M2E Ramos

[Thalaric]

So GenCon has come and gone and the final print of the old man has seemed to fix the "one cuddle too many" problem from the very end of PT, as well as giving his team some additional buffs on the whole.

Pulling them out for ease of reference so we don't need to go digging into the big change thread:

Ramos - Summon the Swarm: Now reduces by Armor again. So 1 or 2 bugs come in with 1 Wd each, and when you summon all 3 Arachnids, they each come in with 2 wds each.

Steam Arachnid Swarm - a couple changes. First, on their attack, they picked up:

:masks Carry Away: After damaging, push the target 4" directly away, then push this model into base contact with the target.

Then for Self-Repair, they gained the ability to sacrifice a friendly Steam Arachnid within 6" to pay the cost, instead of discarding a scrap marker.

Finally, Johan had a price drop, from 8 points after Mercenary tax to 7. (his base cost is now 6).

With that final change, I think I may actually start hiring Steam Arachnid Swarms, or at the very least I will have a reason to swarm them together in the middle of a fight for reasons beyond eating a bunch of scheme markers. The ability to shove Ramos or another model 8" up the board at the cost of 2-4 Wds (depending on armor, which can be healed) is always worth exploring.

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Also figure this is a good place to keep a compilation of Ramos tips & tricks... maybe I'll kick this off with an obvious one:

Spider Pinata - Start the game with an Electrical Creation. Activate him first, and move him so he's at least 8" away from Ramos and in the general direction of where you want Ramos to go turn 1. Then activate Ramos, use his Magnetism ability to pull 6" towards Electrical Creation, doing just enough to kill it and have it drop a scrap marker. Then use 1 AP to summon 2-3 Steam Arachnids off of the scrap. Easy way to start a scrap engine / start stockpiling walking bombs (depending on playstyle).

[mythicFOX]

Good post Thalaric.

Carry Away has some really interesting potential for the Swarms. You can use it to extract the swarm and/or a friendly model from melee by hitting the friendly model and pushing out of melee. Good to help Ramos stay out of trouble.

With the right cards you could charge in (Cg6?), double hit and wind up (6+1+4+4=) 15" away from where you started. Which may prove quite strong with the destroy scheme markers (0) on the end of the move. *evil*

It's also nice to see the heal take a slight upgrade. Inside Ramos' auras I can see them being great mid-price combat beasts.

Going to give hiring them a go soon. They may also now have some interesting uses in Mei Feng crews.