Beating Hamelin

[M_Ruckuss]

Just...how do you do it????

[Joel]

What particular problems are you having?

[M_Ruckuss]

Pandora can cope, and i think Zoraida herself can, but how would you use a doll based list to good effect?

[SilverBullet]

If I see Hamelin, I tend to pull out the dreamer, coppelius, teddy, insidious madness and make things run away.

Pandora is pretty good as most of hamelins minions have low ish wounds, so 1 wound at a time damage is not the worst thing.

Doll lists would be difficult and I guess would become a bit of an attrition war.

Lilith and Whirlwind can be rather nasty early on if the opponent keeps models close together, e.g. hamelin and stolen.

However, as I said, Dreamer tends to be my go to if I am playing Neverborn.

[marful]

I just played a game against Jacob Lynch as Hamelin.

Observations:

1.) Kill Nix. Nix must die. DIE DIE DIE NIX!

The ability to perform an extra (0) action any and every time a model is sacrificed within a certain range of Nix is huge. As Nix has several (0) actions to buff rats around him, the ability to buff the rats with all his different effects makes Malifaux Rats able to kill Masters in 1 activation. Of note is the (0) action makes non-Soulless models take a on duels. Another one being able to push rats 3" for extra movement. Or make rats gain +2 to weak -2 to sever damage.

He also makes all insignificant models within 6" significant and able to complete objectives. Hamelin is the only other model that can do it. Other than Nix, the only other significant models are the Rat Catchers which are Rare (2). So killing Nix seriously deprives the crew of objective grabbing capabilities.

I ended up pushing 2+ rats into base to base with the Hungering Darkness via Nix. I then used the Rat Catcher to give them all +1 Dg by sacrificing one of the rats, allowing Nix to give one of the rats +2/0/-2 Damage via his (0) ability. Then stripped Slow from all of the rats in range with the Ratcatcher.

2 Malifaux Rats doing 4/2/1 adding Blight Counters on each hit while you are -2 Df ended up killing the Hungering Darkness from full wounds (I did this exact same thing TWICE during the game.) My opponent ended up not summoning the HD anymore because all that happens is he kills some rats (causing new fresh rats to be summoned...) and I summon another rat when I kill the HD next activation.

2.) Make sure you kill stuff outside of 6" from a Rat Catcher or Hamelin.

Do not let them use Voracious Rats. Neverborn has a lot of models that have abilities to do this.

• Graves with his "Bars Closed" spell is excellent for separating Rat Catchers / Hamelin from rats.

• Lilith can Transposition the Rat Catcher and then kill it solo. Don't let it use Voracious Rats.

• Lilitu can lure the Rat Catcher out of range.

• Beckoners can Lure as well.

• Zoraida can Obey them out of range.

• Hungering Darkness can Obey them out of range.

• Pandora can cause them to fall back via her casting Trigger.

• Pandora (or a model in the crew) can pacify the Rat Catcher while another model Inciting a Rat.

3.) Cause as many moral duels as you can on the rats.

The Hungering Darkness' Terror->12 was a huge advantage my opponent had and was used effectively to cause my rats within range to flee. Unfortunately I kept every single high card I had JUST so I could cheat high on my moral duels because I was expecting it.

I feel that this is a strong way for Dreamer, Pandora and Neverborn in general to really mess up the crew. Malifaux Rats have a Wk of 5, that means if they fail a Morale Duel and fallback they will be 10", outside of Voracious Rats and more importantly, not protecting the Rat Catchers.

4.) Don't even waste activations with the Rats.

It's not worth the AP or the card flip. Just don't. Kill Nix, Rat Catchers or the Obedient Wretch as those are irreplaceable targets (well except the Rat Catchers, but those take up resources to summon in and this has a diminishing return). Ignore the rats and Stolen.

Just to point this out, I started the game with 3 Malifaux Rats. During the game I summoned the following additional rats into play: 2 from the killing the Hungering Darkness twice, 5 from sacrificing Stolen, 1 from the Obedient Wretch being killed by the Hungering Darkness, 1 from a Rat Catcher dying from the Hungering Darkness, 1 from a Depleted dying from mass Rat attacks, 2 from Beckoners being swarmed by Rats and at least 4 more Malifaux Rats from malifaux rats being killed by various things (Depleted killed 1, and Hungering Darkness used his Consume Brilliance to kill a bunch and heal up to ful Wd). That's 16 Rats summoned into the game with a starting count of 3 rats.

Killing rats is such a humongous waste of AP.

All-in-all, Hamelin's crew synergizes amazingly well with itself. This is due to 3 models: Hamelin, Nix and the Rat Catchers. Taking out these key models and breaking the synergies is a key element to defeating them in addition to exploiting their key weakness: Morale.

Edited March 15, 2013 by marful

[M_Ruckuss]

I just played a game against Jacob Lynch as Hamelin.

Observations:

1.) Kill Nix. Nix must die. DIE DIE DIE NIX!

The ability to perform an extra (0) action any and every time a model is sacrificed within a certain range of Nix is huge. As Nix has several (0) actions to buff rats around him, the ability to buff the rats with all his different effects makes Malifaux Rats able to kill Masters in 1 activation. Of note is the (0) action makes non-Soulless models take a on duels. Another one being able to push rats 3" for extra movement. Or make rats gain +2 to weak -2 to sever damage.

He also makes all insignificant models within 6" significant and able to complete objectives. Hamelin is the only other model that can do it. Other than Nix, the only other significant models are the Rat Catchers which are Rare (2). So killing Nix seriously deprives the crew of objective grabbing capabilities.

I ended up pushing 2+ rats into base to base with the Hungering Darkness via Nix. I then used the Rat Catcher to give them all +1 Dg by sacrificing one of the rats, allowing Nix to give one of the rats +2/0/-2 Damage via his (0) ability. Then stripped Slow from all of the rats in range with the Ratcatcher.

2 Malifaux Rats doing 4/2/1 adding Blight Counters on each hit while you are -2 Df ended up killing the Hungering Darkness from full wounds (I did this exact same thing TWICE during the game.) My opponent ended up not summoning the HD anymore because all that happens is he kills some rats (causing new fresh rats to be summoned...) and I summon another rat when I kill the HD next activation.

2.) Make sure you kill stuff outside of 6" from a Rat Catcher or Hamelin.

Do not let them use Voracious Rats. Neverborn has a lot of models that have abilities to do this.

• Graves with his "Bars Closed" spell is excellent for separating Rat Catchers / Hamelin from rats.

• Lilith can Transposition the Rat Catcher and then kill it solo. Don't let it use Voracious Rats.

• Lilitu can lure the Rat Catcher out of range.

• Beckoners can Lure as well.

• Zoraida can Obey them out of range.

• Hungering Darkness can Obey them out of range.

• Pandora can cause them to fall back via her casting Trigger.

• Pandora (or a model in the crew) can pacify the Rat Catcher while another model Inciting a Rat.

3.) Cause as many moral duels as you can on the rats.

The Hungering Darkness' Terror->12 was a huge advantage my opponent had and was used effectively to cause my rats within range to flee. Unfortunately I kept every single high card I had JUST so I could cheat high on my moral duels because I was expecting it.

I feel that this is a strong way for Dreamer, Pandora and Neverborn in general to really mess up the crew. Malifaux Rats have a Wk of 5, that means if they fail a Morale Duel and fallback they will be 10", outside of Voracious Rats and more importantly, not protecting the Rat Catchers.

4.) Don't even waste activations with the Rats.

It's not worth the AP or the card flip. Just don't. Kill Nix, Rat Catchers or the Obedient Wretch as those are irreplaceable targets (well except the Rat Catchers, but those take up resources to summon in and this has a diminishing return). Ignore the rats and Stolen.

Just to point this out, I started the game with 3 Malifaux Rats. During the game I summoned the following additional rats into play: 2 from the killing the Hungering Darkness twice, 5 from sacrificing Stolen, 1 from the Obedient Wretch being killed by the Hungering Darkness, 1 from a Rat Catcher dying from the Hungering Darkness, 1 from a Depleted dying from mass Rat attacks, 2 from Beckoners being swarmed by Rats and at least 4 more Malifaux Rats from malifaux rats being killed by various things (Depleted killed 1, and Hungering Darkness used his Consume Brilliance to kill a bunch and heal up to ful Wd). That's 16 Rats summoned into the game with a starting count of 3 rats.

Killing rats is such a humongous waste of AP.

All-in-all, Hamelin's crew synergizes amazingly well with itself. This is due to 3 models: Hamelin, Nix and the Rat Catchers. Taking out these key models and breaking the synergies is a key element to defeating them in addition to exploiting their key weakness: Morale.

Thats really helpful Marful, thanks. How do you deal with Hamelin in the mean time?

[Ausplosions]

Thats really helpful Marful, thanks. How do you deal with Hamelin in the mean time?

Kill Nix.

[M_Ruckuss]

Lol, ok, point taken

[Hunter-thom]

the rats suffer from a neg flip when nix has his bubble up. And the big errata has changed heaps of stuff.

---------- Post added at 11:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

And as a general rule in malifaux if you kill the component pieces of your oppenents crew you will greatly increase your chances of winning. Not all crews have them, but some do. Grow crew, Take out nekima or the black blood. Kirai take out the lost love. Hammy, nix and the rat catchers... There are others Levi, the waifs. If you run these crews that have a mechanic then you run the risk of losing the chance to use it.

[marful]

the rats suffer from a neg flip when nix has his bubble up. And the big errata has changed heaps of stuff.

---------- Post added at 11:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

And as a general rule in malifaux if you kill the component pieces of your oppenents crew you will greatly increase your chances of winning. Not all crews have them, but some do. Grow crew, Take out nekima or the black blood. Kirai take out the lost love. Hammy, nix and the rat catchers... There are others Levi, the waifs. If you run these crews that have a mechanic then you run the risk of losing the chance to use it.

+1 on the dismantling crew mechanics advice.

As to the rats and Nix's bubble, the rats are no longer Soulless (only Vermin & Insignificant) so they are affected to.

I normally use the bubble when killing targets by himself with nix.

[Odin1981]

Understand that against a Hamelin crew in addition to stuff that was said is that unless you are trying to kill a important model of his or keep one of yours alive don't cheat against a hamelin player. His card draw outside of totems ability is based around you cheating to draw him cards. If you do not cheat he doesn't draw more than one a turn. I would also add stolen to the important to kill but when killing them kill with at least a wp 6 model so it isn't hard to pass the paralize check when they die.