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I've been painting a lot more Malifaus recently, and want to get back into the game. I only have two friends who are remotely interested by the game, but one of them confessed last night that since the change to M2E, he's lost interest in the game. He had the old metal Ramos crew, which he had learned to (his words) "break up his big spiders into small swarms, then buff those and make more." He says that this is not possible anymore and so refuses to use another strategy, giving up the game as dead.

On the surface, he's a relatively bright individual. Did Ramos really get hit that bad? Are there suggestions I can give him to help him rediscover the game? Upgrades he hasn't read properly? He's not too keen on buying new minis, because he tells me the selling point of the game was that their marketing shtick was "you bought the box and you were done." Which I know to be false, but he feels like he's been lied to by Wyrd.

Let's put his mental foibles aside, can I help him make a performing crew? Let's say, with minimal gifts on my part (X-mas is coming up, after all)

IDK about getting "hit that bad," but that was mostly just a strategy that allowed you to exploit a silly quirk of the game's flexibility to get way more points than the effort or cost you put in to them and may have been fun for him but was probably obnoxious for his opponent.

Ramos can still make spiders (with the right resources, 3 a turn), his crew can still buff them (totem gives reactivate; anyone can get a regeneration aura Upgrade; Ramos can buy a [+] DF spell or a [+] melee aura. There's plenty of buffing and summoning going around. I don't see anything he lost that wasn't either a poor ability to begin with or about balance/NPE.


As a comparison that I can more actively talk about: McMourning: he ran off of a mechanic similar to corpse counters (body parts, which didn't require you kill a target and could be pulled from corpses, but, in one turn, he could pretty reliably summon a Rogue Necromancy off of a whirlwind of body parts with very little long term damage other than losing a 3-ish SS model and then sling it further than most models could run.

It didn't make sense, and took a few tricks, but every McMourning player learned how grabbing a bunch of counters off of your own models could turn Mcmourning (a strong melee Master) into a strong summoner. I loved playing him that way, but that didn't make him balanced, and I didn't complain when he lost the abilities for the combo. He can still summon everything he used to be able to (with the right upgrades), but now has a flexible fighting style that doesn't hinge on one gimmick and his lackluster crew models got some serious buffs.

He was playing to exploit a poorly conceived ability, which Wyrd's tried to remove from the game. Ramos is about where he was before, and I'm surprised a summon spamming player (no judgement) was saying that the old starter sets had everything he needed to field.

If he wants something extra, the Mechanical Rider can spawn a spider a turn (mid-late game), so could bring back some of the spammed spawns, I guess.

Ramos is still a nasty spider summoner, especially in <50SS games.

One of the most popular strategies is to take an Electrical Creation, have it activate first, move it twice (it takes damage), then activate Ramos.

Ramos will use his magnetism move to pull up to it (but just out of range of the explosion), then turn the scrap marker into 2 spiders (always go 2 spiders, it's the best balance of cost to summon, number spawned, and damage the spiders will take once spawned). This also gets Ramos up the board quickly, which is a major issue for him sometimes.

Basically , instead of taking big swarms, breaking them apart, then putting them back together, take awesome stuff like a Rail Golem/Howard Langston/Joss (pick 2, I prefer the latter 2) and when enemy stuff dies, as well as your own weaker constructs, turn them into more spiders!

That's what I've been reading from PMF too. I understand his FLGS has closed so he feels he has no more access to minis, but still.

And uh, his only opponent was his wife, who no longer plays, I'm getting to understand why.

I bought Ramos as my first crew, before I even had the rules!! Turns out he's dominating the scene at my games club. Howard is a beast when combined with the [+]Ml aura that Ramos can take. We are still starting out and only playing smallish games (35ss). In my last game against Jacob Lynch, Howard took out 3 Illuminated, delivered the message (scheme) and assassinated Jacob. He was unstoppable. Of course my opponents are starting to focus him down pretty fast, but then they lose out on schemes and strats as my spiders cover the board.
I'm having great fun with him. Also his first name is Viktor, so that synergises well with my online alias!!