Mei Feng essentials

[Ludvig]

1 hour ago, Pyrflamme said:

Yeah, burning is at a premium in her core box, but a lot of core boxes find themselves wanting for additions to get the synergy going. I should note that she has an upgrade, Vapormancy, that gives out burning with blasts as a Ca attack on a built-in suit. It also comes with a trigger for her basic attacks that lets her Vent Steam, which makes it very useful beyond ranged burning. Honestly, I never found the shoveling too compelling on Rail Workers, so it mostly comes down to her getting that + on damage.

FWIW, I originally started with Mei as TT and will be using her to kick off my Arcanists, and while she's certainly very strong in 10T, her burning game there was weak for a good while until Komainu and Obsidian Oni hit. I much preferred combo Mei at the time, and have played the latest iteration with summoning to good effect. I'm looking forward to Arcane Effigy and Firestarter in Arcanists for the burning play, and it seems the Firestarter alt sculpt has moved to the Wyrd webstore for special sales, meaning that it's now feasible to get one without buying a Kaeris box.

I was also looking at the firestarter. If you can get burning up towards +6 on something those shovels start to look pretty sweet, especially since they can then use their (0) to ignore armour instead of upping the weak of their attack since you will be doing flat damage either way. Far too many ressers with 14 wounds and impossible to wound.

[spooky_squirrel]

8 hours ago, Ludvig said:

I was also looking at the firestarter. If you can get burning up towards +6 on something those shovels start to look pretty sweet, especially since they can then use their (0) to ignore armour instead of upping the weak of their attack since you will be doing flat damage either way. Far too many ressers with 14 wounds and impossible to wound.

The Rail Worker (0) isn't for shoring up their weak level damage. It's for getting into the range of positives for the damage spikes at the other end of their track. If you're running into armor or h2w, then the Hard Worker benefit comes into play. Really though, they're there to mob on and punch down expensive minions and enforcers, not go after things with 14 wounds. Hold off on sending stuff after the 14 wound model until Kang's in position. Note: between Implacable Assault and Kang, Rail Workers into Undead/Constructs are immune to horror and have double positives on both attack and damage. There's a reason I love dropping Mei Feng into Ressers and Outcasts.

The Firestarter is definitely a solid add, because his being M&SU means that he can bring Bleeding Edge Tech, which gives the hard as nails Rail Workers Regeneration for being near The Firestarter when they activate. He's also dirt cheap for a Henchman that you can use for additional scheme support and potentially putting Mei Feng on positives (as well as making it possible to claim credit for things dying to burning). If you decide you want Powered by Flame as well, it'll bring him up to 10 stones in cost, but it means that the whole crew is putting out a ton of burning.

[Frollo the Wordbearer]

Mei was my first arcanist master.

I've found an orange firestarter in a raptor's box last year and tried him a lot with mei.

I found using him to set Rail Golem on fire and do schemes, mostly.

Then i tried him without the golem and with a gunsmith, setting thing (snipers) in cover to fire to make the bad girl with the gun explode them. It worked well.

I've never managed to set things on fire for Mei to charge, thought. I always found better things to do with him (schemes in fact).

I don't think using a 7ss henchman's activation to prepare the enemy for Mei is worth the investment, honestly. She hasn't all that damage potential against the single enemy to justify it. AND it let your opponent know Where you want to send Mei and gives him time and the opportunity to react.

I think Mei's role (other than Steam Vent) is to threat the piled-in enemies, where the firestarter hardly could make the difference (setting on fire one model when there are 3.. well, ok but meh). Here the tiger's claw really shines, even without [+]s.

She has a huge threat range, just with a porkchop's doulbe walk she reaches 22-24" on the charge. Really good mess with your opponent's moves.

I just bought arcane effigy and going to try it a lot. This should be a way to really put burning and stress opponent's hand efficently, giving the amount of attacs mei could make. Lots of attacs, lots of burning (or discard). Sound juicy!

Ah, the upgrades! I use nearly every time Sismic Claws, Arcane Reservoire and Seize the Day. Given her "anti-sinergy" crew (2 railworkers and/or Har Worker stress your hand a lot) i really need the seventh card. Seize gives you the opportunity to make a storming attack late in the turn and have a good probability to have the first activation in the next turn, giving Mei more attacks AND a way to excape opponent's retaliation (2 activations chaining attacks and the last one to railwalk away).

 

Well, that's it for now. Sorry for the poor english, i hope it's understandable. 

Bye!

[Squirrelich]

To expand on a pile of comments
 
Rail Golem - his limitation isn't burning, that is easy in Arcanists, it is Tomes in hand. I tend not to take him with Mei because she eats more cards than gives. The models I like with her are ones that will be earning me my VP (Firestarter/Cassandra/Emberling/Mech Rider/December Acolyte), countering my opponents (Kang/Sparks) or fast and hitty enough able to back her up when she dives in (Mech Porkchop/Howard)

Mei needing burning - why? Pluses on damage for one of her attacks? That only matters if you can get in position to combo attack a whole bunch of people several times (this requires that the enemies cannot be pushed), and if you can do that why are you worried about that damage track since you will be beating (preferably with the help of the Mech Porkchop giving her positives to hit) them over and over anyway? This is why I say use the Arcane Effigy, if you do get in a position to keep hitting people they will need to discard cards or get burning, and then you can get those positives on damage if they don't. Mei's strengths are shutting down Ca and Sh attacks to keep your whole crew safe until they are in position and ready to melee or earn VP, and being able to get where you need her to fast and tie down whatever you want. She has a 3" engage that allows her to push into base to base even if you fail the disengage strike, a push Df trigger to push her out of range of them but still in range of her 3", armor to help keep her alive and immunity to Slow and Paralyze so you can keep using her despite some tricks they may have. She excels in tying down your opponent (hopefully multiple models) when and where you need her to b/c of mobility with Railwalker and a 10" charge threat range, not killing stuff. If you are looking for a straight killy Master I do recommend looking elsewhere, I expect you would have better luck. She just doesn't have the damage track to straight kill everything and her combo attacks require a bit of specific positioning of your opponents models so it doesn't happen every game.

[Ludvig]

I've seen people rate McMourning as killy and he only has a 2/3/6 track. Perdita is often considered killy and only has 2/4/5, Leveticus 2/3/4. I think such low damage tracks are considered ok if you also ignore armor. As any Lady Justice player will have experienced that track ignoring armor would sometimes be preferable to her high damage that doesn't go through armor.

If you could reliably get Mei to have  to damage and ignore armour it seems like she would be right at home with the masters above. Maybe the setup isn't worth it as you say since she adds her own burning. But on a standard charge that would still be the difference between 6 and 8 damage or a total of 10 or 12 from three attacks. There are a lot of models with 7, 8, 11 and twelve wounds that I wouldn't mind killing instead of leaving alive.

All that being said I am convinced that you are right since you have played her and I haven't. Since she has some really interesting and relatively unique support actions I guess I should leverage those to maximum effect if Itry her. If her crew had a good way to set up burning I wouldn't need a 7ss henchman to do it which was kind of my point. Maybe instead of reaolving burning her raik workers could have shuffled burning onto stuff or had a (0) to add burning.

It seems Mei is really suit hungry, she has a lot of triggers and none of them are built in. Those combos of doom seem like they will show up once in a blue moon and require some massive cheating. I'm not sure I would dare to rely on her defensive trigger when you need to win the duel to get away. 

Seems to me like she defends very well against anything not ml but won't stop nasty ml alpha strikes. Are there any disguised arcanist models I'm missing?

[Adran]

On 05/03/2017 at 9:24 AM, Ludvig said:

Mei likes burning and her rail dudes like burning. A good synergy would be if her rail workers had a decent way to add burning to things to set up for her attacks as well as their own but they don't. She is decently beaty if you can set up that fire reliably, without it she doesn't look like all that.

The rail golem positively loves burning. Her totem can add burning to stuff but NOT to the rail golem, it has a rule specifically designed to give anti-synergy within the crew.

The foundry upgrade gives a cool (0) action but the guys in her set and rail golem already have very worthwhile (0)s that conflict with this.

Honestly I find that in about 95% of the time, Burning is not the limiting factor for the Rail Golem. If you are using those locomotion for attacks then he should be getting burning back again every time. I'm guessing that the reason that he is slightly harder to set on fire by your own crew is his other (0), that pulses lots of burning out. 

 

Mei is an area damage master, just in a very different way to Rasputina. I would say that her most important triggers are built into her Tigers Claws, its just the Jackhammer ones that you need the suits for. (And if you want combat, you take seismic claws). She will punish bad placement of enemy models very well, if you can get two of them in an area where they can't push away, she has infinite hits on them as long as she keeps damaging. She can do decent damage to a single target, but it is more Suit intensive than several masters to get to those heights (but not worse than Lady J doing onslaught, and its close on damage levels to that, but I think Her onslaught is a not worth taking upgrade)

You are right, if you just look at her box, her and her totem are the only ways to add burning, and they probably don't add much, but if you want to go the burning route, there are plenty of things in faction that will do. If you are planning on using her Tremors trigger, then your best friend is the Arcane effigy with its (0) on her as that adds burning without it being a trigger, so she can quickly get lots of burning out on models to give her the positives on damage. 

[spooky_squirrel]

On top of @Adran's comments regarding the Effigy: it's additional burning unless your opponent discards a card, and it's on all of her attacks.

One of the things I like to do is Railwalk into position and take the kick trigger (with its subsequent push in) against the target of choice. They either discard a card or get burning on damage. Then she claws. If they didn't get burning from the kick, they get +1 from the claws, and an additional +1 unless they discard another card (on damage again). If you go into a knot of things that aren't supposed to be tanking (support pieces, scheme runners that haven't spread out yet), it can get bad for your opponent. With a lack of competing (0) actions, you could discard for the Hard Worker benefit (Kang or Sparks carrying this, though you could put it on the Rail Golem).

This is very card intensive, but you can inflict damage+conditions against multiple targets. If you are running with Price of Progress you probably want to be killing things. Rats, Waifs, Bayou Gremins, summoned spiders, it doesn't matter what. Kill it for the card draw so that you can make up for what you're doing to your own hand getting here. This is the kind of approach that makes Mei Feng a bully-beater as opposed to a full-blown beater.

[spooky_squirrel]

On 3/7/2017 at 2:54 AM, Ludvig said:

I've seen people rate McMourning as killy and he only has a 2/3/6 track. Perdita is often considered killy and only has 2/4/5, Leveticus 2/3/4. I think such low damage tracks are considered ok if you also ignore armor. As any Lady Justice player will have experienced that track ignoring armor would sometimes be preferable to her high damage that doesn't go through armor.

McMourning's killy-ness comes from the poison condition, his and Sebastian's aura effects on poison, and expunge. Perdita has triggers that ramp up her damage track and she can ignore cover or armor, while having Df/Wp7 and the ability to shoot things that shoot/charge while within 12" of her. Levi's not using his normal damage when he's stripping half your total wounds off of one of your tanks. What makes them killy isn't the damage track by itself, it's the other stuff that they do.

Mei Feng has been my go-to master when I'm not sure how I want to score the strat/schemes, but I'm pretty sure how my opponent will try. Her disabling Sh and Ca actions at range allows me to get models into position to threaten and possibly score, and gives me the option to slingshot her straight into a knot of models that aren't beaters to keep them tied up until I get bored of being there. She's immune to Paralyze and Slow, which makes her great into Neverborn and Ressers, and can be a good argument to have her on deck for Ten Thunders and Outcasts (if your meta features use of those conditions by either). She gives Arcanists access to Kang. Kang makes your stuff around him Immune to Horror and he hands out bonuses when fighting undead or constructs--without you needing any further costs than hiring him. This makes Kang an excellent Henchman to have into Neverborn, Ressers, Arcanists, as well as meta-dependent Outcasts (Ashes and Dust, Levi) and TT (Mei Feng, Yan Lo, Lynch). He's also hard to deal with in wounding and keeping him wounded, and he's carrying a shovel that's got the sort of damage track you want on a hired beater.

After those two, it depends on what you would like to do. I would recommend Hard Worker and (Warding Runes or Recharge Soulstone) on Kang, with that second spot decided by whether you intend to keep Kang back in a supporting role longer, or commit him and his shovel to smashing things. It brings him up to 11 stones. One aggravating way to use her is to have her keeping a nasty shooter or two safe under her steam (Envy and Lazarus, for instance) and shooting out, with a beater like Kang somewhere just behind them to counter-charge. Your opponent cannot just shoot back and call it a day, they must close the gap to deal with those two, at which point they get Kang's shovel to the face. Otherwise, they give up whatever board position Mei Feng has decided to point those two shooters at. Lazarus won't get the benefits against undead/constructs, but Envy will. If you're wanting the second shooter to have those benefits, you have other options you can hire in within faction:

• Oxfordian Mage, Blood Ward gives the Mage itself the ability to fight in close combat, Nemesis builds in your triggers, Doom would give Kang w/ WR regeneration +1. Immunity to Horror and positives on attack and damage against the thing that was trying to scare you makes for an amusing round of furious casting.
• December Acolyte, which allows you to hand out slow (denying AP) and on trigger strip cards from your opponent's hand, or the take other trigger to draw your hapless prey in closer for the next sentence. For 1 AP you strip armor and h2w from enemy models within 6" , setting those undead/constructs up for a royal treatment from Kang's Shovel.
• Silent One, blasting at range is awesome. Having a trigger to shoot again is even better. Getting positives against undead and constructs just makes the whole thing nastier.

The thing I'm omitting in the above is the fact that you need to get your stuff into position to project their influence over what matters, and that you need to have things that will be moving up into scoring position as well. I know someone, somewhere is probably thinking "undead, belles, horrible lures"  ...Mei Feng's putting those lures on as much as a double negative while still moving up with her crew. What they flip is what they get. If you go with the second option I listed above, you can even make them slow and attempt to drag them away from their own friends. Those lures don't help them a whole lot if they're surrounded by your crew.

Her role in the above scenario is supporting her crew. At some point, late in the deciding turn, it will be time for her to activate and do something other than keep those shooters (and Kang) safe from ranged/magic retaliation. Probably because the shooters are no longer in play. If your shooters mauled some things and didn't kill them, send her in. This would also be the time that Kang commits to killing something other than melee attackers that probably killed at least one of your shooters. Leading into this turn, your focus will be on slowing your opponent's momentum through denial. During this turn is when you attempt to swing the momentum in your favor and set yourself up to finish with one more VP than your opponent can score. I could be mistaken, but I think this is an approach she may do better in TT (Emissary handing out Fast on pushes, Katanaka Snipers as shooters, etc.).

[Ludvig]

@spooky_squirrel Cheers for that excellent writeup! If I get around to playing her I will definetly try to capitalize on her strengths instead of trying to do something that she doesn't do well. Turns out babies take a lot of time so my hobby has been completely stalled lately.

Being primarily a guildie I haven't experienced any expunge shenanigans even if the auto poison does mean some extra damage for McMourning. The insane auras make Sebastian a mean damage dealer and can't be attributed to  McMourning in my eyes. Especially in ressers where you can run Seb in another crew that hands out poison.

As for Perdita I had completely missed thst faster than you triggered on charges. I thought it was just  attacks so I've been considering it a waste of space and never used it. Will try to remember that for my next game with her

[spooky_squirrel]

@Ludvig you're welcome. I decided to test out a variant of the idea I suggested above with Arcanists into Extraction, Show of Force, and Leave Your Mark, and it actually got a lot of work done.

Mei Feng (Price of Progress, Vapormancy, Seismic Claws)
Kang (Hard Worker, Warding Runes)
Angelica (Practiced Production)
Envy (Well Rehearsed)
Rail Worker
Rail Worker
Arcane Effigy
Malifaux Raptor

I did not really start feeling the effects of my opponent's list until Mei Feng spent all three AP trying to kill some things to give Envy a clear shot (bad things happen, I should have just accepted that Envy wasn't going to get more than two turns of shooting and just kept venting until it was time to commit to a full counter attack). Every turn prior, she would spend at least one AP on Vent Steam, which effectively stopped shooting and cast actions  by forcing my opponent to either spend AP on focus or take different actions. The first two turns she spent with double Vent Steam up, which blocked out anything that didn't have spare AP for focus as well as built in bonuses. Obviously this wouldn't work into everything, but it did well with the strategy and schemes I selected (see above).

The basic idea with this is:
T1: flip initiative, Angelica walks up to a covered position that has LOS and <8" to the Rail Workers. Angelica activates, PP drops a scheme marker behind Envy giving Envy a 2" push, and pushes the two Rail Workers to the stage (5" push). Effigy activates, wanders foward enough to be at 4"+ from previous scheme marker and drops a scheme marker within 3" of Envy, Envy pushes another 2" up. When the opponent is running out of chaff activations, Mei Feng activates, Railwalks to the Rail Workers and Vents twice. Envy stalls as long as possible in order to put a focused 2/5/6 (potentially with blasts) shot into something important. Kang trundles up, Rail Workers walk to limit of opponent's threat and Mei's bubble and go defensive. Raptor prepares to pop up in a corner somewhere for LYM.
T2: Angelica activation puts a scheme marker near the Raptor, pushes Kang onto the stage,  and if everything else is in position to score strategy, drops a scheme marker to fuel Practiced Production. She's on standby in case I need her upgrade to count for Show of Force. Mei Feng stalls as long as possible to keep the double Vent up while the ranged and controlled elements go. Envy goes as early as possible to get shots in before being engaged--if he's already engaged, nearby Rail Worker (0) for implacable assault and charges. Kang is on mop-up duty. Rail Worker's primary job is to just be as hard as nails and not die until my bubble of 7 non-peons can get the Extraction Marker more firmly on my side of the table.

The momentum shifting turn, when I stop being a brick, is either Turn 3 or 4. It depends on what my opponent is doing. In my case I was very unfortunate and had no cards better than an 8 in hand (and even then only had a pair of 8s because I stoned for cards) when I decided to try and shift gears. That was a bad call on my part. As it was, the game was steering towards a 10-10 tie unless I stopped my opponent from gathering evidence (would require killing anything with Don't Mind Me and keeping Kang and Mei hovering over the markers to prevent interacts) and worked carefully to reduce his significant model count. So I gambled and tried to go aggressive with Mei Feng. Sadly, that meant 6 AP going into failing to do what she was trying to do (Vapormancy attack to blast onto other targets nearby in order to spread burning and damage and get that model count down). Given the soulstone card draw and initiative flip on that turn, not even Arcane Reservoir would have bailed my hand out of trouble.

[katadder]

Mei Feng is my favourite master, arcanist or otherwise

usual for me is:

Mei - price of progress, seismic claws, vapourmancy

Joss - bleeding edge tech, imbued energies

Kang - hard worker, imbued energies

2 Rail workers, Arcane Effigy, Willie, Emberling

[bertmac]

Depending on what you are facing if it is a lot of undead or constructs kang makes an awesome gunline with acolytes/gunsmiths/willie.

[spooky_squirrel]

13 minutes ago, bertmac said:

Depending on what you are facing if it is a lot of undead or constructs kang makes an awesome gunline with acolytes/gunsmiths/willie.

..and Envy. Moderates from Envy are very painful and can one-shot things like Steam Arachnids at full health.

[spooky_squirrel]

At a tournament yesterday I got to see how well the crew outlined above (swapped Raptor/ Effigy for Shastar Vidiya Guard, swapped Warding Runes out for Recharge Soulstone) can do into Neverborn.

 

Counterspell is critical if you're trying to stop those lures that require a built-in suit and another suit. My opponent( through sheer weight of number of attempts) was able to get Kang outside of the Mei Feng's bubble and deep into his own models, where Kang died. It took essentially all of his activations in a single turn to bring down Kang, but that Immunity to Horror was going to be critical for dealing with Huggy and Widowweaver.

In spite of losing Kang, Mei Feng camping out with double Vent Steam up for the first three turns really hurt my opponent's ability to kill stuff (in a Reckoning game) while I picked off things like Sorrows with Mei Feng's Vapormancy and multiple shots/stabs from the rest of the crew. I think bringing in an Oxfordian Mage with Temporary Shielding and Bleeding Edge Tech will be interesting, freeing up a couple of stones from using the Shastar Vidiya Guard to do it. The Mage's job will be to hang back and shoot stuff as needed while granting the obnoxiously hard to put down Rail Workers regen +1.

[spooky_squirrel]

Another thread got me thinking about Willie/Miss Fire, and the PMF take on our local psychopath.

They mentioned things like:

Quote

Engaging him from range might be the best idea, as it just plain the safest. Staying in cover from him will do you some good, as he either has to focus or he has to take a hit to his SH rating. Either way, it's reducing his potency.

If you can obey him, and cause him to walk, you get to place the blast marker, which can be pretty good, and since it's not an attack action, you can do it more than once per turn, and throw him way out of position while also keeping him the hell away from you.

Which Mei Feng has a hard answer for, simple by being on the table and Venting Steam.

He's Foundry, and the editors for his entry on PMF seem a little unsure why he might go with Mei Feng, chalking it up to providing burning for her.. but I think that the subtlety here is not in his boosting her, but rather her (and Kang) substantially boosting him. His help to her crew could be in the form of pushing friendly models away from engaging opponents, but I really think he would be a supplementary blaster with Envy. That scheme marker could be for Envy to get a boost. It could also be for Willie to get a boost. He uses (0) Set Charge to keep people thinking very careful about approaching, and until they do Envy gets blast triggers baked into his shot. Simply walking and inflicting damage is dangerous as well

[Ludvig]

@spooky_squirrel He places the blast after he has taken a walk action so control will have reverted back to his original controller. You might want to let whoever you qupted know that.

[Martin1974]

For me, just my opinion, these are what I like to take with her.

Mech Porchop:  dropping that scrap marker is helpful to get her railwalking

Howard Langston:  50mm base to jump off of, and, he is a beast (I just have miss step, never bought the Ramos box)

Mechanical rider:  Another 50mm base, and a model that is great

Arcane effigy:  clears conditions, a construct, and give Mei Fang built in burning

Scorpius:  I just got this, and assembled.  Waiting to field it.  Once again, 50mm base to jump off of.

Halifax Raptors:  these just help out in alot of schemes and strategies