Coming from Ressers, what cheap frontline models do Arcanists have?

[Whut]

First, some background

I play ressers, and I'm thinking of trying Arcanists. When playing ressers, my front line (the core I use in around 80% of games (or would if I actually got that many games )) Looks something like this:
 

Izamu

Mortimer

Flesh Construct

(Usually) a Student Summoned in by Nico first turn

 

Arcanists seem to have some strong parallels to two of these:
 

Izamu - Joss (armor 2 and hard hitting)

Mortimer - Cassandra (Flanker, higher mobility than the rest of the crew, marker/counter manipulation)

 

But the Flesh Construct I can't find a substitute for. Personally I think the Construct is the best 6 point front line model ever. It has 13 wounds, hard to wound, and essentially regen, making it often too much trouble for an enemy to commit AP to killing it. Its attack, while not incredible, attacks at a decent Ml5 and hits for a good 2/3/5 plus infect, or can get a + to damage on a ram. On top of this, it adds a level of control against your opponent. Playing against one of these, your opponent doesn't dare use his entire hand, or else suffer another 2 attacks.

_________________________________________________________________________

 

The most important part of all this is that the Flesh Construct is model that doesn't need to fear getting stuck into combat, giving a 2" ml range to lock down more of the enemy, does decent damage when up close, and comes at a very cheap price.

 

Do arcanists have any parallel to something like this? My initial thought was two Metal Gamin, but then the problem becomes that your frontline is relying too much on armor and models that ignore armor will cut through them much more quickly that one would like.

 

Ideas?

 

 

[Myyrä]

If you want something that's good at slowing down your opponent and doesn't rely on Armor, you don't have a very large selection to choose from in Arcanist faction. The best options that come to my mind are Raptors, which are very cheap and mobile and have relatively high Df, and some more expensive beasts like Razorspine Rattler and Slate Ridge Mauler. Rattler has high Df and good amount of wounds while Mauler has Impossible to Wound, Hard to Kill and good amount of wounds.

[Whut]

Here is another question, how often does the anti-armor issue come up? When I see my opponent declare arcanists, I would never immediately take 2 students of steel in fear of fighting marcus. But others may take this risk and start with a HUGE advantage against Ramos.

[SpiralngCadavr]

Playing primarily Guild, Outcasts, and Ressers, I feel like Arcanists are kind of weirdly missing front-line pieces. The closest thing in my opinion is in the Foundry theme, with Metal Gamin and/or Rail Workers as reasonably durable and accurate models, backed with the M&SU regen upgrade.

[admiralvorkraft]

Gunsmiths maybe? Pretty durable, with a trigger to handle any job and a reliable way to get it off.

Arcanists really don't believe in the generalist front line model, even the things that come closest (Rail Workers, Union Miners, Gunsmiths, Gamin) have a pretty specific role to play.

[Sybarite]

Seems a bit like you switch faction but want to play the same? We dont need flesh constructs

[Whut]

Seems a bit like you switch faction but want to play the same? We dont need flesh constructs

Not really want to play the same, I'm just a little worried that without enough of a frontline, I could easily be flanked and lose my support support models.

[surly]

Blessed of December has a solid Df, Hard to Wound and can kill stuff to regen life.

Compared to the Construct it's probably more squishy, but hits harder and is a lot more mobile than the Construct. This makes it easy for it to take scheme runners down while dropping schemes itself.

[mythicFOX]

A lot of this will depend on the master you're playing. I play Ramos and Kaeris so the Large Arachnid probably fits the bill best. It does rely on armour but so do almost all of our tanks, it's what we have to work with.  It's generally more trouble to kill than it's worth.  It also has an amazing (0) action. 

 

Keep in mind as well that when looking at Arcanists we tend to have a fair bit of healing to boost the tanking of our construct models (Johan, Ramos, Kaeris, Bleeding Edge Tech, and the Eternal Flame). For Kaeris, I tend to use a Large Arachnid and Rail Worker as my combat blockers in the build. Totalling 11ss they give me a reasonably difficult to remove pair of activations which can both get access to on attack and damage. 

 

Ramos tends to summon his own front line AP sinks so I tend to just take a Large Arachnid to support this job for him.

 

Overall ignores Armor is a pain but tends to be limited to only one or two enemy models, you should be able to mitigate these with practice.

[Math Mathonwy]

I agree about the Large Arachnid being sorta the closest match. As for their vulnerability to anti-armor tech, the Fleshies are similarly vulnerable to non-damaging shenanigans like Paralyze, Pushes, Obey, or Bury and such due to their extremely low defensive stats.

[Adran]

I would say the Slate ridge is very similar to the Flesh construct. Its slow, but durabe, has some form of healing, and a mechanism to discourage opponets normal approach (With the Mauler it gets bonus damage when hurt, rather than re-activate).

It doesn't com with as many wounds, but the Flesh construct is an abominatioon on the wounds per ss scale.

[MR TORGUE]

Why don't you just play leveticus - he gives you the best of both worlds if you really want to focus on necromancy/constructs and also want to look like ramos.

 

RAMETICUS!!!!

[decker_cky]

Arcanists don't really have that basic solid core. I think they're more of very toolsy core, and they have a lot more synergistic crews (it's only in the armour crews that you have a ton of overlap).

 

Where there's overlap for everyone is generally on big stuff:

 

1. Metal Gamin (14)
1. Mechanical Rider (14)
3. Joss (12)
4. Cassandra (9)
4. Howard Langston (9)
4. December Acolyte (9)

 

That's from the 5 models every arcanist should have:

http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/103280-5-models-every-arcanist-should-have/page-3