Is Ramos Overpowered?

[Grantt]

I've been playing a while, especially with the varied Archaist crews. Before second edition, I played mostly Guild, with some Neverborn thrown in for good measure. 

 

Lately I've been running Ramos and each game I play genuinely surprises me as to how powerful he and his crew can be. It seems like the ability to overwhelm an opponent with Arachnids is too much; I'm usually throwing 2 (on average) per turn into the game, often healed soon by Bleeding Edge tech. If an opponent doesn't destroy them (leaving Langston and Joss to wreak havoc) then the spiders just go achieve objectives. 

 

It seems so very powerful when compared to other masters. I can see the weaknesses and I've had them exploited a few times, but it seems like he's a little too powerful compared with the other masters. When I play him, and I hate to say this, he feels a little like playing the original Hamelin crew. 

 

A little dirty-guilty. 

 

I tend to run; 

 

Ramos + Arcane Reservoir, Electrical Summoning, Upgrade relevant to game

 

Brass Arachnid

 

Electrical Creation

 

Joss

 

Howard Langston + Bleeding Edge Tech

 

Lazarus

 

45 (plus upgrade) soulstones. 

 

I usually run Ramos, Joss and Howard as a beat-stick and start the spider manufacture line off the Electric Creation, while Lazarus teams up with the Brass Arachnid (assimilating Stoke more often than not) to maintain a dizzying artillery fire. 

 

It's pretty devastating. 

 

Thoughts?

[SteampunkCake]

I've not found Ramos OP. against any other competent player they should be able to defuse Ramos before he can flood the field. I find people tend to ignore Joss (usually by flattening him) and go straight for Howard and Lazarus. Whilst Lazarus is an amazing tank and a great gunner, all it takes is someone being able to ignore armor and he will drop quickly.

[Omenbringer]

I strongly disagree that M2e Ramos is anything like 1st Ed Hamelin (pre-fix).

[rythos42]

I don't think I agree that Ramos is OP, but I do agree that he is a very powerful Master. I think that he's incredibly good at getting VPs, in the situations where he needs to be getting VPs.

 

I don't know of any solid counters to him, as I've only played him 3 times and uhm...haven't lost a game with him, >.>, but I can brainstorm a few things:

• If your opponent hears Arcanists, they may want to consider anti-Armour. It's a decent bet in a lot of cases. Poison is an AA attack, could be useful.
• Depending on the Strat/Scheme, some Blast attacks may help.
• Anti-Wp attacks. I suspect that Pandora+Woes would wreck face against Ramos in Turf War!
• Creating a position such that the spiders are engaged, but are not in base contact. This could prevent them from scoring VPs, but also prevent them from giving the -1Df. Getting the perfect position could be complex.

Some of this stuff could be considered "tools to bring to any game", and if you pull Ramos you've got some answers to him. I like that better than "X model will destroy him!"

[zFiend]

McMourning + Expunge.

I just had to.

[Rathnard]

The thing about Ramos is that if he's summoning Spiders, like other Summoners he's pouring alot of resources into doing so - at minumum a soulstone and one of his best cards each turn. That leaves the rest of his crew a little starved of resources which in turn, makes it easier for the opponent to win duels and smash face with their own crew. So you want to keep that card advantage in mind - a swarm of three summoned spiders costs alot more to the Ramos player than a mere 1AP. 

 

The spiders themselves can prove resiliant little buggers with their armour and Df 6, but they have the killing power of a wet paper bag and remember that Ramos is spending his best cards on summoning, so after the heavy hitters those Spiders are pretty low on the priority list for cheating defense flips. So as long as you keep them contained (ie. not running off achieving objectives) it's mainly the heavy hitters you'll need to worry about. 

 

If you want specific anti-Ramos tech, you can't go wrong with Taelor (anti-construct, plus Welcome to Malifaux!) and/or anything that ignores armour. A Specialist might not be terrible either, what with his blast damage, Burning, immunity to pulse damage and ability to sweep up scrap markers each activation. Even his Punctured Tanks get around the Spiders Evasive ability, since it's applying not damage, but Burning.

 

You do need to watch your reliance on Ca-based attacks though, since Ramos can get Counterspell, and Bleeding Edge Tech has a (0) action that puts a  on Ca-duels within an aura. 

 

 

McMourning + Expunge.

I just had to.

 

Well that's one spider dead. How do you plan to kill the rest?

[zFiend]

Who the hell kills one spider with McMourning?

[HiveCommander]

Simple; use Nurses and keep Ramos perpetually paralyzed or unable to declare anything that isn't an Ml action. Had it happen to be before

[zFiend]

Simple. Expunge Ramos.

[Patzer]

Ramos is very very good (in most strategies and schemes), but he is far from overpowered. He doesn't bend the game like Hamelin (or Pandora) used to back in the hey-days.

[wopr1986]

I run a similar list to the OP when I bust out papa ramo (which is very rare) but swap Lazarus for mechanical rider and drop bleeding edge tech. He is a very good master but when my group of friends started playing I started with nico and perdita and never had any issues beating ramos. In fact the reason I got Ramos was a mate calling nico OP so we switched masters for a few games and I still beat the stuffing out of him, think it's about 6-0 in game difference.

[zFiend]

I run a similar list to the OP when I bust out papa ramo (which is very rare) but swap Lazarus for mechanical rider and drop bleeding edge tech. He is a very good master but when my group of friends started playing I started with nico and perdita and never had any issues beating ramos. In fact the reason I got Ramos was a mate calling nico OP so we switched masters for a few games and I still beat the stuffing out of him, think it's about 6-0 in game difference.

 

Obvious solution, Ramos is OP.

[wopr1986]

Obvious solution, Ramos is OP.

Don't forget perdita too, he was most upset when papa loco went boom boom BOOM followed by Santiago with tormenta de plomo killing all his zombies. If I remember right only Mortimer was left on the table as Frank the tank with some high rams in hand and soulstones for rams killed nico in one activation too.

Still on the topic at hand. Ramos is as OP as all the other masters. In my opinion it really comes down too knowledge and skill of the player with a little bit of luck from the deck.

[MR TORGUE]

Ramos is only overpowered if the person using him plays intelligently with summons and hand/ss management. That and the schemes/terrain load out bring a lot to the type of play style he will commit to.

 

I don't believe there are over powered masters in general (although some are obvious power houses *cough-Leveticus*) but that its dependant completely on your opponent and how they choose to react to your force.

 

I agree however that Ramos is a super fun master to use and themes up nicely too.

[MR TORGUE]

hah, super similar update; good to see likeminded players

[dgraz]

Alpha.....and done.

[Grantt]

Thanks for the responses, team; I wanted to check and make sure I wasn't being a douche by playing him!

 

In fairness, most of my games have been against the Guild, so my range of opponents has been limited. I actually look forward to the day I get steamrollered. 

[moxypoo]

Easy solution - Leveticus.  All your Armor means nothing Ramos!!

 

 

Here's my real response:  My main opponent (CougDyver on these forums) is an excellent Ramos player, and I've learned a few tricks to take him on.

 

1. Kill key lynchpins and don't get bogged down in Steam Arachnids.  Ramos generally needs a couple heavy hitters such as Joss to get the summoning engine going.  In addition the Spiders barely have any damage output, so Joss/Howard/etc. are there to do the real damage in the crew.  The Brass Arachnid is a high priority target for its ability to hand out reactivate, while Joss should be killed given the opportunity. 

 

2. This is a continuation of point 1.  There are few masters (Hamelin certainly, maybe Nicodem and the Dreamer too) who can win an attrition war against Ramos.  For the most part, you should avoid trying to focus on killing spiders unless absolutely necessary.  Spending too many AP unnecessarily fighting spiders can quickly lose you the game.  Target spiders holding your key models in place or ones that are running to drop scheme markers.  Do your best to avoid any others.

 

3. If you plan to kill Ramos, go all out.  Don't try to nickel and dime him to death, because his Armor +2 and innate healing ability will keep him topped off in Wds.  I generally don't try to take out the man himself unless he's particularly vulnerable.  However, if he's alone or otherwise exposed I'll bring all my force to bear on him.

 

4.  Bring models that can ignore armor in some way.  This is generally good advice against most Arcanist masters but especially against Ramos.  Models with Armor +2 generally have lower than average Wds to compensate, so ignoring that Armor makes them much softer than they should be for their cost.

 

 

Conclusion:  Ramos is not overpowered and certainly not to the level pre-patch Hamelin or Dreamer was in M1.5E.  However, I do think he's at the top tier of the master power curve along with Leveticus and a few others.  He's not easy to fight but few masters are. 

[Hateful Darkblack]

Justin actually talked about Ramos' power level on a podcast recently and said that, yeah, he's on the upper side of the curve among Masters, because in addition to Summoning his other abilities are quite good too: Electrical Fire is a strong attack, he has great defensive boosts for his team, etc. But that doesn't mean he's OP, just really good.

 

I think playing against Summoners can feel like they're overpowered because when a Summoner is winning, it's a very dramatic win with many AP and activations. It feels overpowered because once they're ramped up they win hard. But when you look at game statistics, Summoners do about as well as everyone else.

 

Summoners don't win more often than others, they just feel more inevitable when you're facing them if you can't stop their engines.

[EntrepeNinja]

Simple. Expunge Ramos.

 

It's simple.... we kill the Batman... er.... robo-spider-man.

 

Young Ramos.

 

Open Spoiler