How to Mei Feng?

[FinalForm]

Sup guys.
Just bought MF starter to my girl. She already plays Raspi and Ramos.
What models does she needs(exept for Rail golem)?
What is her strong and weak sides, what shemes and strats does Mei Feng?

So I will be happy if you can enlighten me.

[bertmac]

Depending on the opponent shooters can be good. Kangs aura with gunsmiths December acolytes and Willie can be awesome.

[Vorpalhit]

Sparks and Kang. 

have Sparks armour someone in the opposing crew making them a construct and giving armour +1

have someone within 6" of Kang hit them.

don't leave home without vapourmancy you can hit things 3" away to avoid blackblood and other such shenanigans 

[dancater]

Always depends on the variables of scheme-strat-opponent.

Schemes & Stones podcast has a Mei episode, I'd try to listen to that, always valuable.

But..

Your girls already has the Ramos box so Steam Arachnids, Howard and Joss all good Mei models.

Mechanical Pork Chop (Gremlin/Foundry) is an exceptional model for Mei.

The Arcane Effigy if she does not already own is a must for Arcanists and Mei and Ramos in particular love it.

Also as you've noted the Rail Golem.

Those are the must purchases for me.

Then as bertmac points out Gunsmiths, Dec Acolytes (tbh these are amazing and must haves in Arcanist particularly for Raspy), Willie all can be useful.  Definitely the Dec Acolytes.

Large Steam Arachnid, Metal Gamin, Union Miner and Scorpius all have synergy.

Sparks (as Vor notes) is an interesting potential model as well (Gremlin/Foundry) providing some unexpected and powerful interactions.

Johan/Johanna is always worth mentioning and with Mei their inclusion depends on how many M&SU models also get a look in the crew.

Mei is an exceptional model in fights which reward maneuverability and is generally very flexible.  She can work a good anti-shooting build, is potentially very fast across the field and is great for chewing up low-mid cost enemies.  Her weaknesses are she does not have a huge punch against durable opposition (but the Rail Golem and Howard can solve this) and she can be overwhelmed easily in part because she is prone to get isolated and in part because she is not super tanky but instead a hit and run master.  She is a bit all-around so can suffer against a crew which fully commits to a particular scheme-strat pool but the same is true for any of the more flexible masters, she is a solid Arcanist take and actually an exceptional compliment to Ramos (who does the mass troop summon fights) and Raspy (who brings the ranged blasting pain) with her move and hit from all angles style.

 

 

 

[retnab]

I'd also point out the Arcane Emissary with its Mei Feng specific upgrade is very nice for her.  Giving her a free attack for a discarded card is nice, but just being able to (0) to drop a Scrap Marker is very helpful for Mei Feng, Sparks, and the Large Arachnids.

[Sybarite]

Rail golem is in no way a must have model. If you already have Joss and Langston it is a bit redundant.

I'd say get Cassandra (and raptors) or Firestarter for scheming and some much needed speed. Angelica plus raptors could also be nice. 

[Sybarite]

I tend to pick mei when I am facing undead or expect a lot of ca or sh attacks heading my way.

Vent steam is her most powerful action.

She excels in strats like guard the stash, turf war, extraction,  but is fine in the other ones too.

[Mxbedlam]

My favorite Mei list involves Sparks, mecha porkchop, Lazarus, arcane effigy and Emissary with a few minions mixed in depending on what the schemes are. Basically turn 1, Sparks turns Mei in to a Construct. Then Laz copies Railwalk or Vent Steam depending on whats needed. Mei does her rail/vent stuff. and the rest of your crew just does what they need to do. 

[spooky_squirrel]

I've got a handful of approaches to Mei Feng that I've used with varying degrees of ability and success.

Armored Core Mei Feng: take base box, drop a rail worker, add Joss, sprinkle Metal Gamin to taste. It's a slow moving ball of death, but it's going to take some effort to kill. Not great into position strategies or speedy schemes. Squeezing in the Emissary is a good idea. If Mei Feng decides to go kill stuff, she might end up somewhere unsupported, so careful.

Mobility Mei: Mei Feng, Carlos (or The Firestarter, or The Captain), Coryphee x2, Sparks, Mech. Porkchop, Mech Rider, flesh out to taste. It's stupidly fast, and some of the dirty things you can do, like giving the Coryphee Duet Fast with Sparks or getting Carlos up to Armor +3 (and Construct, for rail walking), are silly and potentially great for mobility strat/scheme purposes. Think about the idea of a swift, fast Coryphee Duet with baked in on attack and damage charging from within the Porkchop's aura for additional bonuses. You'll see a ton of cards.

With either of those: if your opponent ignores armor, it's going to hurt.

So I've done some tinkering around. I've found that a pair of Rail Workers can get further up the field (and be in position for strat and/or scheme) with some support from Angelica. I've found that Mei Feng spending the first couple of turns being a denial master gives my opponents headaches. I've found that Warding Runes on whichever Henchman or Henchmen I bring are incredibly useful for keeping that ball of denial up (countermagic on Kang, with opponent being on or to lure means almost never having to worry about horror checks).

But what I found with playing an armored ball of denial is that it doesn't project threat very far on its own. You put Joss and Rail Workers and Kang into a bubble in the middle of the field and your opponent cannot effectively shoot/cast at them, so they might just ignore them and do their schemes. Meanwhile, how's your own scheming going? Not so hot if you're all-in on being a brick on the Extraction marker and counting on your opponent coming into your brick to give you things like Set Up, Accusation!, etc.

 

So I started making use of some shooters, and found that I'm actually quite happy with the way that Mei Feng plays with a couple shooters projecting out and a couple of beaters on close support, provided I also make sure I leave room to accomplish schemes. I've found that she doesn't need as many constructs when played in a denial support role early game (as well as not being a huge FFM liability, since she's playing cagey). For shooters, Envy and December Acolytes are solid, especially if getting boosted by being living and targeting things that are constructs or undead.

[PanzerHarris]

I've been experimenting with Mei lately and have found the Large Arachnids to be good partners. They give you scheme denial, they're Constructs so can be Railwalked off, and they have Creative Salvage for extra scrap markers. 

Mechanised Porkchop for me is a must-take. Dr Sokolov has ploughed through a lot of models thanks to Walking Rage Machine and in combination with Temporary Limb those Large Arachnids are on double positive to attack. Don't underestimate Detachable Tail for a Railwalk node. 

[WWHSD]

6 minutes ago, PanzerHarris said:

Dr Sokolov ...

Is that an alternate Joss?

[spooky_squirrel]

38 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Is that an alternate Joss?

Yes; I think it'll be available when they're doing special even web orders and it is also be available on the guilder page for 5 Guilders.

[PanzerHarris]

Yeah, sorry. I hate the Joss fluff (or lack thereof) so much I couldn't actually use the model til Sokolov happened. 

[JoeJones]

21 hours ago, WWHSD said:

Is that an alternate Joss?

Yes, yes it is.

 

Dr. Sokolov was one of the Arcanist character from the TtB Nythera campaign.

[WWHSD]

4 hours ago, JoeJones said:

Yes, yes it is.

 

Dr. Sokolov was one of the Arcanist character from the TtB Nythera campaign.

All of the TtB products are just books, right? They aren't campaign box sets that come with minis and other stuff, are they? They minis were just available from special events.

Is there a list anywhere of all of the alternate models in Malifaux?

[Pyrflamme]

1 hour ago, WWHSD said:

All of the TtB products are just books, right? They aren't campaign box sets that come with minis and other stuff, are they? They minis were just available from special events.

Is there a list anywhere of all of the alternate models in Malifaux?

There are some products - the band, Brotherhood of the Rat, the Spawn Mother/Gupps box, The Twisted Alternatives (alt Blessed and Izamu sculpts) that come with TtB material in them. Nothing extensive, maybe a one-shot session's worth.

[solkan]

1 hour ago, WWHSD said:

All of the TtB products are just books, right? They aren't campaign box sets that come with minis and other stuff, are they? They minis were just available from special events.

There are some encounter boxes that have Malifaux and TtB scenarios for the models is the box.  But they're all regular production and you should see them listed as Malifaux products.

Quote

Is there a list anywhere of all of the alternate models in Malifaux?

Between the Easter newsletter and the guilder store webpage, you should be able to see everything currently in production as alternate models:

https://www.wyrd-games.net/news/2017/4/10/easter-sale-newsletter

https://www.wyrd-games.net/guilders/

Alt-Joss is on the guilder store page.

 

[dannydb]

well sorry to Derail the thread slightly but was looking in to a bit of a combo regarding mei feng, although its a bit model intensive, as its mostly 0 actions which are probably going to be going unused in the first turn anyway (which is when i can see your wanting to be using rail walking to anyway to make sure you get mei feng up and ready to smash)

 

essentially the idea is 

1. Walk the mech porkchop up twice towards wherever you want to go, dropping scrap after first walk
2. turn Meifeng into a robot with sparks 0 ability 
3. using lazarus 0 ability copy rail walking, moving essentially almost and extra 2 inches + 30mm for the scrap marker- doesn't sound like a lot, but could be the opportunity to then walk and then go blasty blasty with its gun turn 1 that might be missed otherwise
4. then meifeng actually goes does her thing 

[spooky_squirrel]

One small issue with your plan there:

Turning someone into a construct with Sparks discards the scrap marker. You won't have the marker to bounce off of.

There's been some noise about making Mei Feng a construct so that Lazarus can copy either Rail Walk or Vent Steam, but where the problem arises is you probably really want Lazarus either shooting twice, or focusing and shooting (more likely to get those blasts). His first turn is spent moving up into position, so if you have markers/constructs in place it can help, but you're relying on top-decking the 7s or burning your control hand to do it. If you're counting on Mei Feng Rail Walking up in order to properly support her crew or otherwise do her job, there's potential for conflict on ensuring that those abilities go off.

If you're really shooting for having him bounce up the table and get first blood via shooting, you're going to need to top deck or cheat a 7+ in order to get slightly further up the table to try and get a ton of shots off. You're also going to want to do this late in the turn, possibly as last activation, just to guarantee that you get the target(s) that matter somewhere that you can reach.

[edited for corrections; re: no triggers, no AP cost]

[dannydb]

Drat well that does break things up, back to the drawing board then!

Does lazarus work without without the the railwalk assimilate then out of interest? obviously there is going to be a lot of constructs in the mei feng crew, but not sure how many of the arcanist constructs have abilities worth copying with it

[WWHSD]

34 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

If you're really shooting for having him bounce up the table and get first blood via shooting, you're going to need to top deck or cheat a 7+ for each node he has to hop through to get into position, and you need to do all of the hops as triggers off of a single AP in order to take a single normal shot. You're also going to want to do this late in the turn, possibly as last activation, just to guarantee that you get the target(s) that matter somewhere that you can reach.

Lazarus doesn't get to declare triggers on Assimilated abilities so he only gets a single jump with Railwalk.

[WWHSD]

Railwalking Lazarus seems like it would be most useful as a way to fall back while engaged as opposed to using it to close distance.

[WWHSD]

If I'm reading "Assimilate" correctly it's a 0 action and the action you choose has to cost 1AP but Lazarus doesn't spend an AP on it. If that's the case then using Mei Feng and Sparks lets him Auto Fire at something 22 inches forward from where he starts. It costs other models 3 AP (4 if you count the Fast that goes to Lazarus instead of someone else) to get him there.

Emberling drops scrap and moves 5 inches forward.
Sparks makes Mei Feng a construct using the scrap dropped by Emberling and gives Lazarus Fast.
Lazarus Railwalks to the far side of Emberling. Uses the AP from fast to walk into position. He discards a card and Auto Fires with his remaining AP.
 

[spooky_squirrel]

Well, you're limited to (1) actions printed on the target construct's card and typically are hiring Lazarus for his blasts, so unless you have some very specific ideas in mind that you build for, you might not get as much use out of Assimilate as someone like Collodi does. His own abilities are solid enough where you won't be copying attacks from other models (especially since you don't get triggers*).

If you sink the (0) into making Mei Feng a construct, then copy Vent Steam, you end up with a secondary bubble of "no shooting/casting at dudes near here" on a larger based model. This couples well with some other things that you might try to do because it lets you have two areas covered (Guard the Stash comes to mind) with the bubble of "ha ha, no." Doing it as a (0) lets you autofire from somewhere useful (like those stash markers, or near the center for Turf War/Extraction) into things that might be supporting efforts elsewhere.

 

* With what @WWHSD says above: that Rail Walk, when copied, only lets you slightly extend your walk for the cost of a (0) to copy the action.
For early game darting up, you might find yourself better off bringing in someone like Angelica to handle things like that for you. She gives you a (1) tactical action that allows you to push one of your non-leader types within 8" up to 5" in any direction in addition to being a Showgirl Enforcer (and thus giving you access to Practiced Production). Lazarus can also sit there with Well Rehearsed so that you can PP a scheme marker near him, push him 2" because of the scheme marker, then use one of those pushes to get him a total of 7" up the board without his activating yet. This is what I do with Envy to get him into a shooting position early. It relies on no control hand manipulation or flips; it all just happens.
Otherwise, you might try it to get out of combat, but you're counting on having the right card come up to do so. Unless your opponent is blocking pushes in some way (outside of Anna, since she also blocks places), Angelica's push will do the same thing quite nicely.

 

What I've found is that the less I lean on constructs in Mei Feng's crew the more likely I am to hire something that can get work done for me at cost. In Arcanists we have a ton of tools for getting work done, and something you might try doing off of a mercenary hire might have a cheaper solution in-faction (you get what you pay for, though). It's something that's an interesting twist: the Foundry was looking to be mostly constructs with a couple oddballs (Wave 5 beta shows this changing further) and Mei Feng's Rail Walk calls for friendly constructs, which makes it seem like Mei Feng wants to be surrounded by constructs, but when you play out a few dozen games with her, the games where having constructs everywhere actually helps are not as frequent.
To make matters worse, not only does a field full of constructs not necessarily help you score VP, it makes your crew skew in a direction that can be countered readily. Here in faction in the Arcanists, we have December Acolytes, multiple Magnetism vectors (one of which is non-unique and can be summoned), and Mei Feng's crew. Joss outright ignores armor on his primary attack, and a number of our options ignore damage reduction on triggers (like the 2/4/6 damage track of the Shastar Vidiya Guards) or otherwise bypass armor in other ways. A hard skew towards armored constructs is throwing Rock in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, which means that you've got nothing for dealing with someone who skews Paper or plays a more balanced and focused crew for the existing victory conditions.

So long as I've got 2-3 sources of scrap or friendly constructs, I have nodes for Rail Walking to that allow me to do things with Mei Feng's mobility. That can be a pair of Rail Workers, or the Emissary and Mech. Porkchop, or Joss and the Effigy, etc. The rest of the crew is not there to enhance Mei Feng, but rather get/deny the VP that matter or support the crew members that will be doing that.

 

3 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

If I'm reading "Assimilate" correctly it's a 0 action and the action you choose has to cost 1AP but Lazarus doesn't spend an AP on it. If that's the case then using Mei Feng and Sparks lets him hit something 22 inches forward from where he starts. It costs other models 3 AP (4 if you count the Fast that goes to Lazarus instead of someone else) to get him there.

Emberling drops scrap and moves 5 inches forward.
Sparks makes Mei Feng a construct using the scrap dropped by Emberling and gives Lazarus Fast.
Lazarus Railwalks to the far side of Emberling. Uses the AP from fast to walk into position. He discards a card and Auto Fires with his remaining AP.
 

The problems here are the scrap production from Emberling requires a decent card and costs a wound; Emberling itself is not a construct, so you cannot Railwalk off of it. Add in that you're trigger-fishing or cheating to guarantee getting the trigger to take a second (0) with Sparks and still needing to have a 7+ in hand for Lazarus to Rail Walk (and no Black Joker flips on any of this). So while the Rail Walk is "free" in terms of Lazarus' AP, it's hitting your control hand hard and requiring other moving parts to set up. Whether or not this is a good idea depends entirely on what the victory conditions are and what you're playing into.

[WWHSD]

2 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

The problems here are the scrap production from Emberling requires a decent card and costs a wound; Emberling itself is not a construct, so you cannot Railwalk off of it.

Oh Snap! I had assumed that Emberling was a construct like the Fire Gamin was. 

The order I had laid out didn't seem like it was particularly efficient but it seemed like a way to make something happen if you really wanted to Assimilate Railwalk.