Book 1 Ramos

My previous observations of Ramos were that he was interesting, but really hampered by the suits he needed for his spells. He needs tomes to an almost ridiculous extent. Only Sonnia needs tomes more desperately than Ramos, but she can spend a SS to get them for free. In book Ramos really struggled as he not only needed 6+ to cast his good spells, he also needed a tome. So if you had the tomes, he was ok, if not, he struggled.

Previous Advice

The advice that I had read about Ramos online was that you should be grabbing a scrap counter every turn with his 2 actions, then summoning a spider (which needs a tome) and then casting arcing screen to provide some defense. I'd say that would work fairly well so long as your strategy didn't require you to move anywhere as you have no AP left to move (let alone Ramos' pitiful move of 3"). You could then use the Brass Arachnid (book 1 totem) to try and stoke Ramos or something else to get another activation. Stoke however required an 11 tome, so you can see that this strategy is really hurting for tomes.

In Book 2

Rising Powers offers Ramos another totem, the Mobile Toolkit. I believe that this totem moves Ramos from interesting into a short ranged powerhouse. The Toolkit can give any friendly model within 6" a tome on their casting stat. This is absolutely huge for Ramos as you now have 300% greater chance to get your tough spells off. If you have a scrap counter you will generate a spider, if you want to, you can summon an Electrical Creation.

The Electric Bomb

Something that I only cottoned on to in the game last night, but that was used to fairly deadly effect are the capabilities of the Electrical Creation. In the base book, the are Unique, but v2 (and even before v2 cards, they lost the unique attribute) removes that restriction so you can summon as many of these bad boys as you like. They can be extremely nasty. Firstly when they touch a model for the first time in their activation they do 1 damage. When they die they do a 2" pulse that does 2 damage and finally they have a spell that lets them kill themselves on a 7+ doing a 3 damage 2" pulse. They are also spirits and only have 3 wounds.

The electric bomb involves anyone without immunity to pulses stopping within 6" of Ramos. If they do, they are in for a world of hurt. When you activate Ramos, also activate the Toolkit. Get the Toolkit to give Ramos the extra tome he needs. In Ramos' activation summon 3 Electrical Creations (you only need a 7 or more). Put each of them in base contact with the enemy. If the Electrical Creations die, they will do 2 damage to the enemy model. If you get to activate the creations though, even worse.

Firstly, when each activates it will do 1 damage. If you get to activate all 3 even better. Activate the first 2 and either move somewhere close to other enemies (but make sure you stay within 2" of the main target and one other Electrical Creation) or attack with Bash. With the final Electrical Creation, activate, do 1 damage for touching the enemy and then blow yourself up. The enemy will take 3 damage (now at 6 total from the 3 touches and blowing up) and you will also kill the other 2 Creations who will then blow up for 2 damage each bringing the total damage to 10. That is a whopping amount of damage that is unresistable without Evasive or some other way of avoiding pulse damage. The damage is also AoE meaning you can kill multiple models with it (I killed 3 Silurids in 1 turn, another turn I took down another Silurid and nearly brought Marcus down).

The Electric Bomb is a far more effective use of Ramos' AP than casting Electrical Fire and really makes him lethal in that 6" range. I am keen to try it out against some other crews now