15 SS The Dreamer vs Ramos

[xGIxJOKERx]

Hi all,

My buddy and I played a 15 SS game on Saturday to practice for an upcoming escalation league. This was only my second game with the Dreamer. The first was shortly after GenCon and the only Nightmares I had were 2 Teddy’s for a 25 SS game. I lost that one pretty bad. After reading Karn’s massive tactica I felt pretty confidant. I found the small SS games to be surprisingly fun. It really makes you be careful with what you have because any loss could be catastrophic. It also keeps the games short. We were able to play two games in short succession and he had time to play another afterward.

On to the crews:

My friend’s crew:

Ramos

Mobile Toolkit- 3 SS

Steampunk Arachnid- 3 SS

Steampunk Arachnid Swarm- 9 SS

Strategy: Slaughter

Scheme: I think he took Assassinate and forfeited the other for extra SS

Total Cache: 4 SS

My crew:

The Dreamer

2 Daydreams- 4 SS

3 Alps- 9 SS

Strategy: Escape and Survive

Schemes: Kill Protégé and Kidnap (I think)

Total Cache: 7 SS

The table was set up as a 3’x3’ with four medium sized cottages with a small outhouse in the middle. The deployment was corners with me deploying the Dreamer and 2 Daydreams behind a house in the SW corner.

Turn 1

Lots of maneuvering. Ramos salvaged under fire and made a spider. The swarm started to move South while the Dreamer and one Daydream moved North and the other Daydream moved East to hide behind the outhouse and be closer to the Swarm.

Turn 2

I won initiative and so started out by sacrificing the Daydream to summon Lord Chompy Bits right on top of the Swarm (forgot about magical extension.) LCB immediately activates and tears into the swarm with his claws, getting a free attack off of the first strike with a onslaught and then using his melee expert attack on for the final blow which triggered ‘All Done,’ turning him back into the Dreamer and allowing him to beat a hasty retreat to the far West of the table via ‘I Can Fly!’ Ramos moved forward and made another spider with the help of the toolkit and the pile of scrap from the newly dead swarm. Ramos’s single spiders kept in base to base to set up the swarm together move.

Turn 3

Ramos won the initiative and the spiders swarmed together. The remaining Daydream moved to block the dangerously close swarm from the Dreamer. The new Swarm then moved twice, was able to get into combat range with both the Dreamer and the Daydream but it took all of its melee master attacks to fell the little spirit. The Swarm finished by using Disruption Field. The Dreamer is unaffected by auras and the like, however so on his turn summoned all of the alps around the Swarm and gave one Flurry. Ramos Summoned another little spider and an electrical creation. The Alps went to town on the swarm, the first one only doing weak damage once. The second did weak damage again once. I was starting to get a bit worried. The last one was able to pull off a moderate and inflict slow and thus the spider took damage from all three surrounding alps. While this was happening, the newly summoned Electrical Creation and spider moved closer to the Nightmares, the EC taking a wound in the process.

Turn 4

Ramos wins initiative again, activating the swarm. It promptly loses the Wp>12 duel with two negative twists and receives slow. The Alp’s abilities activate, dealing it 3 more wounds, enough to kill it and create a new Alp. Seeing an opening, the Dreamer flies over the intervening Nightmares and constructs in a beeline to Ramos, changing into LCB and starting the long business of taking down Ramos. With a lot of soul stone and Armor 2, Ramos is a tough nut to crack, even with Flay but LCB manages to put a few wounds on him. Ramos then activates, heals, and punches the thing of nightmares right in the gob with his big robot fist, cheated damage with the Red Joker and flipped severe again, doing enough damage to kill the monster were it not for a timely SS resist and a good flip. An Alp then activated, charged the EC, hit, cheat to a moderate to do 1 damage and slow and the resulting extra point from the Alp’s ability killed the EC. The EC blew up, doing 2 wounds to everything around it (including the spider) and another alp showed up. The Spider was then forced to activate, being the only Arcanist to not activate yet and with so many Alps around he had to flip four cards and pick the lowest. Needless to say, the spider failed, gained slow, and was promptly killed and turned into another Alp. One of the newly summoned Alps walked over to LCB and used its 0 action to sacrifice two of its wounds to give LCB a healing flip. At this point it was six Alps and LCB versus an injured Ramos tied up in combat and a mobile toolkit. My friend decided to thrown in the towel.

Conclusion:

Alps kick ass. For 3 points a pop, they can really ruin someone’s day if you can gang up on them. My friend claims they are broken but I think this was just a perfect storm of them being able to work their magic unmolested on the swarm and then having little low wound models to pick on and spawn more off of. In the game we played afterwards they were much less effective so I think they are well balanced. I also learned that LCB is not as punchy as say, Lady J, despite being a huge monster. His claws are paired but only Cb5 and his teeth are Cb6 but not paired. Also his damage spread isn’t the greatest unless you get flay. Worst of all is his average wounds for a master of 10, no armor or Df triggers, and a low Df of 4. I am by no means complaining, but is just something to keep in mind that he is more of a finesse master than a straight beat stick. You see this massive beast of a model and think “he can take on anything” but he really can’t if he isn’t supported. I never did kill Ramos and in the next game I was locked in combat with Raspy for two or three turns until my friend once again threw in the towel (I won init, he had a terrible hand and was out of SS so it was over for her that turn, but it still took long enough,) and those are two back line caster masters. Over all, I really dig this caster as he plays completely different from my usual Guild force and I am looking forward to using him in the escalation league.

[Alondir]

one big thing that LCB has for him is he can use ss making his stats not a huge problem vs normal stuff, one of the best models iv found against masters is copelius hes a monster, been able to paralyse on hit is just amazing, so masters have to make sure non of his attacks hit which makes him a really awsome at draining soulstones, then thats where LCB really shines (when he has an unfair advantage) and despite there looks ur often more safe as the dreamer as hes much harder to hit.

oh and nice writeup had some funny bits, but would have been better if LCB had died to Ramos

[hippieshopper]

We've never used Alps because in our group, they are next to useless.

Everyone who's ever had to deal with them, including myself, has always had the right amount of AoE to make them pretty much easy points.

I am glad they worked for you though, and statistics aside, I love the way they look.

[Shadowopal]

Alps big weakness is blast attacks. But, I do think they may need a "Rare ?" Added to them. I haven't played enough games with them to figure it out for sure. But, I've played games with nine of them (just to try it out)that I really felt bad for my opponent and swore I wouldn't do that ever again. It wasn't fun for either of us.

[hippieshopper]

Yeah, I had to rely on ol' Sebs with his saw of whirling pain...and that was mighty effective and he has yet to let me down.

If I didn't have him or those Punk Zombies, I woulda been dead...er

The Dreamer is the one to beat at our LGS.

[HopelessHeretic]

If you know your opponent is running the alp bomb there are two really powerful things you do with ramos. First I would have an electrical creation out at all times. It is willpower 10 so a willpower 12 check even with negative flips is fairly laughable but even if you fail it you will blow up and damage the alps around you. The other thing to do is keep 2 spiders near ramos and activate him and the toolkit as late as possible. Then when he comes to drop the alps bomb activate ramos and the toolkit; toolkit first. The tool kit is immune to influence so it doesn't care about alps. Have it controlled detonate the two spiders hopefully killing most of the alps (this is heavily dependent on positioning). The toolkit should be in base contact with ramos and as a result of handy it will take no damage and ramos is armor 2. Then hopefully ramos willl be able to activate taking only one or two wounds (it really depend on how many alps and how well you did with your spider explosions) summon one of the spiders back and use the other scrap counter to heal.

@shadowopal alps are very powerful but almost every crew can deal with them if you plan ahead.

Edit: Whoops! I forgot the new book changed immune to influence to defending only do not activate the toolkit anywhere near multiple alps it is willpower 3.

-Heretic