Ramos Tactica?

[Baalbamoth]

Hi played my very first (and only) round of Malifaux yesterday, uh... more of a learning curve than I expected...

 

Can some experienced Ramos guys give me some links and or tips on building a crew list? (different from pull my finger) I'll be playing in a tourney Sunday and am trying to do my Malifaux homework...

[Rodregeus]

Quick comment. Don't under estimate the power of steam arachnids. 

On paper they look kinda small and pitiful, to me at least. But people are always so distracted by Joss and Howard Langston (Who I tend to pour a lot of resources into keeping alive and re-activating) that they ignore the arachnids running around placing markers and removing their markers.

Howard and Joss have never really won me a game, but those dastardly arachnids certainly have.

[Drool_bucket]

Ramos is so well rounded and solid that his tactica, beyond a few little tricks, is pretty basic.

 

- make sure you can generate your own scrap first turn.  This means hire a 4ss construct and kill it.  This makes 2 or more spiders which then keep making scrap as they die.  There are also Constructs that multiple this like Joss and the Large Arachnid.

- Hire a chunk of heavy hitters.  In killy Strats and schemes it's Joss and Howard.  In movement/scheme marker ones its the Captain and Mech Rider.  You then summon your scheme runners in arachnids.

- take upgrades that make your constructs better, either healing them, giving them positive flips

- win your games.

 

Ramos isn't tricky, he isn't fancy, he's just darn good.  He's a great place to start but at some point challenge yourself with another Master, it'll make you a better player.

[Fenton Crack]

...and don't forget you can actually start with the Mobile Toolkit, which is only. 3 stones, to get your first piece of scrap.

I use it similar to the "Mythic Fox EC" opening (which can be found here: ), but instead of having the EC double walk, then get magged by Ramos for its death and the scrap, I walk the MT up then mag up a Metal Gamin that I am going to shadow Ramos with (for the Df 6 buff) for two wounds, then mag up Ramos for the MT's final wound and the scrap.

It saves me a stone, as other constructs are 4ss, and gets the Metal Gamin the free movement to get him upfield and ready to Protection of Metal Ramos next turn, but you can also just have Joss kill the Mobile Toolkit instead if, you want the two scrap off the bat for the same low 3ss price.

[Baalbamoth]

NICE

 

Any suggestions for general play? some people say to have Ramos around as many arachnids as you can to keep them pumped up, others say keep Ramos hidden as much as you can and take advantage of the long range summoning.

 

what upgrades do you consider mandatory or near mandatory?

 

what about using a Malifaux child, ever tried it? Seems like that would supercharge summoning...

[mythicFOX]

I've won a few tournaments with Ramos so I'll wade in. Personally I almost always take Arcane Reservoir for the extra card and Combat Mechanic for the accomplice and healing.

As for the Malifaux Child I don't use him in Ramos lists. Malifaux is a game about balance, Ramos doesn't need any more summoning in his crews, he has that covered. What he tends to need is hitting power.

The core to my build would probably be something like the below. This comes to 30ss, I'd then add whatever I needed for the objectives of the game to bring it up to 45/50ss etc.

Ramos -- 6 Pool

+Arcane Reservoir [2]

+Combat Mechanic [2]

Cassandra [8]

Electrical Creation [4]

Joss [10]

+Imbued Energies [1]

[Baalbamoth]

Please excuse my ignorance here, I understand Cassandra is for hitting power, but what makes her superior to Langston? Objective running?

[Sybarite]

What's Cassandra's role in your Ramos crew MythicFox? I just bought Ramos so I'm interested too

When i've played her she's been fighting and holding the opposing crews attention (soaking up lots of attacks with imbued protection df7 and southern charm). I only tried her a couple of times so far but I'm sure she'll pop up in a lot of my arcanist crews.

[Gorbad]

Please excuse my ignorance here, I understand Cassandra is for hitting power, but what makes her superior to Langston? Objective running?

I tend to use both Cassandra and Langston, but the benefits of Cassandra is that she is cheaper (by 4ss), she have a good range attack, she can use soulstones and she is, in my experience, harder to kill. She doesn't hit as hard as Langston, but she can hit hard enough.

[mythicFOX]

Although Cassandra's capable of hitting I wouldn't use her in that way in a Ramos crew.  I user her to objective run, something she's great at.

 

Ramos' summoning for me creates a cloud of spiders around him which tie up your opponent and force her to engage it, getting bogged down in the process. What you then need to fill out the crew is hitting power and objective running.  If I was to take the core I gave above and expand it out to a generic 50ss it would look something like;

 

Ramos -- 6 Pool
+Arcane Reservoir [2]
+Combat Mechanic [2]

 

Cassandra [8]
+Practiced Production [1]

 

Joss [10]
+Imbued Energies [1]
+Open Current [1]

 

Electrical Creation [4]
Howard Langston [12]
Soulstone Miner [6]

 

Joss and Howard can hit, Cassandra and the Miner can objective run.  Depending on the opposition I may well look to swap Johan in for condition removal or any number of other models for more specialist objective running / assassination tasks.

[Grim]

Would you play Ramos in Reckoning? I figured the arachnids are easy to kill for VPs.

[mythicFOX]

I wouldn't recommend it tbh. It's by far his worst strategy.

[Adran]

Ramos can do fine in Reckoning, you just need to remember that he can do things other than summon Spiders.

(I'm not saying don't summon spiders, they can still be very useful, but think a little more about how many and where you summon them, as the opponent actually has a reason to kill them).

 

He himself is capable of decent damage, and is pretty durable when needed, just focus your crew on tougher and bigger constructs.

Focussing his mechanical fist will remind people that he isn't rasputina, and you can't stop him by just gettign into melee.

[mythicFOX]

While non of what Adran says is untrue it's worth being clear that there are only two things Ramos does to a 'master level'; summon Steam Arachnids, and not die.  The former being to some extent an liability in Reckoning, the latter being less helpful than it would seem.

 

The best advice to an Arcanist player looking to play Ramos in Reckoning is; don't.

 

After that what Adran says is correct. Also use Combat Mechanic and Bleeding Edge Tech to ramp your tanking up.  Accomplice is your friend here as well, letting you combo up against enemy and swarm summoned arachnids before your opponent can react.

 

Also don't be afraid to detonate your own stuff before your opponent can kill it. 

[Fenton Crack]

I would agree with Mythic Fox that picking Reckoning is probably not a great idea outside challenging yourself (which can still be quite fun). You can still certainly still win, but since his signature ability of summoning is neutered there, another master choice will likely be more optimal.

As far as different "styles" of play (although there are no doubt more) that I often alternate between depending on strats and schemes, would be the Spider Factory and Pseudo-Hoffball. here though, they are not night and day, and may be less varied than say the the builds on other masters with limited upgrades that take you in two different directions.

For Reconnoiter, Power Ritual, and spread objectives, I'm likely to go Spider Factory where I am keeping Ramos relative safe and concentrating on making spider objective runners, healing them with Bleeding Edge Tech, then sending them off to spread throughout the board. Generating scrap can be a bit more of an issue for me here, as when the spiders did they can be too far away. Thus if I'm summoning three, if I have a Metal Gamin hanging around (to buff Ramos up to Df 6 via Protection of Metal), I'll have him mag one of the newly minted spiders to kill it for scrap reset.

For Turf War, and other central control objectives, I am more likely to run him up the middle surrounded by spiders, like Hoffman dies surrounded by his constructs, healing them, and buffing their Df and Ml via upgrades while having them latch on to enemy models that get close to the "ball" to attempt immobilization and lowering of enemy Df. Spiders inevitably die close to Ramos as they are swatted off enemy models in this manner, so generating scrap does not seem to be a problem.

Ramos is actually fairly durable, despite his abysmal Df, and I find myself ending many games with him either with full wounds or close enough to, that I feel I should probably be playing him more aggressively, but with Raspy as my first master, the habit dies hard to keep him out of the storm.

I think I may also overvalue spider production, and may actually waste AP and high cards and/or stones making spiders when I already have 6 or seven in play, which may honestly be more than one needs. It just becomes a habit to try and summon them every turn if able, but a high card may be better spent I the Df of a spider already in place where I want him. Rather than summoning spiders halfway across the board that will lose time and AP to get back over there.

Mythic Fox has some great stuff on Ramos both available on his blog (located in his forum signature) as well as in several podcast interviews he has given on his Ramos play, Malibites episode 9 being one off the top of my head, but I seem to recall a good one he gave an in depth one Malifools as well.

[Dracomax]

And, of course, Pullmyfinger has a Ramos section...

[Fenton Crack]

And, of course, Pullmyfinger has a Ramos section...

Yeah, good catch. You know, I honestly overlook that source every time since I'm do used to it being a 1.5 wiki.

[Baalbamoth]

OK played the tournament yesterday, I plan on writing a full batt rep but for now...

Ramos appears to be very slow in opening turns needing later turns to ramp up spider production/bleeding edge regen before the wall O' spiders gets rolling.

At a tournament where scheme selection is limited, there are 45 min time limits, and most games barely reach turn 3... Ramos just plain sucks.

I couldent agree more with mythic on reckoning, last game I faced the ortegas and was bleeding points to "make them suffer" (elec creations) and wounded/slow spider summoning (even though I was focused on distract/just blowing em up and had built the most tanky list I could.)

I have yet to play a full game, and lookin at my turn 3 ends I think I would have done much better (good chances of winning) had the games gone longer,but as it was I saw exactly why a scheme marker hemoraging crew like Collette would do very good in a short game where scores with most other masters usually ended 0-1 or 2-3, etc.

Lastly I was really disappointed with langston. At a cost of 12, 13 w imbued energies he didn't really make his points back in effectiveness. Using him to try and take out masters was a big mistake, and I had to cheat a lot of cards to keep him alive and hitting. His huge base size also made it harder for my other models to get around him and enter the fray. Overall it seemed he would burst forward into a fight and everybody else just had to run around him as he blocked up lanes.

[mythicFOX]

45mins is far too quick for a proper game of Malifaux, I'm not surprised you weren't getting out of turn three.  Ramos can set off fairly quick though, what was your open? How were you going for the scrap to make your first summon?

 

One thing to watch out for in timed play is how you use your spiders.  I'm vary careful about now making pointless attacks with them, unless the attack is going to achieve something meaningful I tend to avoid wasting the time with them in melee.

[Baalbamoth]

All three of my tables seemed to have an over abundance of terrain/cover, it helped to block LOS but initially made the electric creation double walk/mag opening difficult.

Second game I had to change direction to engage an advancing rasputina/ice gamin threat and moving the E.C. meant magnetism would put me into the 2' burst, should have been more sure of measurements there.

Third game ortegas were in perfect positions fast, I wanted Ramos to activate last as not to run into ortegas fire lanes w/o cover but that meant dropping the E.C. open. I might have been playing too timid that game, then again 40ss I only had Langston joss Ramos (max upgrades and 7ss pool) and an EC, one screw up would have cost me.

Never got the schemes I wanted, I was trying to use the spiders for "distract" but I was summoning in 3s and they were getting killed off before their second activation (by burst templates w raspy). Did manage to use them for some objective gathering.

[Sybarite]

Wow that is too little time for a game!

[mythicFOX]

All three of my tables seemed to have an over abundance of terrain/cover, it helped to block LOS but initially made the electric creation double walk/mag opening difficult.

Second game I had to change direction to engage an advancing rasputina/ice gamin threat and moving the E.C. meant magnetism would put me into the 2' burst, should have been more sure of measurements there.

 

 

The beauty of the EC opening is it's resilience. Just take the damage from the EC and summon, you'll heal it back fast enough and you can't win without summoning.

 

It sounds to me like your play was a bit timid generally. You also need to start with six activations in 40ss, four isn't enough. Especially as you can't rely on upping it by more than one for turn two. 

 

Can you give us an exact list?  We may be able to help more.

[mythicFOX]

All three of my tables seemed to have an over abundance of terrain/cover, it helped to block LOS but initially made the electric creation double walk/mag opening difficult.

Second game I had to change direction to engage an advancing rasputina/ice gamin threat and moving the E.C. meant magnetism would put me into the 2' burst, should have been more sure of measurements there.

 

 

The beauty of the EC opening is it's resilience. Just take the damage from the EC and summon, you'll heal it back fast enough and you can't win without summoning.

 

It sounds to me like your play was a bit timid generally. You also need to start with six activations in 40ss, four isn't enough. Especially as you can't rely on upping it by more than one for turn two. 

 

Can you give us an exact list?  We may be able to help more.