The Key report thread

I am using Hamelin and his plague crew for my Keyword challenge This past week I faced Aaron and his Zip crew.
Strat: Turf War
Scheme Pool: Detonate Charges, Assassination, Power Ritual, Outflank, and Vendetta
My Crew:
Hamelin
Stolen x 3
Benny (8)
Nix (8)
Winged Plague (4) x 1
Rat Catcher (6) x 1
Hodgepodge Emissary (10)
Midnight Stalker (8)
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Total = 44ss (Cache = 6)

I decided to take Power Ritual and Detonate Charges. I was not confident enough to take assassination and I think it will be rare that people are able to reliably pull that off on Zip. In hindsight, I should have maybe taken Vendetta as one of my lower ss models could have maybe finished off a higher pt model.
We were only able to make it through turn 2 before time was up. I was able to get a point from the Strat and 1 point from Detonate Charges and Aaron was able to also get 1 point from the strat plus 1 point from Assassinate as he had Hamelin down to less than 1/2 health.
Zips crew was able to run circles around the Plague crew. They are very fast and hard to pin down. Macha and First Mate are a good combo for beaters and if the game had gone on for another couple of turns it would have been interesting to see how it would have played out. He had my crew pretty well cornered except for the midnight stalker. I think I would have had a chance to remove Macha next turn but he still had the First Mate and Zip up in my crew and they are not easy to pin down (First Mate has good defensive tech including butterfly jump). I may have been able to get 1 point for Power Ritual next turn if my Winged Plague survived to drop a marker.

My impressions of the Plague crew so far (including my experiences using them during the story encounters at Bugeater - I used them all 3 games).  The blight mechanic is good, and if I could ever make it to turn 5 with all my key pieces alive (thus the challenge), I could dish out some major damage. If they ever decide to implement a mechanic that removes blight tokens there really will be no reason to ever take Hamelin's Plague crew, competitively speaking (I still enjoy his fluff and style so would take him regardless). His crew is woefully lacking in mobility and mobility schenanigans. I have to take the Emissary to get any kind of extra pushes. It seems to me that many of the schemes/strats now favor more mobile crews which hurts the Plague crew quite a bit. In the future, if or when I'm playing in any kind of competitive setting I would be hard pressed to use them as the Amalgam keyword crew is ALOT better. The blight just takes too long to stack up and once you are forced to spread the plague crew out for completing strats/schemes their efficiency goes down considerably.

Positives:
Benny is better than I originally thought. If the plague player is planning on doing any summoning of rats Benny is the only one that has an ability to do it (other than summoning from blighted models that are killed). His Swarm them ability (bonus) can be quite good (Range 8" Stat 5 Resist Mv TN 14 - Target model suffers an amount of damage equal to the number of Vermin models within Aura 3" of it, plus 1), as I hit Macha for 5 damage. It is a bonus action so can only be taken once per turn and if/once an opponent has seen that go off they will find ways to prevent it from happening. However, with some "activation control" the Hamelin player has a decent chance of setting this up near end of turn.
Nix can be a very good tank. In the games that I have played so far he has probably been my MVP. He can be very survivable for only having 7 HP, he has some very good and useful bonus actions and can tarpit several beaters.
Midnight Stalker. Not a plague model but is almost a "must-take" with the plague due to their overall lack of mobility for scheme running. He holds his own very well and doesn't need anyone to support him to be effective.

Negatives:
Winged Plague (4ss) are the designated scheme runners for the Plague theme. They have flight which is good, but I feel like they could use Mv 6 (currently 5) or more importantly stealth. Which if they gained either of these would likely push their cost up to 5 rather than 4ss, but I would be fine with that. They are Df 5 Wp 4 with no defensive tech. So they will go down fast not only to a beater but also other 4 and 5 SS minions. I've been hiring them just so I could properly test them, but they really don't seem worth it unless you play on a board with lots of terrain for them to hide behind as they work their way into scheme positions. The rat catchers can make them fast which is nice, but that would be more useful for late game movement schenanigans because if you put them out too close to the enemy they will quickly go down. Whenever there is an errata I would like to think they would be among the first group of models up for some buffing/rework.
Rat Kings are a model I have yet to hire but will in one of my next games for the Keyword challenge. At 7 SS they just don't seem worth it. Also, I am not summoning rat kings like I did in 2E. The rats seem more useful for spreading blight and blocking charge lanes than bringing in a Rat King. Also, I've not been able to flood the board with rats like I was in 2E, so you have more of a decision on what you want to use the rats for (which is a good thing for the game). They actually seem like a "win more" type of summons in which you've flooded the board somehow with rats and decide to summon a rat king because either you can or have to.

Just MEH:
Hamelin has been ok. I know that I need to push him up further into the battle sooner to get his blight aura to impact models sooner. His lure is good but I really miss having an obey with him. I'm sure playtesting revealed that the Obey was too OP, but I still would have liked to have it even if it costs more resources to use.


Alas, I will not be there this next Monday due to being out of town for work. So I hope to see everyone the week after next.