Anti-Ramos Asami

[Cadaverousbirth]

My meta is Arcanist heavy. Guess who you get to face in Interference/Reconnoiter? Ramos. Assuming standard deployment, here's an idea to shut down the spider swarm turn 1.

The usual Ramos turn 1 activation order goes:

1. Electric creation/spider/mechanical attendant walks forward twice

2. Joss shoots/charges this and makes two scrap

3. Ramos begins to win on activations by summoning 2-3 spiders and putting up bubble buffs.

So, two activations to shut that off if you go second. Easy. The idea revolves around Sensei Yu with Wandering River Style and Asami with Heavenly Design. Yu pushes Asami twice making her Fast and 10" up the board. By this time there will be two juicy scrap markers to summon with. Fast Asami walks twice, steals the markers with a summon (fingers crossed for a Jorogumo) and walks away + placing herself back out of harm's way (aka Howard). Now Ramos has no bank of scrap to give you headaches, and Asami is hopefully 11" away back in relative safety. Your summon has Flicker +3/4 if Yokai and will likely die before that even comes into play but who cares - no more spiders.

My biggest concern with this is needing two six's for Yu plus a high enough card for Asami to summon with. Three 6's if you want to guarantee her place, for four high-ish cards for this to work perfectly. If your hand is garbage this may not work, but my question would be if you think turning off the spider engine for at least 2 turns (until you kill a construct, or Joss does) is worth possibly losing Asami to Howard's counter charge? Again, if everything goes well you should be far enough away for Howard to have to over-extend and get himself killed sooner.

A lot of this will be board dependent as well. It would help Asami a lot if she can place herself behind Blocking or Impassible stuff like a building. Yu is good enough on his own that even if your opponent doesn't bring Ramos (are they mad? Yes.) you can still have an effective crew especially with the summons. Let me know your opinions or even a better solution.

[daniello_s]

Remember Howard can have Imbued Energies plus benefit from Angelica and her push so he can easily grab Asami with his Flurry. IMO you are gambling too heavily here.

[Cadaverousbirth]

29 minutes ago, daniello_s said:

Remember Howard can have Imbued Energies plus benefit from Angelica and her push so he can easily grab Asami with his Flurry. IMO you are gambling too heavily here.

That's a fair point. I have never seen Angelica on the table so that is something to keep in mind. How far is the push?

[daniello_s]

She can push a model within 8 up to 5''. 

Angelica is very good piece of support especially when you can Practiced Production on her.

[Tris]

Also, if you manage to pull this off once, he might start to play more safely and places his first scrap out of your reach, so I don`t think that its the best way to "aplha strike" his scrap.

I do think that Asami has a favourable match up against Ramos though, keep Betty and her summon place in mind

[spooky_squirrel]

As someone who'd dropped Ramos on the table at tournaments: if my opponent can do something off of markers I drop, I'm not going to forward deploy those markers. 2-3 spiders on turn 1 will give me a ton of activation control, they're unimpeded so they'll make their way up the board without issue. So something that's going to eat those markers or use those markers to strike into my core? I just need the Creation to die more then 2" from anything important, which I can set up on deployment. Crews are revealed before deployment, so if I see a push-happy summoning crew (not just Asami) that could get something across the board turn 1, I'm going to alter my deployment strategy and order of operations.

Deployment Strategy: for the 'standard' start to the factory, on deployment you'll see Ramos somewhere near where you plan to start summoning, Joss somewhere close to where you plan to start summoning, and the Electric Creation within walk-walk distance of that same spot. Alternatively, if the Ramos player is concerned about alpha strikes that involve early scrap removal, they can put their front line of beaters where you normally expect the Electric Creation, Ramos direction behind them, and the Electric Creation behind Ramos. Instead of moving the creation forward to become a pile of scrap to summon off of, this lets me create the initial scrap in my deployment zone, behind a wall of models that will deal with anything fast enough to get up the board.

Order of Operations: With the 'standard' pattern of "Creation Activates, Joss Activates and kills it, Ramos summons", there are three Activations in sequence. The other way I've used it is "Creation Activates, Ramos Activates and kills it with Magnetism, Ramos summons"--which is two Activations in sequence. You've now left Asami well ahead of her forces attempting to stop my summons, and I just work with one less scrap, knowing that I will be killing my own spiders in the near term. Not ideal, but you adapt to what you're dealing with.

More importantly, as @daniello_s already brought up: Ramos Spider Factory tends to have an Elite Crew backing it up. That crew will have beaters like Howard Langston in it. If something gets into his threat range unsupportd without doing something to tie him up or disable him, it's not long for the world. Angelica is just one control piece that the Arcanists can put on the table to assist. If you're counting on that summons getting a Jorogumo with Flicker 3 on the table to create problems and eat scrap, you will want the flexibility to deal with it only being Flicker 1 and Asami being assaulted by a model that is Nimble, has Flurry, can get Fast, can be Reactivated, and has Decapitating Strike on a Ml 7 attack that has a damage track that makes the Decapitating Strike 'a cute thought'. While that Jorogumo is engaged with a pair of 1-2 wound spiders that don't need to do anything except hold him until the Upkeep Phase.

 

You would be counting on your opponent to make a mistake for you to capitalize on. I wouldn't recommend doing this in competitive play.

[spooky_squirrel]

All that being said, Asami can disrupt Ramos effectively. Just don't try it turn one, you're not Levi, you won't be coming back from the dead.

For the Ramos Spider Factory to maintain activation control against a crew that can kill things quickly, it ends up needing to summon spiders every turn. Normally my constructs are dropping scrap for me to do this with and there's no problem, including the spiders who are being summoned. 

What Asami does is deny me my own scrap even as her models are killing mine and causing them to drop scrap. If I summon three spiders to run schemes and the various 10T shooters/fast movers race out to kill them before they've had a chance to regenerate under Bleeding Edge Tech or go do something dastardly like explode, There's three scrap markers on the board for me to summon off of, or Asami to buy an extra turn on each summoned Oni--but Ramos has already activated (those spiders were just summoned if they're still wounded, and against almost any other master, those scrap would be available for the next three turns to summon off of). Which means that Sensei Yu pushing Asami to where she can hit all three scrap markers with her Oni summons leaves you all three AP to do just that.

Now you're out-activating me and you've eaten the scrap that I was hoping to use in the next turn.

Asami can summon in beaters to do work, Ramos cannot. If the attrition game becomes one of Asami eating scrap resources to summon things that will be whittling down Ramos' beater line, Ramos loses. Joss dying drops 1 scrap marker, which I can summon 2-3 spiders off of. 2-3 Steam Arachnids aren't doing the work Joss was doing (especially the Upgrade carrying that was helping make the whole factory meaner). I'll be playing catch-up on the Strategy the whole game, and if my schemes don't involve my own stuff dying, I won't get those points either.