Ramos, am I doing it wrong?

[KuVenet]

So much great info you guys/gals. Thank you all so much. I ordered the EC to add to my crew. I hope this thread keeps going lots of good stuff here.

[spooky_squirrel]

Similar to Hank's rapid demise, once you get the factory going, you'll find that people in your local meta start bringing armor counters and working against Ramos directly--which is enabled by how predictable his first turn is and how his stuff functions. So you'll also want to look into how to deal with counters to his shenanigans (anything that eats tokens, suppresses Ca suits, responds to newly summoned critters) as well as figuring out if you want to play him into strats/schemes that reward killing minions or getting at least 2 kills per turn, and if you do (or find you have to due to limited masters and/or hiring pool b/c tournament or owned model limitations) how to minimize the free points your opponent is looking at.

[admiralvorkraft]

Ramos can play against type (it's how I tend to have the most fun with him). Magnetism makes him surprisingly mobile if you're willing to ping your own models, and if there's chokepoints on the board he can summon in spiders, sling some Electrical Fire at the target they're de-buffing, Accomplice into the spider, and trigger the explosion (or Swarm, if you summoned enough). Especially with Powered By Flame on the board he can throw around a surprising amount of damage both directly and indirectly.

If you're running him more independently then you have more flexibility with his crew. Large Arachnids are glorious, as are Railworkers, but I'll often run Johan (a cheap solo, and a great buy), Cassandra, and something like the Firestarter. Gunsmiths can work well too with the amount of burning he throws around and Union Miners enjoy the Solidarity of their Arachnid brethren.

The aggro Ramos build is, for the record, strictly less successful than leaning into his strengths as a spam summoner and debuffer. But it's an option.

[Fog]

I find a lot of people forget that Ramos does stuff.  They think spiders, auras, tough as nails.  They rarely plan for Electrical Fire, his painful melee severe, and using spiders as bombs.  He's surprisingly quick with magnetism, and can either scheme as needed, deal with runners in your backfield, or repositioning before summoning a swarm to eat enemy markers.

[Mxbedlam]

Indeed that Severe melee can be fun. I've had an opponent run a already damaged Howard into Ramos, I tanked the damage with some soulstones, activated envy for free focus, activated a spider or two to get into base contact, then focus attack, straight damage flip, severe out of my hand and dead Howard. 

[spooky_squirrel]

The caveat is that relying on the upper swing (Severe) of the damage track is not the best planning approach if you're looking at competitive games. It's awesome when it happens, but there's so much out there that pushes negatives, stops cheating (like Impossible to Wound), or forces you to dump additional cards in order to cheat--and none of it is "I'll play this in case of Ramos". People will play models with those effects because it minimizes damage (ItW) or helps with other things that they do (Insidious Madness and horror duels).

The more competitive players in my meta benchmark models' damage on the assumption that they'll never get better than minimum. This is what leads to things like Cassandra, Joss, Hank, Rail Golem being seen as beaters even without looking at reactivation tricks and Imbued Energies. Canny players will also do what they can to mitigate the threats that these models present (which is what leads to Hank being alpha struck off the table before he gets to activate, Rail Golem getting the burning condition removed by opposing models before it can activate, etc.).

Casual games? Heck yes, look at the wild swinging damage, sweet-talk your opponent into helping you get the Imbued Energies Rail Golem up to Burning 7+ so that you can see what full-tilt locomotion will do (min damage 5, triggers making your cards the only limit to the activation points used) with a fast Golem. Convince them to let your brass spider-Reactivated Imbued Energies-upgraded Hank live to activate twice (fast only works on one activation, so nimble-walk, charge, reactivate, gain fast, go to town). Switch over to Colette from Ramos and understudy/prompt yourself to the middle of the board, then slingshot the Coryphee pair into the enemy lines, final act them into the Duet, and watch them dance their way through your opponent's models. Of course, you may want to be a good sport and allow your opponent to see their own shenanigans on full-tilt (not to mention it is useful to see how nasty it can get, instead of avoiding it through blind luck).

This will help everyone involved understand why they rarely get to see their crew's star do everything it's supposed to do in a less casual game. This is how I learned that when I'm playing against Rasputina I need to kill the Acolytes before they can activate and engage/kill as many frozen heart models as I possibly can, all while bringing counterspell-bearing models and/or chaff to limit her brutal curse web's effect on my schemes.

[Mxbedlam]

This though is what makes the Papa in a Box trick so damn powerful. They force such high probability of moderate and severe damage that you can plan on it. Makes Envy good too. Focus on top of positive flips to attack means you should hit, and then focus beats out a negative result (minus hard to kill, etc)

[decker_cky]

Unless you're facing ressers, it's not too hard to cause severe damage due to focus (which was used in the example). Win the duel by at least 1, don't flip black joker, and cheat in a severe card. While he has other things he'd rather do with his AP, considering only melee effectiveness, against something hard to wound Ramos is better off focusing twice to cause get severe damage rather than plinking away 1 damage per attack (use magnetism to get within 1" range if you don't start in it). 

Ideally, Ramos sits back boosting his crew, raising spiders, and zapping stuff with electrical fire. If things go wrong and your opponent closes in on him, his clockwork fist can turn out to be a nasty surprise and a pretty good get out of jail free card. 

[spooky_squirrel]

My perspective may be skewed, as I've been playing into the Turf War/Guard the Stash/Extraction/Collect the Bounty strategies (often with Hunting Party in the scheme pool) more often than not. Since these focus on surviving/killing, we (my local group) are all bringing things that have armor, HtW, ItW, go defensive without card loss (i.e. Metal Gamin), and/or stone to affect flips or ignore damage--because these are far more common and easier to spread out than Joss' ability, which in turn makes them harder to directly counter. With these strats and related schemes, staying power is critical, whether from high quality elite crews or high body count swarms (Ramos can put a ball of spiders in the middle of the table for Turf War/Guard the Stash/Extraction and do really well with attrition). I also tend to burn through my control hand quickly trying to get my planned effects off early in the turn, which severely restricts cheating options towards the end (I play aggressively).

 

If Ramos is backed into a corner and absolutely must smack whatever is sitting next to him, he'll get more mileage out of a double focus and single swing than taking 2-3 swings, absolutely. But when it's Teddy that's backed him into a corner, you might want to figure out a way to get a spider to spawn behind you, use magnetism to pull away, then use his last two AP getting as much as you can out of Ramos before he meets a grisly (grizzly) end.

[spooky_squirrel]

Side note: I'm getting more practice with scheme running and control crews to try and work around the skewing towards the mosh pit in the middle. I like having more flexible crews on the table and a more flexible mindset when a control crew starts pushing/pulling/burying/terrifying/obeying my models into doing things I don't want them to. Of course, this (being a Ramos thread) is not the place to bring up Toni

[Mxbedlam]

Just remember that spiders are summoned within 2" of the marker. I often spread them out as far as possible and let the little guys do my convict labor while the rest are just doing their thing clogging up models. without armor ignore, those guys can really hang in there at df6 arm 1 and regen 1.

[spooky_squirrel]

One thing with Ramos' spider factory and things like Bleeding Edge Tech:

At some point you might feel marker-deprived. You want scrap markers out there for heals, for boosting the large spider, for spawning more spiders, etc., but someone keeps eating your markers. Bleeding Edge Tech requires line of sight. So if you need to keep 1-2 spiders standing by for "free" scrap (magnetism from Ramos or the Emissary, or metal gamin if you brought them along too), keep them out of line of sight of the BET-bearing model. That way they stay down at 2 wounds for the whole turn, giving you scrap for magnetism in a pinch. Otherwise you may end up needing to sink AP into getting scrap, and that's not always something you want to do. Though Joss and the Large Arachnids can get you a two-for-one deal if you need them to.

On the other side of the coin: sometimes you want to maximize your attrition game, so you need everyone regenerating as much as possible. In this case, make sure that the things that need to regenerate (new spiders, front line dudes not supported by Johan(na)) can draw line of sight to the BET-bearer before they activate.

[Mxbedlam]

This is a fair point. Often by turn 4-5 I want to use Ramos AP for shooting vs summoning. I own 12 spiders and rarely field more than 6, as I often use them as road blocks. 

[spooky_squirrel]

Spiders as roadblocks worked really well in my game against NB (Lilith); the summoned spiders kept her and Barbaros engaged at a choke point on the board while the rest of the crew scored points (Hank and Joss going for Hunting Party and Firestarter with Imbued Energies skirting the edge of the table for Undercover Entourage). Summoning into a scheme pool with Hunting Party pretty much guarantees that your opponent gets the 3VP from that scheme, but if you can keep all their beaters tied up with a knot of spiders and spider bombs, your scheme runners are free to do the things they do best.

[Mxbedlam]

yes, this. Ramos is so good at denying schemes for my opponents, that I often don't mind giving up the 3 points for Hunting party because I can deny the other scheme and strategy

 

[Fog]

On September 6, 2016 at 5:22 PM, spooky_squirrel said:

Of course, this (being a Ramos thread) is not the place to bring up Toni

Toni is amazing. Most underrated master in the game.

 

And you don't bring Ramos for his melee. It's just another option on his card. His card is absolutely loaded with options. People often ignore two thirds of his card and it's a travesty.

And between arcing screen and bleeding edge, those spiders take work to put down. Your opponent is spending cards and activations to get those kills. Meanwhile you can kill models that Don't come back. Playing aggressively, I rarely give two points on hunting party, let alone 3. Weakened spiders can self detonate, Ramos can blow them up, so your opponent pretty much has to one round a defense six, positive flip, armor 1 model. I'll throw a face card to savea spider and cost my opponent a point. There's a fair number of enforcers who need three weak hits to pop a spider, and almost none can finish it with one. Force a single miss and it's a wasted activation.

[spooky_squirrel]

I like that idea. I was primarily using them to eat up activations in order to force my opponent to commit to things before moving Hank and Joss. One of the spectators saw my starting line up of 5 models (plus EC) and wondered what was going on when a turn later I had 10 activations (started with 12T and RJ in hand).

 

The number of ways you can kill them yourself if they're not tying up a master or minion is absurd... and useful into condition schemes like Exhaust.

[Fog]

I had Ramos detonate the mechanical rider to spite a player an exhaust point

[Squirrelich]

6 hours ago, Fog said:

I had Ramos detonate the mechanical rider to spite a player an exhaust point

Did this two weeks ago in a tourney with joss, it is what gave me the win for the game.

[RustAndTheCity]

I had a game with the opponent taking exhaust and catch and release. I had my victory points pretty much complete and spent turn 4 and 5 destroying my own models to deny his schemes. I even put Joss down to hard to kill, reactivated him to kill Izamu, then killed him myself. Opponent was not pleased.

 

If Ramos is in melee, consider focusing if you have a high card in hand. Then you can hopefully cheat in a severe for 7 damage. It can catch people by surprise.