. All those rats going over and over, nibbling away at your models... plus, once you start getting separate groups of rats activating in the same area, the opponent (and sometimes the Hamelin player) can easily start losing track of which rats have yet to activate, which makes it feel like the Hamelin player is cheating even when they aren't. Also, resolving the attacks of a series of rats against your models takes frickin' ages.

2) Death is at worst an inconvenience, and at best a bonus. Killing Hamelin is hard, and if you manage it, he generally comes back (albeit weaker). Killing his rats doesn't hurt him at all outside of Slaughter - if anything, it helps him, because that's another rat activation for free. This makes it feel like a waste of time to attack, when attacking and killing the opponent's stuff is normally a big part of the fun. You can still kill Nix if you try really hard, but if you fail it's like you've achieved nothing.

3) He turns your advantages into disadvantages. Got Black Blood, or Immolating Demise, or similar deterrents to melee attacks? Hamelin loves that stuff - the rats die, and then they get to go again. Black Blood is the worst - get a pack of rats into an activated Nephilim and it's almost guaranteed to die, since the entire swarm will die every time the target takes damage, then get to do the whole thing over again, infinitely, until it's dead or they somehow all miss.

The upshot of this is that playing against Hamelin turns the game on its head - you can't really kill your opponent any more, so it's difficult to stop him completing his objectives... but he can quite easily stop you from completing yours, because he can kill you or make you insignificant just fine. On top of that, it feels like the Hamelin player is getting to do all the stuff, and the opponent mostly watches and makes Df flips against infinite rats.

How to avoid this, under the current rules? I don't know, honestly.

[Requirement]

The best option you have is educating your opponent.

http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?29454-How-to-Beat-Hamelin-the-Plagued

Magic pockets made a great thread a few weeks ago that is actually helpful. It may be worthwhile to show this to your friend and everyone you play against. Hamelin is beatable, he is just admittedly really hard to beat.

My biggest complaint playing against him is the boring factor. It's not that I don't have fun if I lose... but if I lose, do nothing, and am not entertained... that isn't a good play experience. Most boring situation on the face of the earth? Rats vs. Executioner.

[Omenbringer]

The best option you have is educating your opponent.

http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?29454-How-to-Beat-Hamelin-the-Plagued

Magic pockets made a great thread a few weeks ago that is actually helpful. It may be worthwhile to show this to your friend and everyone you play against. Hamelin is beatable, he is just admittedly really hard to beat.

Definately agree with the above, Magicpockets (and a few others) have really worked to try and rbing him down thru education. I also have to agree that he is beatable, just not easily without purpose building to counter him and a large amount of luck.

My biggest complaint playing against him is the boring factor. It's not that I don't have fun if I lose... but if I lose, do nothing, and am not entertained... that isn't a good play experience. Most boring situation on the face of the earth? Rats vs. Executioner.

If you are talking Wyrd only then I would agree, however if we open it up to any mini game system I think a much more boring game was the Warmachine Mk I P-Haley turtle vs a High Reclaimer Turtle (that game took forever!).

[Cthulhurising]

So thats a lot of info.. O.o Lol, sorry about posting a new thread when it was already kind of there, I don't know if i made a typo or just flat out missed it when I searched, So apologies for that.

But I can understand the boring factor, so far what works for what i've seen is when you kill rats, keep them where they're at, unless space actually becomes an issue and its a worry of not being able to re-spawn a rat. We figured you move the rats around, and its easy enough for them to move where they were with Writhing Mass aanyway, saves some time.

Thanks for the help though. I just don't see the help in limiting what he can do as a master or giving him a handicap. But I was hoping for some way to limit him without handicapping him. Best I thought of was reducing my soulstones without my opponent knowing. :/

I even only take 1 rat catcher, and don't reactivate rats after my opponent kills them. Only when my rat catcher does. (Around here, NO ONE seems to understand that you shouldn't kill rats with a rat catcher around. I counted almost 7 extra activations I could of done one game cause of my opponent. O.o)

[Ozz]

Advise your opponents to take as much terror causes as they can, and the rats and rat catchers all start to flee, and spread out a bit, then just kill the catchers and its not so hard, the issue is getting the terror causer in place and keeping it alive to do its job, i think every faction can take 2 - 3 of them, at least (bar maybe outcasts as i can only think of Killjoy for them) The other one is largely only not to hard with Neverborn, but poison on Nix and the rat catchers does WD as they activate ignoring spirit and armour so they are stuck with the wounds, + the dmg they took for hits.

Also, depending on the attack, and what is near the rats and if they have already activated or not, hitting them with a blast for example to hit the rat catcher or Hamelin can be worth it or anything else you need to kill. Or something that generates a puls from the model it hits, like i think the convict gunslinger does?

But from the sound of it, you know what you are doing with Hamelin correct? So just play against your opponents, maybe have a you Vs them, and try to educate everyone on what you are doing, why and how to counter it at each step so they slowly learn, then you can play more freely with him (also if you do this i would suggest not gimping yourself at all) But read the thread i think they linked above (not looked in it) as there will be far more suggestions in there for how to counter him.

But for some people, hamelins mechanics, win or lose are just not particularly fun win, lose or Draw. I personally have not enjoyed his mechanics in any of the games i have played against him, but that is just my own opinion, just saying with some people you will find it very hard to change their minds.

[Cthulhurising]

Alright, I may try the seminar kind of approach. It just seems to be no matter what I play, no one has any fun fighting me. I'm pretty sure its not how I play, I take fluff over power (I even have a hoarcat pride in the wings, just so i can have a cat chasing rats kinda feel, ala tom and jerry) and some of my happiest fights are a 0-8 loss for me. So I'm pretty sure I'm not a sore loser or anything. But with Hamelin his reasons why he's no fun are well pointed out already, so I switched to Zorida and Collodi (after just watching a pretty big stint with a bunch of voodoo movies) and well... I could take out Liliths crew with nothing but Z and Killjoy... so I switched to The Dreamer (been a huge huge fan of the book "where the wild things are" and the old NES game Little Nemo) and then found out about him... so i figured, hey... lets go gremlins. No one has any fun there between Pull My Finger and A Gremlins Luck and the pigs... Maybe I'm just fighting the wrong people. :/