Vitzh

Thanks for the link. On a slightly different topic is there a Malifaux app for the iPhone at all?

I moved to Santa Clara this last Nov. I've heard there is a local Malifaux community but I haven't seen it. Any help?

Looking forward trying out my 10T with this league.

How many people are you expecting?

No you are correct.

Just to make sure I understand things correctly, if I have a height 2 model firing at a height 1 model and in between there is a wall 1.5" high this is legal as they can both draw LoS to each other. The wall position is irrelevant, and there is no way to position the Ht1 model to block LoS, even in the shadow of the wall. Now if the Ht1 model is close enough to the wall it gains hard cover. This is where Hunter causes a problem. Hunter doesn't just drop hard cover to soft cover it strips all defensive benefits of the terrain. Isn't this all a bit silly? If the wall where somewhere between the two models it would make sense they could see each other from the right position. The fact that a model with hunter not only sees through the wall to fire at a target(which should be out of LoS) but suffers no penalty while doing so makes most non-LoS blocking terrain useless. Or worse then useless as they slow down melee troops while making perfect shooting galleries for ranged armies.

Can anyone explain how he isn't completely broken? Every game with guild has him regardless of faction faced and he punches completely out of his weight class. When his minimum damage gets to such incredible levels so easy, and he has flurry its just kinda ridiculous. I also especially enjoy how he ignores cover so that can't be used against him. The terrain rules in general are annoying, watching him firing over Ht1.5ish obstacles against Ht1 models in btb with the wall is just stupid. The student of conflict giving him fast is just the final poorly playtested piece on top of everything else.

You also have to be careful of SSing up for a spider. You need to cheat first then SS so you can still fail.

Just how are you managing to get that many tomes? Or have that many scrap tokens?

Coming into a discussion with the forum equivalent of "when did you stop beating your wife?" isn't really conducive to discussion either. There is a word for people who like asking such misleading questions: Republicans! I dont think its appropriate posting overly negative things about the master in question and the game in a thread for potential new players. Part of it is not wanting to ruin their good time, and they may never run into the same problems I have with Ramos. It also felt like the OP was asking more for a poll of opinions than an actual discussion. Where to begin on Ramos? His soul stone count seems to indicate that he should be a rather powerful master. Yet he suffers in terms of his stats, spell list, and in scenarios. Stat wise he is only blessed with a high CA. His movement and combat are both low. His Def of 2 is rather abysmal. He does have armor to try to make up for this but that low of a Def mean far too many attacks hit home easily and often for extra damage. Ramos is clearly supposed to be a spellcaster. Yet over half of his spells require an extra suite to be cast successfully, and often high values in those suites. His totem compounds this problem by requiring an even higher value in the same suite. Two of the spells with suite requirements also require a wreck marker. His spells that aren't suite dependent are also under performers. His attack spell scales poorly compared to other masters attack spells, and has a very situational bonus. A required defensive spell suffers from ending at the end of the turn instead of lasting till his next activation. This provides a flicker of lost defense that is controlled solely by initiative. Malifaux is really a game about scenarios. As you determine which scenario you are playing in a game before you even pick your faction or build a list the master used should match the scenario. The game really supports having a wide collection, and not specializing in one master in this way. I have found Ramos is a poor choice for any scenario, and only really supports other poor choices for scenario play. In actual play he never felt like he really did much every turn compared to other masters. The suite requirements make it very difficult to do multiple signature spells per turn, and sometimes impossible to do any. Overall it feels like you can make him work by taking an excessive amount of soul stones. They need to be used for both defense, and for casting spells. This makes him a very expensive Master to play for fairly poor results, doubly so in scenarios. He really feels very close to bottom tier in a game with huge differences in power level. Its also annoying that models he summons haven't been released yet and don't look like they will be released for quite some time. Leveticus(the other master I have as well) suffers from this too, as do others.

The question asked was is there a better master then Ramos to learn the game with and I responded with a neutral remark. I didn't really think going into the issues with him would be appropriate for this thread. Advice I have seen from other people who do like Ramos even says he is a difficult master to play. Poisoning the well in the manner you have done feels far more damaging towards actual discussion then anything I have said in this thread. The only place I have posted negatively about Ramos is the thread I started about him. Honestly I didn't like how discussion there was killed either.

I would suggest learning the game with any other master.

@BugKing The games that Knightdrake played last were on lower amounts of terrain. My last few games were not. They easily fit into what the rulebook described for terrain. My spiders did hide as they advanced up the table but in an attempt to project multiple threats they eventually had to leave cover. A list with Joss, Ramos, and the spiders has a single must deal with threat: Joss. How are your opponents not easily murdering spiders when you eventually have to try to do something with them? How is Df 4 anything but horrible? Its not like the Df stat is only used for ranged attacks, and these models never get into melee. Its really annoying to watch your hand get drained trying to defend these turds only to eventually see your opponent cheat fate down because its so easy to get off triggers. Armor 1 doesn't help out nearly enough when the low defense opens up + fate damage flips. I find tactics telling me to waste time and try to outmaneuver positions incredibly dubious. My games have generally been decided by the third turn. If I stall my opponent wins the scenario. If I engage I get slaughtered. Suggesting I play with beasts with Ramos is conceding the point that his crew is awful.

@ TheBugKing Not really impressed with being told to play more games in liu of anything useful or concrete. While we love the system and setting the more games my group plays the more we find that it appears to be poorly playtested. Its nice that they have fixed some problems, but more keep showing up. Nerdelemental already described how to use Joss. In future games I will have to ask my opponent to kindly position his minions so that the spiders can approach them completely in cover. It sadly hasn't worked this way so far. You don't see a good portion of the deck early. At most by the second turn you will see 12 different cards in hand. This means you discarded your initial hand and didn't hold onto any high cards as spent cards would be shuffled back in. This is simply not enough to consistently create spiders, and electrical constructs. You will also never have a period like the first turn again to build up your hand. Ramos was not blessed with an overabundance of soulstones and using them to cast spells other cast far easier is just another issue he has.

This makes a lot of sense and is significantly better then what was described up thread. I will do this with him the next time I play. I also haven't been using the Steamborg. Its been all spiders, and Joss.

There are a lot of issues with what you present. Last time I checked there is nothing stopping an opponent from cheating to hit arachnids. That and your trick with swarms requires the swarm to be within 5", or engaged and have survived what your opponents has done to them so that they don't immediately create scrap tokens when splitting apart. With a Df4, and a measly armor of 1 this isn't likely. Joss hiding in cover and using armor every turn isn't building up power tokens. To get what you describe out of him would require him staying completely out of LoS, not spending power tokens and then using all these built up power tokens. He then is effective, but by then I have already lost. Electrical Creations, Multiple Spiders, and using Surge separately early to cycle? The required cards consist less then 1/8th of your deck. You are getting rather lucky to consistently get multiple effects off in a single turn that all require high value cards from the same suite. Far too often I dont even have an opportunity to summon a spider a turn. Summoning extra spiders is far too slow. The first turn Ramos needs to move up if he is going to do anything in the game. The second turn he can summon a single spider if he doesn't move. I find my opponents can easily kill 2 spiders a turn even when they are focusing on more substantial models. With the size of the game this gives me maybe 4 turns of play before my crew is dead, and they have suffered minimal loses. There is no second wave as the other factions are far too efficient at putting down whatever you can field, it takes too long to summon it, and requires getting incredibly lucky card draws.

Summary: Ramos is awful. He is a support caster with one of the shortest range and weakest effects in the game. This is tied with poor combat abilities in all forms, and an under performing crew. Statistically Ramos is incredibly underwhelming. 2 Soulstones, Def 2, Cb 3, and wk 3. His only high statistic is his Ca 8. This seems to indicate that he should be a solid caster but 3 of his spells require further suits to successfully cast. From there he has a spell that requires a scrap token and one of the weakest attack spells in the game. His high casting ability is actually more of a detriment with his totem. As the totem is only a cast of 5 it makes casting any of his spells significantly more difficult. The totems reactive ability is awesome, but again it requires more of the same high casting cost cards from the same suite Ramos needs. As said above he is a support caster. Unfortunately, his only real buffing spell is a 3" bubble. When combined with his 3" move it is difficult to use effectively. It means the first turn or two of the game he is forced to double move and use his casting action on this bubble. The bubble also requires a 7+ to cast, which means if you are holding a good hand of cards it will fail half the time. For his totem to cast this spell requires a 10+, which is highly unlikely without fate twisting. For your minions to effectively use the bubble they are tied tightly to Ramos, which has its own issues. As a final issue this buff flickers. It goes away in the end phase, and doesn't come back until Ramos casts it again. This often forces Ramos to go first and means you are punished heavily when you lose the initiative. You also likely have to either hide Ramos, where he can't buff, or cast this bubble every turn. It increases his abysmal defense of 2 up to a subpar 4. It means he really only has 2 actions a turn to use, and has to spend those actions inefficiently to get anywhere with his short ranged spells. Ramos has two spells to summon new minions to the battlefield. Both require higher value tome cards. This means you are likely to have to cheat fate to cast them, wasting another card in hand, or cheat fate and use a soulstone(while he only starts with 2!). One of his summoning spells is a zero cast action which creates more spiders. As a zero cost action it can only be performed once per turn, and is burdened with trigger requirements. Both of his summon creatures tend towards being worthless as well. His crew, and Joss don't improve matters further for him. The spider swarms and Steamborg executioner both have Def 4. Neither are particularly survivable compared to other factions minions, and the low def creates further card inefficiency in a master already highly card inefficient. This combined with a lack of an impressive offense compared to other similarly price minions means these under perform. The Steampunk Arachnid by itself has a higher Def, but only has 3 Wds. Its often one shot before it can accomplish anything. Making one explode means you just paid 3 soulstones to do 2 points of damage to a model(who bunches up?) and it then doesn't leave a scrap token behind. It can only really explode within a 6" radius, which is far far shorter then ranged attacks easily reach. It would take 2 of these to trade for any 4 soulstone model at best, which means my opponent is really up 2 soulstones. Joss looks really good on paper. Sadly he has average Df, no survivability without power tokens, and average attack. The only way he gains survivability is by surviving. He could hang around for 3-4 turns doing nothing but by then the scenario is already decided. He can flurry but to do so he would need to have already been engaged, and costs you another card. This leaves the Electrical Construct. The Electrical Construct has 1.5 turns of activation as he takes damage before he activates every turn, and has 3 Wds. The first turn it activates its slow, takes a wound and should deal damage to a single model. It will then likely die before it gets to do anything again as even a single point of damage ensures its death. Out of my last few games I have never even had the opportunity to reliably cast the Electrical Construct as I never drew a high enough card from the tomes suite for my hand. So overall we have a support Master who is awful at doing everything, including supporting his minions, tied to minions who aren't cost effective. From every other Master I have played against in this game Ramos easily defines the bottom tier. Its just annoying looking at Nicodem. He buffs in a 10" area without a cast action. He can easily bring back his pud troopers in a 10" area compared to one a turn. He has a better attack spell that doubles as a better healing spell for his minions. His spell to create a single minion is more flexible, can create more powerful minions, and helps with the card inefficiency. He also starts with more Soulstones. All in all its somewhat maddening. My best tactical advice is to not play Ramos.