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Hit them, hit them harder


Fictor

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Hi dudes!

I came with my new Alpha's list, that I think is really good on Close Deployment, but can works in other deploys

1. Ramos [UP, FG, CM] + 7ss
2. Brass Arachnid
3. Howard  [IE]
4. Rail Golem [IE]
5. Angelica [PP]
6. Union Miner

Perfect teoric hand: 11:tome, 10, 10, 10, 4:tome+, 4:tome+

1. Brass Arachnid reactivates (10)
2. Brass Arachnid reactivates Rail Golem + Howard (10, 10)
3. Ramos shots :ranged Brass Arachnid twice to kill him, then summon 3 Arachnid (11:tome)
4. Arachnid A move
5. Arachnid B move
6. Arachnid C move
7. Union Miner shots :ranged Rail Golem twice for +4 or +5/6 burning depends on :ram on defense
8. Angelica push Rail Golem + Howard 5"
9. Howard can hit something within 17"/23" (push 5" + nimble 5" + IE to move 5" + flurry :melee2", or + charge 6" + :melee2")
10. Howard can hit something again within 7"/13" (nimble 5" + flurry :melee2", or + charge 6" + :melee2")
11. Rail Golem can hit something depends on :tome in hand, he has so much burning on him
12. Rail Golem can hit something depends on :tome in hand, he has so much burning on him

Lets comment! :lol:

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Rail Golem seems nice dmg dealer for try this, I allways play Joss but on this time want to test that.

The reason for kill Brass Arachnid is we doesn't have ss for more models, I want 7ss on Ramos. And if Brass Arachnid reactivates 2 miniatures doesn't walk and the two beaters are in the front line so far away to reactivate him for second time.

I doesn't think be hand dependent, Brass Arachnid have Rewire so we doesn't need :tome to reactivate, and Ramos only need :tome if want 3 Arachnids, in other case can use ss, so all our :tome can go for Rail Golem.

You can be right and the crew may be bad, but I think can give a chance xD

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Yeah, surely we can give it a trie. It's only seems.. situational. If your opponent breaks you eggs too early, if you have a bad hand, if a black joker.. ecc. 

Just.. don't know. Maybe it's me, but seems.. needing too much things going perfect or being destined to crumble.

Of course i don't mean to offend, or being rude. I just don't have enought padronance of the english language.

I'm curious to see how it does for you, if you can do a little b.r. 

Bye! ;)

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Even if you pass all the TN's you're asking yourself to make, what do you do if your opponent asks you to pass duels from his stuff? A single model with Terrifying is kind of scary if you have no cards left. What do you do if @mojopin hires a crew full of Terrifying models? 

Your list could be quite fun and it could absolutely ruin someone's day, but it relies so heavily on an amazing control hand. I just don't see you getting that amazing control hand on Turn 1 to ensure everything succeeds. I find that the more actions and effects you can work with that don't ask you to flip cards, the better off you'll be in the long run. 

My personal opinion, is that if you are going to commit to the alpha strike, fully commit; drop the defensive upgrades on Ramos. You're never going to have cards for Force Generator or Combat Mechanic and if the game ever gets to a stage where you can afford to use them, you've probably already lost. Drop both these upgrades and take Arcane Reservoir and Seize the Day instead so that initiative is likely to be yours every round, and that every round you have an extra card; even if its just for Flurry, that's a really big step up from only 2 attacks with Langston.

I would focus on buffing one big beater alone and bringing a more self-sufficient secondary beater. Trying to buff two big things every game will use too many resources. Whatever actually gets buffed will need to actually have some cards left to win attack duels with. I would choose Langston, because the Golem is only Ml5 and is :tome hungry.

Bring in a Mobile Toolkit and have him discard a card to give Langston a :+fate for 1AP, then walk 5" forward. Ramos can then Magnetise and Clockwork Fist it to death (this brings Ramos 5" closer to the front so Under Pressure is more likely to be in range of wherever Langston ends up, doesn't need to pass Electrical Fire's TN, and still gives him a scrap marker to summon from. Plus, the Steam Arachnids he's about to summon will be closer to the enemy, and Ramos would still have 1AP free to do whatever he wants).

My secondary, self-sufficient beater of choice, would be Coryphee. They're getting :+fate:+fate on their attacks, and :+fate on their damage, if they're in range of Ramos. They also use up 3 activations while they Walk forward, merge and Charge, so if Ramos summons fewer Spiders its not such a big deal (because you're still delaying Langston's activation). Speaking of Langston, he has Reactivate, :+fate:+fate to his attack flips, but most importantly, he still has a few cards left to cheat fate with, depending on what your opponent has thrown at you so far.

All this requires a single 10 for Reactivating Langston and a single 8 for summoning 2 Steam Arachnids. 

My activation order would be:
- Mobile Toolkit does his thing.
- Ramos does his thing.
- His 2-3 arachnids do their thing.
- Coryphee (1) places a scheme marker and Walks
- Coryphee (2) Walks and merges with Coryphee (1)
- Brass Arachnid Reactivates Langston, and potentially the Coryphee Duet if you DID draw a decent hand.
- Angelica places a scheme marker forward with PP and pushes Coryphee Duet and Langston as usual.
- Coryphee Duet Charges something and pushes away with it's built-in trigger on it's second attack.
- Langston drops Imbued Energies and does some combination of Walking, Charging or Flurrying as appropriate, then does it a second time. 
- If you did get Reactivate on the Coryphee Duet, it can do some combination of attacking or Walking.  

That's my take on a Ramos Alpha Strike list. The Miner could stay since he's pretty good with PP after the errata, but he can go if you wanted to hire something else. I do like your list, I just think it's going to struggle a lot when you don't drop a god-tier control hand. 

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@hydranixx it's really nice idea change the upgrades on Ramos for the reasons you describe, I'll do it

And It's true, Corypee is better than Rail Golem on the paper, but I played so much times Howard and Corypee in the other hand I never played Rail Golem, I really want play him, always that I think one miniature is bad I want test it for be sure of that, so I'll do one thing, I try to play two crews one with Corypee and another one with Rail vs the same enemy crew.

@Frollo the Wordbearer, no problem, I write for that, to discurs things and see if I'm daze and can't see how bad is my idea xD

 

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Have you considered what the first turn looks like when you don't have any 10s, and no tomes to use on Locomotion? 

Because thats my normal hand when I do something like this. (And I always take Arcane resevoir for this sort of thing)

Also on close deployment, I'm not expecting you to have both big hitters survive that long. because your opponent probably has something that can kill them in 1 activation after you have used 3 10+ cards already. 

I would say the list is very much focus'ed on 1 thing. If your opponent can stop that one thing, then you are possible in trouble. I can see this list either winning big, or collapsing horribly on the first turn. 

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8 hours ago, Adran said:

Have you considered what the first turn looks like when you don't have any 10s, and no tomes to use on Locomotion? 

Because thats my normal hand when I do something like this. (And I always take Arcane resevoir for this sort of thing)

Also on close deployment, I'm not expecting you to have both big hitters survive that long. because your opponent probably has something that can kill them in 1 activation after you have used 3 10+ cards already. 

I would say the list is very much focus'ed on 1 thing. If your opponent can stop that one thing, then you are possible in trouble. I can see this list either winning big, or collapsing horribly on the first turn. 

It's been my experience in the local and regional tournament scene that the people who fare best in the tournaments are the ones who can manage momentum on crux turns the best. In other game systems I've played Alpha strike lists end up taking a beating from lists constructed to counter attack and shift the momentum, and this has found its way into the Malifaux scene as well. This is why, in spite of how brutal they are, the Viks aren't doing as well in my meta as they might in others. We've learned to counter Alpha strikes and it comes naturally in crew composition and play: "they've got n beaters that threat far, so I need to position like this to protect the things that matter and set up a counter attack."
What close deployment does is reduce the amount of time needed to set up the Alpha, but the opposing player can deploy to counter the Alpha instead of spending their first turn maneuvering to counter it. The problem that Alpha strike lists have is that their labels give them away. You know when you see mostly beaters across the table from you (prior to selecting schemes) that your opponent is going to be trying to inflict as much damage as fast as possible.

Alpha strike lists rely on gaining immediate momentum and never losing it. It's a feast-or-famine approach, and the more experience your meta has with Alpha striking, the more the result is famine. If Howard Langston and the Rail Golem are both lured out of position and/or paralyzed, how do you recover momentum? If Lilith swaps one of your beaters for Nekima and drops her forest between the other and everything it might target, how do you respond? A mistake there will cost you both of your beaters and only one of theirs, with them having considerably more board control than you.

The hand reliance is also on the label. An experience opponent will see that there's an immediate need for specific cards in hand and soulstones to do things. Many tools exist across the factions that will interfere with your hand and/or stones, or worse, interfere with your actions directly (cast on negatives, no attack actions, paralyze, incite to force your order of operations).

As @hydranixx suggests, reduce your reliance on your hand and synergies with at least one of your beaters. If you're going for an Alpha strike (especially in close deployment), make sure that whatever you might dive deep for an early kill meets several criteria:
1. Hand Use:
1a. Does not rely on your hand to do what it needs to do, or
1b. If it does rely on your hand, it does not compete for suits with the primary means of scoring actual victory points.
2. Synergies: does not rely on bubble synergies to get work done (such as Under Pressure)
3. Trade Off: gives you a net gain on activations, hand control, board control/positioning, or scoring that is worth the cost
4. Victory Conditions: using a guided missile to sucker punch someone early should work towards scoring or denying victory points. AP is a critical resource to manage in Malifaux, and every AP not spent on achieving the victory conditions is a wasted AP. Moreso in an elite crew.

Something like the Coryphee Duet readily meets the first two criteria, but at 14 stones to hire, might not be a good trade-off. So whether or not you do this depends on what your victory conditions are (and whether or not you can have the Coryphee live long enough to merge in close deployment). The Emissary is a solid beater pick because its charge attack hits hard and provides control, and its primary attack has triggers on every suit, allowing you to adjust your hand reliance (all the way down if you aren't worried about the triggers). It also runs considerably cheaper than Hank or the Duet, and comes in cheaper than the Rail Golem. Ramos' Conflux gives you immediate return, especially if you're using Brass Arachnid to reactivate the Emissary and the Mobile Toolkit to put it on positives even after it leaves Ramos' bubble.

You will still have the same concerns I described above, but those concerns might be mitigated by the fact that Coryphee have positives on Df and Wp and enough speed where you don't need to start them on the front line. Starting at table edge: one walks up 14", the other places in base contact, then merges, dropping the Duet roughly 19" up the table (hand dependent) with 2AP (while slow). Reactivating the Duet gives you 5AP out of it the turn it is summoned (and two opportunities to self-repair if needed). The Emissary's defensive capabilities are more robust than either Hank or the Rail Golem, so it is a little harder to hit and knock down, and its offensive stats are better than the Rail Golem (but not as good as Hank's). You will probably find that instead of a Turn 1 Alpha (even in close deployment) you're better off setting up in Turn 1 and going for a brutal hit in Turn 2 when your opponent must start moving towards scoring positions or surrender early control of the board to you. This doesn't give you the immediate momentum advantage of indiscriminately killing a couple models, but it does let you take targeted strikes that might make it harder for your opponent to recover and you can work the attack run for the victory conditions.

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