Would Hamelin loose me friends?

[magicpockets]

He's blatantly not meant to be played that way, just another "miss" by Wyrd in the rules that shouldn't be exploited outside of hyper-competitive tournaments (where anything goes) unless you're a douche.

And for multiple sacs, don't forget that when you sac a Stolen it drops a rat which you can then sac in your next AP without reducing your model count.

[kasin666]

wonder if making rats summoned only would be a good change or not. meaning no rats to start

[graeme27uk]

He's blatantly not meant to be played that way, just another "miss" by Wyrd in the rules that shouldn't be exploited outside of hyper-competitive tournaments (where anything goes) unless you're a douche.

And for multiple sacs, don't forget that when you sac a Stolen it drops a rat which you can then sac in your next AP without reducing your model count.

This is true, so I guess you can happily sac one Stolen per turn, one rat per turn. Summon the Stolen back and still have 2 AP left.

The Obedient Wretch seems pretty useful as a totem. But are any other totems worth considering? What about the Effigies?

---------- Post added at 08:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:15 PM ----------

wonder if making rats summoned only would be a good change or not. meaning no rats to start

That would be a big change. I would imagine Canine Remains would be a stand in instead of rats....

[Trevelyan]

I see the infinite-rat-loop out-activating shinanigans as a cheap trick that isn't what the designers intended. I have not stooped to do it even though it would be pretty easy to pull off.

Unless that is the way that Hamelin IS intended to play. If so, then wouldn't giving him a bonus ot the initiative in some way be less "cheesy"?

I assume that the intention is for the rat catchers to grant the rats one extra activation per turn, allowing each pack to operate twice.

I like the way that a single rat pack activates simultaneously with what amounts to a mandatory Companion ability. The intention is clearly to have the swarm act more like a single large entity than a set of individual rats, but while the activation and movement suits this, making multiple attacks based on the number of rats is clearly a huge advantage.

I wonder whether the simplest solution might be for a rat pack to make a single attack with positive flips based on the number of rats in melee range, rather than each rat making its own attack (frequently with a positive flip) by introducing some sort of mandatory assistance trait on the card. You'd get a single attack with a very good chance of hitting but inflicting relatively minor damage. A similar approach might be for extra rats to boost the damage track rather than making attacks of their own - turning many small nibbles into a single large bite (which is easier for opposing crews to survive/counter).

The function of the Voracious Rats aura is clearly to simulate an unending swarm of rats - you can kill a rat but there is always another waiting to take its place. The swarm is only coherent when Hamelin or a Ratcatcher is around to marshal the rats, otherwise a few attacks can easily disburse them.

Instead of summoning a new rat to replace each one lost, you could simply make rats within the swarm untargetable (this might require minor rewording of abilities which allow Hammy and crew to sacrifice models so rats remain sacrificable). This would prevent wasted attacks against rats. The Voracious Rats aura could be amended to summon a new rat only when an enemy model is killed in range, and the Kill All Rats power of Ratcatchers could be adjusted to specifically kill and resummon rats. The advantages of this approach are that Hamelin's own crew couldn't kill rats to produce additional activations (so no rat on rat action, etc). Obviously blast damage would then be able to kill off rats permanently when other nearby models are the initial target, but thematically it makes sense that AoE blasts should be lethal against a tightly pack swarm of small animals.

What do people think of those proposals, and would they help to resolve the issues?

[graeme27uk]

There are already precidents for swarm-style things. Arcanist arachnids (the small ones) can break off or combine to make a larger swarm.

Could you not use this? So that if you have enough rats around you can get a new "rat swarm" model which would have better stats.

And, as has been suggested before, make a rule that says rats don't eat other rats.

[kasin666]

limit the rats' rat problem action to once or twice a turn per crew like rasputinas ice wall. and or make it spell so the need a certain level of card to cast

[Trevelyan]

There are already precidents for swarm-style things. Arcanist arachnids (the small ones) can break off or combine to make a larger swarm.

Could you not use this? So that if you have enough rats around you can get a new "rat swarm" model which would have better stats.

The drawback with this is that 1) it requires new minis to do it (or heavy modification of existing rats) and 2) an immortal larger swarm with better stats is potentially a bigger problem for the game.

However, if you were to go down that route then how about the following:

Individual rats are unable to meaningfully interact with other miniatures. They just take up table space and have other abilities to remove counters, etc, as appropriate for a bunch of small rats. Three rats together can form a rat swarm with certain stats as appropriate. A rat can sacrifice itself and two other rats to create a swarm, which is placed (not a summon or replace) in base contact with the activating rat before it is removed from the table. A swarm is not slow and potentially has other abilities, including the ability to do reasonable damage for a 6ss model with added complications. When a rat swarm is killed within a Voracious Rats aura it summons 2 rats which are paralysed until the start of the next turn and cannot be sacrificed to form a new swarm (only applies to these rats - prevents them swarming more than once).

That would allow individual rats to move a lot as they now do, but would limit the number of attacks that the swarm could make. It's more complex than my original idea, though.

[magicpockets]

^^ Personally this feels too complex for what will be an errata - I still stand by "rats cannot activate on the turn they are summoned" as an elegant fix to the rat swarm problem

[cain]

As i said, without changing other rules this would be very bad for any movement encounter with a normal (rats&catchers) crew.
You cant move the rats out of Hamelins 6" without risking the swarm to be wiped out immediately. No activating, no new catcher, rats gone.
And it defines the activation order. Activating the catcher first (for example when he needs healing) stops the swarm for the turn if you use Slaughter rats. Sure you can move 4" per turn and lure them with cheese. Enemies will be very happy about a speed of 4-5" for the swarm.
So you always have to activate rats before or the swarm moves unbelievable slow.

This doesnt work with a simple "elegant" change, you would need a full rewrite of the rat/catcher mechanics.

[Trevelyan]

^^ Personally this feels too complex for what will be an errata - I still stand by "rats cannot activate on the turn they are summoned" as an elegant fix to the rat swarm problem

It is a little complex.

I still worry that preventing rats from activating on the turn they are summoned will make it pretty trivial to stall an entire rat swarm, and swarms remain the main offensive unit of a Hamelin crew. I'm going to have to test that out in practice and see how it impacts play, though.