McMourning vs Ramos, is this a bad matchup?

[Coyotebreaks]

My Main opponent plays ramos (its his only crew) and my only crew is McMourning.

 

I seem to really struggle against this opponent. He does not drop many corpse counters, he only has three or four living models. So managing to get a flesh construct from expunge is all but impossible.  Due to the lack of corpse counters he can summon at  faster rate then me, so before I know it im swamped in spiders. 

 

So I have two questions really, first is does any one have any tips to help me deal with ramos?

 

but also is this just an impossible match up that will never work? i hope not as I like playing doug, and I dont want to get a new master yet. 

 

at present I have the main mcmouring starter box. extra canine remains, extra flesh construct and some rotten bells (i have the shamus box, but don't plan on using him for a while) to make my list from

 

thanks for any help

[Ludvig]

Take Plastic surgery so he turns undead when he is near you. That allows you to summon the fleshies from anyone.

Use Rancid transplant and trigger This one is ready to get near them, it's the exact same range as expunge so unless terrain really screws you over it sould be very doable 

[Gnomezilla]

I’m a construct handler, and the ‘cannot be reduced’ poison chews through my stompybots’ armor (which reduces damage) too quickly for my comfort. To the best of your ability, touch everything with a little bit of poison and defend Sebastian’s life with soulstones as though he is the master.

Put one rotten belle far away from everyone else in the corner and have her job all game be to pull either Joss or Howard away from the main fight. He will get annoyed and kill the belle, but waste a lot of his AP getting there and getting back. Pulling Ramos away from his scrap doesn’t help as much as he can use his 0 and move himself 6” back towards the fight and his scrap.

[Mikey_C]

When they come out little gassers will be amazing at dealing with the spiders in combination with Sebastian. They'll kill all but full health spiders.

[cbtb11235813]

I second Gnomezilla, non-reduced damage really sucks when nearly every model you bring has at least armor +1. I play Ramos more than any other Master, and my advice is to drain his hand as much as possible. Pick key targets with Rancid Transplant (assuming you have a decent amount of undead near them, poison 6 or so is where it starts getting scary). Ca 7 and a good card from you means your opponent will have to decide if Joss, Howard, or Ramos is worth the cards in his hand (the answer to that is almost always yes). For 3 spiders, Ramos needs 11 or higher, so unless he has a spectacular hand, McMourning should hopefully be able to draw out those cards. 2 spiders a turn don't snowball nearly as fast as 3, and it denies him summoning a full health swarm with those spiders. 

If your opponent brings a steamfitter, kill it fast. If you can't do that, be very aware of what card is on the top of your opponent's discard pile. If that card is a high tome, force a duel somehow to cover it. Doesn't even matter if you win it, just make him flip a card, otherwise your effort draining his hand of 3-spider cards will be for nothing

[Ludvig]

The way I play him I either have a nice advantage or a dead McMourning at the end of turn 2.

If you can get Sebastian and a decent beater into a threatening position for turn 2 they should face some tough choices. It helps to have cheap stuff to not be badly outactivated, you can only play aggressively if you aren't too badly outactivated.

If Ramos lucks out with three spiders you could be in a rough spot. In that case you could take it easy and place McMourbing behind something big and blocking where he will be able to poison-push out and attack turn 2. It might be hard to be completely untouchable for a fast, reactivating Howard but since you get to push you can at least block LoS. If Joss went early to create scrap you have an excellent target to lure over to your side instead of throwing yourself at the concentrated crew of the opponent. If he didn't you can lure something else, just make sure it's something that has already activated.

[Gnomezilla]

34 minutes ago, Mikey_C said:

When they come out little gassers will be amazing at dealing with the spiders in combination with Sebastian. They'll kill all but full health spiders.

I’ve already seen painted gassers...

and their frantic flailing is min1, so the steam arachnid is already dead once touched...unless you meant they could kill the entire clump of fresh spiders with their 0AP toot.

[Coyotebreaks]

thanks for all the tips everyone. glad to read that there are ways round him. I guess I need to practice with mcmourning more, i used to try and throw  him in there and he would get flattened, so I have since been more conservative. but it seems throwing him n there is ok as long as you use his abilities properly. So I need get better at this. 

 

thanks again, I have abetter idea of how to handle things in future. 

[Clement]

1 hour ago, Coyotebreaks said:

thanks for all the tips everyone. glad to read that there are ways round him. I guess I need to practice with mcmourning more, i used to try and throw  him in there and he would get flattened, so I have since been more conservative. but it seems throwing him n there is ok as long as you use his abilities properly. So I need get better at this. 

 

thanks again, I have abetter idea of how to handle things in future. 

That's the challenge to most "beatstick" style masters, they will often go out and destroy one model, then get beaten to death by that models friends.  Once you figure out how to do your damage and escape the brunt of the counter-attack, you'll be an amazing player.

[Mikey_C]

6 hours ago, Gnomezilla said:

I’ve already seen painted gassers...

and their frantic flailing is min1, so the steam arachnid is already dead once touched...unless you meant they could kill the entire clump of fresh spiders with their 0AP toot.

I guess they haven't made it to my area yet.

I meant the toot. It is not defendable, and with Sebastian near by will do 3 damage ignoring armor. 

[mo11usq]

I have some video reports on the match up on my channel - gg17 though.

My experience is that Ramos has a strong, but predictable mechanic.

His first turn is spider summon and again turn 2 if you don't pressure him. This can be countered by alpha strike. I personally don't favour this approach. A good Ramos player will hold the prof back at range and threaten with reactivating Langston. Mcm can do it, but the odds are not in his favour and you lose if you bounce.  @Ludvig is spot on about activations, however Ramos will almost always outactivate mcm in the first couple of turns.

Ramos will use brass arachnid to reactivate the beat stick. Typically this is langston in the first turn, joss when he dies, and scheme runners in the late game. Langston exerts huge pressure, his job is to hold he enemy off Ramos long enough for him to get summon his swarm. He does this by assassinating your master or key peices, or threatening to so you stay back and let Ramos do his thing. The counter to Langston is to hit first with mcm, an bring him down turn 1/2.

My favoured approach is this:

Take out Langston, turn the spiders into canines, endgame with ramos

To do this, move up extremely carefully turn 1. You will be outactivated so you must ensure your important peices cannot be reached by langston such that he can make more than 1 attack. Use chaf models and terrain (note: don't just hide behind terrain, position so he can't position where he wants). If you can bait him with something throw away great. Mcm must end the turn in position to go in on him first thing turn 2. This has to be a short dance or Ramos will build too many spiders. Turn 2 consider going with Sebastian getting into 6" of langston and accomplacing to mcm to ensure the bugger never gets another activation.

From here it is time to deal with all the spiders (and of course run shemes). You will still be out activated and it is likely to get worse this turn. The key is to position such that you limit incoming damage, but get your models into threat range for turn 3. Once the crews clash quality counts over quantity and the arcanists numbers begin to matter less. Give your moonlight insecticide a shake and poison the spiders up good, they are your dogs in waiting and will help you keep up with activations.

The job is of course not over, as there are still Ramos and joss (and all their + flips) to deal with. Gun for ramos if at all possible, joss can't usually do enough on his own to disrupt your plans in the late game, mcm can die happy if he gets this done. Circumstances dictate however. Watch out for whatever the upgrade is that dicks with ca.

It's a tough game, favouring Ramos as his abilities are more forgiving of mistakes, but its not awful.

[Adran]

McMorning is quiet a scary Master for Ramos to face. Ramos's  main defence (and also that of the models in his crew box) is Armour, and McMorning and Poison both ignore that entirely. It might seem to you that you are out numbered and unable to do anything, but you have the possibility that poisoning the newly summoned arachnids and having Sebastian nearby will result in the arachnids dieing without being able to do anything. 

As a general rule McMorning doesn't summon from corpse counters. (yes you can buy the upgrades Muhuhu or Spare parts, but they aren't required). If he summons, he does so from expunging models, or from models dying by poison, and as said he has an upgrade that will allow nearby models to count as undead, so he can turn anything into a flesh construct or canine remains.  

You can be agressive with McMorning, but I find he is at his best scapelling away. He can take a bit of a beating and come back thanks to his healing, but he will struggle if too much comes at him in one turn. So unless you are happy for him to die (and sometimes that is a fine plan) pick your targets ,and your time. Try to not activate him to early if you expect him to take a beating, because you will want him to heal as much as he can. Also try not to send him into too many unactivated models at once, because thats a lot of activation's before he will get to activate and heal again. Of course there are times when that's fine, especially if you think he has a good chance of killing an unactivated model that could cause you a lot of problems, such as Howard, or Joss or Ramos. But you need to know what he can consistently do, and don't let him bite off more than he can chew. with the use of actions like focus, and expunge, its reasonable to expect him to be able to do 10 points of damage in a turn, but that's going to require reasonable hand support which you know if you have (you will need to win the 3 attack duels and be able to cheat in a severe card for damage. If that 10 damage isn't likely to kill your target, then eitehr wait until its activated, or until McMornign needs to heal at least 5 wounds. 

 

MOST IMPORTANTLY

Games of Malifaux are not won by killing your opponent. Games of malifaux are not lost by losing all your models. Remember what you need to do to win. 

 

 

[Ludvig]

These two described what I was trying to say in a much better way.

While killing doesn't win games most of thr time I think letting Joss and Langston decimate your crew while the spiders form marker-eating swarms is pretty much a recipe for disaster in almost any pool. You do need to have a good target priority and unless they have the cheesefordian mages with the immunity upgrade you can use your nurses for crowd control on the big guys and save the trouble of kiling them.

I'd say killing doesn't win games except for that one 10+ murder model on the other side and any summoning master.

[Freman]

If you can pull Joss into a position where a Nurse can medicate him onto negative flips, with a Belle, and then hit him with a Shikome and/or McMourning he will evaporate. Reactivating on one wound doesn't mean anything when he's poisoned and sitting near the Doc, that's if he hasn't been expunged into a Flesh Construct already. In fact sitting the Doc next to a poisoned model on one wound, who's yet to activate, is quite enjoyable.

McMourning's answer to every question is "poison it". Must be that Guild education.

As others have said, McMourning isn't a beatstick, although with Rafkin (and I always run Rafkin with him) around he can put out a tolerable amount of damage. He's a scalpel. Pick a model. Kill it. Move on. That said you should be splashing poison around like it's a half price sale on pesticides (Guild Autopsies, Rafkin, Rogue Necromancy can all do it at range, some with blasts) so there shouldn't be a healthy model on the board.

[Ludvig]

Watch out for warding mages. If you start beating someone with McMourning I would expect them to catch on and start using that sweet condition immunity.

[mo11usq]

Hate that blood mage so hard

[Rillan]

39 minutes ago, mo11usq said:

Hate that blood mage so hard

Try to use Emissary for Los block. Helps a lot.

[Coyotebreaks]

thanks for all of the replys. lots to try out and think over. 

 

I will let you know how I get on. 

 

can i just check, if I use the thats the stuff trigger on rotten transplant and I have plastic surgery. do the spiders turn undead before the amount of poison to go on the targeted model is totaled? 

[Sagrit]

Yes, you count all spiders in Aura Undead and they will increase Poison from Transplant. Also they will get 1 damage.

[Ludvig]

3 hours ago, Coyotebreaks said:

thanks for all of the replys. lots to try out and think over. 

 

I will let you know how I get on. 

 

can i just check, if I use the thats the stuff trigger on rotten transplant and I have plastic surgery. do the spiders turn undead before the amount of poison to go on the targeted model is totaled? 

No, the push is after succeeding so you have already added the poison. You will have to do abother transplant after the push.

[Adran]

Ludvig is right, you resolve the action effects, and then you resolve the after suceeding trigger, so you don't get to move McMorning first. (Page 23 of the rules manual)

[Sagrit]

ahhh i misunderstood the question , sorry )) Spiders in Aura's range have the Undead characteristic. If they outside the Aura when you do Transplant they are not Undead. Triggers resolves after suceeding of the Ability. 
Ludvig and Adran are absolutely right