The Ice Golem

[Frozen Feet]

Hi Fellas.

I do frequently play Raspy, Marcus,Sandeep,Kaeris and sometimes Colette in a more or less competitive way.

But when i do, there normally is no space for the big smashy Golem in my lists.

He is so damned slow and needs all 3ap to do his devastating Smash attack. So, what do i have to do, to take him with me into battle?

His impact feared by almost everyone. And there is a big sign above his head: Kill me as fast as possible..

How do i have to play him, to gain the biggest benefit of his tremendous power?

Greetings

 

[Fictor]

IMO, nothing.

For me and other people in my game group it's one of the worst miniatures in the game.

His Df2 is terrible, something that ignore armor or an amount of low attacks will kill him quickly, all attacks of all kind of miniatires will hit him.

His main attack have a low 3dmg of moderate for a 10ss Enforcer, and for do the Smash he need be on combat before.

He doesn't have movement tricks, he is slow, and for example, which is what do you prefer to move with Snow Storm hability, IceG or Raspu...

In other words play him if you want but, be clear with yourself, it's a bad election, you play him for do tematic crew or for the miniature xD

[Durza]

I had success with him with pre errata Colette and armour of December, a prompt is 2 3" pushes and armour +1 but you can only do that once per turn now. Although with Angelica pushing him as well you can still get quite a bit of range on him. 

[Adran]

I often use him in Close deployment games for things like turf war and extraction. He is a big threat when he gets to an area, and as such he can distort an enemy plan.

Don't expect him to live, especially if they have good armour ignoring attacks. But if they have to swarm him then he has probably made his points.

His standard attack is a pretty solid attack in its own right, with the auto slow trigger ad a waek of 3 damage.

The Blade and claw upgrade might well give him a new lease of life, but you will still probably want to think about some form of healing. (Its cheaper to add in than something like Snowstorm which also boosts his mobility)

He hits harder for a single attack than any other model. Its not that hard to give him positives to his damage flip (hello tookit), so if you are holding a red joker, almost nothing survives (to be fair, very little survives a normal smash attack).

I would never put him in a "general" list, but then I don't really make general lists. When I need something that hits really hard, and doesn't need to move much to score, he is a serious consideration. If my opponent doesn't have much armour ignoring, then he easily safe guard a stash marker, and make it pretty hard for anything else to stay in the area for any length of time.

 

[Fictor]

The real problem are we play Archanists faction, a faction who define himself for a general use of armor, for that reason the enemy allways try to get some models who ignore armor, and IceG armorless it's really trash.

[Adran]

If that's how your meta play, then that's going to make him less good. No counter to that, unless you learn to build arcanist crews that don't use armour (which is a perfectly easy thing to do), and alter your own meta.

You can  take advantage of his slowness and use the metal gamin to give him protection from metal. Then the anti armour models your opponent has hired aren't going to be anywhere near as much use (and if they go after the metal gamin, they are probably in range of the Golem, who will make short work of them).

 

[retnab]

The best place I've found for the Ice Golem is in Henchman Hardcore where the opponent has few attacks and wants to be going for your leader instead.  I feel like the Emissary with Raspy's upgrade is just an explicitly better version of the Ice Golem in a normal game (faster, has non-Armor defenses, way better Df, and can be Ice Mirror'd through while engaged).

If I was to put together a wishlist for the Ice Golem, I'd say bump his Df to at least 3, preferably 4, and give him some sort of thematic non-Armor defense.  I wouldn't touch his attacks at all, when he gets into melee he's already a monster with 3 attacks at min 4 (Ice Gamin's Bite should always be up near him).

[Jordon]

Yeah he's unfortunately completely outclassed by the emissary in my opinion. The emissary is faster, hits harder, has a bunch of heals, a far superior stat line and brings an absolute ton of utility including a push for Raspy and the ability to Ice Mirror while engaged. There is simply no reason to take the golem while we have access to this model. 

Blade and Claw is about the only thing that can make this model decent, but it does require the blessed of December and proper positioning. I've also taken the kill switch upgrade and used him as a walking nuke to mixed success

[Bengt]

16 hours ago, Jordon said:

hits harder

The Ice Golem has better damage with three times 3/3/6. Emissary has one for 4/4/5, one for 2/3/5, and one for 2, and that's only if it could/wanted to charge, otherwise it drops even further behind. But I can't really see a case for sacrificing all that utility for a bit of extra damage.

[Peppi]

On 17/3/2017 at 8:54 AM, Fictor said:

IMO, nothing.

For me and other people in my game group it's one of the worst miniatures in the game.

His Df2 is terrible, something that ignore armor or an amount of low attacks will kill him quickly, all attacks of all kind of miniatires will hit him.

His main attack have a low 3dmg of moderate for a 10ss Enforcer, and for do the Smash he need be on combat before.

He doesn't have movement tricks, he is slow, and for example, which is what do you prefer to move with Snow Storm hability, IceG or Raspu...

In other words play him if you want but, be clear with yourself, it's a bad election, you play him for do tematic crew or for the miniature xD

agree, it needs to be revised

[dancater]

The Ice Golem is a solid piece in theory which fails in practice.

Basically the problem is it can be devastating against a opponent who plays poorly but is rapidly negated by an opponent who plays even reasonably well.  The Golem is thus vastly more dependent on your opponents poor play then on your good play.

The core issues are already identified but in summary:

• Its 3AP Smash is huge but really relies on your opponent putting a model within its reach to do, otherwise its basic attack is pretty much only OK, which leads to
• Its terribly slow so even with Imbued Energies and/or pushes it has limited reach for high resource investment, which leads 
• It is easy to attack and neutralize, its Df is essentially pinata category and while its armor is solid it can be rapidly micro-cut to death and ignore armor shreads it, its a big obvious melee threat so it will attract that damage, which also means
• It cannot do much else but shamble slowly forward as an attack magnet hoping in vain to unleash smash on something suicidal enough to stand near it.  It has a couple of other actions, notably toss but given its a slow melee beatstick which is difficult to hide and has limited life span you can't waste low value AP when you simply have to try to move forward faster than a glacier.

It does do some things OK, its Frozen Heart so very difficult to stop with conditions, with armor it can soak a solid amount of hits and thus keep the heat off other things..... but

Ultimately Arcanists have a excellent array of 9-12SS models which do things vastly better than the Ice Golem in every respect.  As a construct Howard is much better, in Frozen Heart the Blessed is not as 'hitty' but its faster and will actually get into the enemy and tear stuff up, same for the Cerebus.  Basically you take the Golem because its not useless, is themey and also is an excellent demo model, simple, obvious.  But if you are going Raspy competitive there is simply much better choices that require less other model/AP investment to get work from.

This is a borderline needs a buff model, a little touch could make it work well, its not awful but it suffers for better choices and simply relying to much on your opponent not paying attention to the pretty simple techniques to remove/neutralize it to be much use.

[PanzerHarris]

Has anyone else taken inspiration from Justin Gibbs' Before We Begin and tried Ice Golems sitting just in front of Ramos with Field Generator and Under Pressure? With a Metal Gamin nearby? Df6 Ice Golem with a pos flip on defence and pos flips to attack from Ramos, and potentially spiders clinging to the enemy to reduce their Df, has proven to be downright hilarious so far. And that's without getting into Brass Arachnid Reactivate fun. 

Arcanists as a faction have so many tools there's usually one for anything. Even retooling Ice Golems. That's certainly been my experience since making the jump from Guild.

[H4ml3t]

I played Rasputina for the first 2 times yesterday. Since I don't yet own Silent Ones, Ice Dancers or a Blessed of December I fielded the Ice Golem in both games. Combined with Snow Storm's 0 I was able to set him up for 1 or more Smash attacks against high value target's before  he died. In the first game even his explosive death served me well.

Once I have more options I'm not saying I'll take him every time but so far he has easily paid for himself so he will remain a contender for inclusion. Even more so once I have a Metal Gamin to buff him with.

Just my thoughts as a new Rasputina player.

[Griffin839]

 I like to use Golem a lot with my Raspy. Like Everything in Malifaux, when you use him depends on the Schemes and Strats pool as well as who you are playing against. There are dozens of variables to take into account when building a crew, and thats just for 1 master.

For example:

So say we are fighting over a singular objective(which terrain allows us to get to easily) AND we are killing each other and denying kills to the opponent. I might try this.

The Glacier Formation- 

Raspy - 5ss Arcane Reservoir, Shattered Heart, December's Pawn 

Essence of Power

Ice Golem- Armor of December 

Ice Golem- Armor of December

Mechanical Rider

Place the two golems in front of raspy and move them up the board with guarded advance. Move the Essence of power and Raspy up behind them. Try to get as far up the board in the direction of the objective as you can with their slow speed.  I usually guarded advance and walk the golems, then triple move raspy and double walk the essence.(If you are up against a super fast crew that can threaten you turn 1 dont do this, always stay flexible) Use the mech rider to summon ice gamin every turn and to create scheme markers when possible.

Starting on turn 2 keep advancing to the objective and begin using shattered heart to lob spells through your minions at targets of opportunity. Focus on the objective area first, then worry about the others. Whatever you shoot, commit to the kill. Your goal behind this is to begin closing the activation gap. Keep raspy right behind your golems and put them base to base with each other(to block los to her) if you worry about her safety. Anything that comes close to the formation can be charged and smashed by the golems and anything farther away can be blasted by raspy. If you get the chance, nuke their important models. When I can, I will often dump whole hands and burn through my cache of SS to do this. The resilience of 2 golems and mech rider can overwhelm a lot of crews so this isn't as risky as it seems. Anyways, for the rest of the game keep making gamin and killing with raspy and the golems. When you reach the objective(normally turn 4 for me) area hold it from a defensible position. When the golems are about to die, charge them into combat to ensure they do as much damage as possible with their shatters.

As the game goes on you will be gaining activation through the mech rider's summons and they will be losing them, use this to leverage your schemes. A lot of times I wont get my schemes until the last turn with this strat. Always keep this in mind when chosing what to go after.

Anyways that was just an example of how you could use them. Like everyone has pointed out they are not the most competitive choice for arcanists, but they can get the job done. Use them if you want to, don't if you don't.

 

 

[TemplaroftheMS&U]

The only Viable way I've found to increase his defense is with the Combo of Armor of December and A Metal Gamin.

That being said. I have put just Armor of December on him, used its push + armor to move him up the board after a quick place with Snowstorm, then had a Silent One follow him around, makes a big ol' Kill him target on him but If Frame for Murder is in the Pool. He's an excellent choice.

MOST players I've played against can't just ignore this "easy" to hit model that packs a nice damage track. So he's going to get killed, you might as well as earn some VP from his death and possible his life.