Vitruvian Man

I would recommend Ramos's Box: The M&SU. This gives you a second Arcanist Master, as well as some faction staples: Joss and Howard. Joss is a tanky beatstick, that utterly decimates whatever he comes into contact with, since he ignores most common defensive technologies. He also is extremely resilient, and difficult to get rid of. Howard is a cruise missile: fast and devastating, but unlikely to survive. Both of them are constructs, so Mei can railwalk off of them. Plus, whenever Joss kills a model, a scrap marker is dropped in addition to any other markers. The box also comes with several steam arachnids, and can be built as individuals or swarms. They are fast little buggers, and great for scheming. These are also constructs, so good synergy there. Finally, Ramos. He's a fun, straightforward master that works by applying large quantities of spiders to the problem, regardless of what the problem is. He also has some neat tricks to buff his own constructs. Hope this all helps!

I've only used her once, but I definitely got my stones worth of work out of her. Being able to debuff models directly is great, but I find her front of card abilities even stronger. Being able to pitch a card for a stone whenever an opponent interacts is amazing, especially with schemes like marked for death. "According to the injured worker's act..." is also fantastic, since for a wound on her, she can impose a negative to the attack flip on a big beater. So long as you have a healer nearby, you can debuff any big killy model. Also, defense 6 willpower 7 keeps her alive for much longer than it would appear.

As the Kaeris Player in that last game, here are some thoughts from the other side of the table: Originally, my crew was intending to go for search the ruins and either set up or show of force, due to the sheer amount of scheme markers available in a Kaeris crew. Upon seeing Parker, I realized that any scheme marker based plan was going to be extremely difficult. This forced me in to eliminate the leadership, and show of force. Winning Initiative so often was an incredible stroke of luck, and likely contributed to my success, since it allowed me to move key pieces or disrupt Parker's plans. In this strategy, the Firestarter was a great choice. I suspect many arcanist players will be bringing him in this strategy in the future, although wind gamin may be another option to consider. Kaeris has been described as an underwhelming master to play as, and as someone with a fair amount of games with her, I simply don't see it. In addition to being an extremely mobile buffing and supporting piece, she offers options to shepherd and control the flow of battle, and disrupt opponents plans. Her new wave 5 flaming angel offers even more mobility, and can set people on fire. While not as powerful as Sandeep or Marcus, Kaeris certainly holds her own on the table. Similarly, Parker is considered to be among the worst of the outcast masters, but I believe he is extremely solid. His upgrade cycling, and ability to replenish both cards and stones throughout the game is incredibly useful. When facing him, I can guess at what Parker will do during his activation, but it rarely aligns with what he actually does, simply due to the flexibility that he offers. His crew also effectively denies scheme marker based schemes, meaning that he can force players to select schemes they would not necessarily choose. The loss of both gunsmiths so quickly is causing me to reconsider their inclusion in a Kaeris crew. In retrospect, Amina Naidu would have offered another control model and debuff model. Other options included rail workers, whose mobility issues are somewhat mitigated by grab and drop Kaeris, and performers, whose counter scheming abilities would have been wonderful.

Use her "You looking at me lure" to pull a key model out of position, then viciously beat it to death. Shutting down one part of the victoria's combo basicly renders it useless. In addition, the ox mages can slow and push models out of position, in addition to their basic damage.

One of my personal favorite upgrades that I almost never see discussed is Recharge soulstone. The ability to have a fairly consistent flow of soulstones during a game is an incredible advantage. Throw it on Joss, and now everytime he kills a living model costing 4 or more, he gets a stone back, which is super useful for feeding your master. Its a combo that's almost never failed me, though don't bring it against ressers.