Mei Feng in GG 2018

[frumpypigskin]

Hello Arcanists Forum dwellers!

I've been away from the hobby for a couple of years and come back to find my only master is "bottom tier" (I say this like such a thing matters or even makes sense, but it still irks me that she might not be the most tournament competitive anymore).

I've been scouring the forums for current discussion on her post wave 5 and in GG2018. 

I was hoping to stimulate some discussion on how people are using MEI nowadays or what they're bringing with her. What works, what's lackluster etc.

In a flurry of excitement with limited reading I've gone and picked up Amin Naidu, medical automatons, steamfitters to add to my Ramos box, Rail golem and metal gamin (now very out of vogue post nerf apparently) I'm also hoping to nab an arcane effigy soon. 

Having trouble finding a place with Mech porky in stock (Australia tax aka international postage) otherwise bid likely have ordered him too.

Any early opinions on my choices? I proxies a steamfitter in my first game back for a public execution game and was quite impressed.

 

Next game will be vs outcasts...

Ply 

Surround them

Covert breakthrough

Set up

Take prisoner,

take one for the team.

 

Since I'm still learning we've shared lists in advance so I don't mind posting what I'm bringing to get people's opinions on how to approach this.

 

Declared Faction: Arcanists 
Crew Name: how meiny ply? 50ss 
Leader: Mei Feng - Cache:(3)
   Seismic Claws 1ss 
   Arcane Reservoir 2ss 
   Rail Lines 1ss 
Emberling 3ss 
Amina Naidu 9ss 
   Imbued Energies 1ss 
Kang 9ss 
Union Steamfitter 6ss 
Medical Automaton 5ss 
Rail Worker 5ss 
Willie 6ss 
 

I was hoping to stay balled up I. Media gas cloud in the middle, pulling people out of position with Amina and rendering key beaters useless and peonising him slowly while keeping her alive with stones she'll be generating and the mech Auto. Also have Willie as a ranged threat to poke at them if they're unwilling to advance or throw things at their hiding scheme runners.

 

I'll have a couple of good options for the sucker, or could use the emberling to either run or fake surround or covert.

 

How did I go making this? I'm keen to really try and invest in making Amina work. Do I not have enough punch? How do you strike the balance between ply and pow for activation control?

 

I know my opponent is fielding vonschill with Sue, midnight stalker and a librarian, Hannah and strongarm. Ouch!

Any Pointers given I'm not backing out of this list now? I think it'll be hard to Protect my back line with this matchup now.... Also if MS goes scheming Willie probably won't be able to kill him 😕

 

Thanks in advance fellow Arcanists

 

 

 

[Ludvig]

Don't have any experience with Mei but the scheme pool looks pretty movement intense which the list isn't super great at and the stalker will be a problem. 

Setup is usually doable even if you have to place markers manually. Take one for the team will be hard since the opponent might just ply you instead of killing you.

If you don't take the marker schemes that force you to move far you can hang in your backfield spread out because the strat doesn't incentivise you to go forward. Stay spread out in your deployment and ply the stalker when it pops out or jump there with Mei and swat it. That way you can make their beaters run across the field and then set one of them up (possibly strongarm or Hanna). This looks like a pool where you could win even if you are tabled. Their heavy range focus fits Mei well, she can protect the models who are at risk and deny the opponenent's ranged advantage. If they charge you because they can't hit with ca/sh they just gave you points for ply.

Tiers aren't always that telling, thry basically assume you want one master thst can handle any pool. I manage to do just terrible with decently ranked masters.

[katadder]

Surprised you haven't got the hard worker upgrade as you will struggle with his armour.

Mei is best at strats where she can bubble up although I tend to use Willie and the emberling to go scheme running away from the smack bubble.

Willie can double wall around the stalker trying to get him just by dropping blasts, or you can try blasting off stuff near him. Or just have someone chase the stalker and ply off him every turn as you don't need to get around his double negs to ply him

[frumpypigskin]

8 hours ago, katadder said:

Surprised you haven't got the hard worker upgrade as you will struggle with his armour.

Yeah, had it in my head I'd need 5ss so didn't put it on him..

 

8 hours ago, katadder said:

Mei is best at strats where she can bubble up although I tend to use Willie and the emberling to go scheme running away from the smack bubble.

Willie can double wall around the stalker trying to get him just by dropping blasts, or you can try blasting off stuff near him. Or just have someone chase the stalker and ply off him every turn as you don't need to get around his double negs to ply him

I think cos the stalker just heals at the start of his turn this wouldn't work unless I've managed to get more DMG on him prior to this. 

Do you find Willie's walk 5 and 0action (to prevent charges) are enough to get him to the back field for schemes? Or would you go out of theme for wind gamin? Ice dancer with PP?

 

 

[katadder]

Usually when playing mei I try not to take the real backfield schemes but if needed Willie can get there. 

Also mei can get most places if need be by the end of the game

[frumpypigskin]

So played the match finally.

Pretty happy with the result considering we realised I didn't have enough threats on the board. 

I lost 6-5

Played very cagey, made him wast AP coming to me whilst trying to stay in cover & vent steam, bluff a surround them start and put plate metal on squishy key models. 

2 mech models and 2 scrap droppers were just enough but occasionally wished I had another one so I could pull off a better passenger line. However, MEI being my only beater meant she didn't have enough AP for that nonsense anyway, especially once Kang went down. 

 

Was lucky a couple of turns in a row holding my opponent even on ply. Nobody scored for it until he cleaned me out on turn 5. 

 

I ended up being 1card in hand short to drop the extra scheme with the steamfitter so only got 2vp for setup on stalker.

I'm in LOVE with the automaton! He was definitely VP, healing heaps on Kang then Amina and then getting the full 3vp for one for the team. Never got to aggressively remove the ply condition but the threat was there.

 

Amina was fun, was definitely annoying, had 2 plate metal on her for 2 armour and the protection from severe damage (which is also nice protection for the ply condition as it happens...) I used her fast single shot to move and Double summon the midnight into my setup trap in the last turn that I had activation control.

Emberling went to bluff for the surround but the bait wasn't taken and so only provided scrap for the steamfitter and ran between cover all game. But he helped with activation control. I should have abandoned the bluff sooner to dart in for an end of turn ply sooner.

 

My opponent easily got covert breakthrough, nearly fooled me that it was going to be being tossed into setup by vonschill but he had take prisoner on MEI. I'd used one of the last scrap on the board to flit over near Willie and was lucky to have enough high cards save up and 1 or 2 nice flips to prevent the 3rd point for setup.

With all the healing he had, this was Willie's most valuable contribution.

I brought his as a ranged threat come flanker, that flank was open, maybe I should have run him around to blast his support/ranged options and then blow up... I'll try that sort of shenanigans next time I bring him.

 

If I had it over I might use Joss instead of Kang or bring Kang's upgrade for a little more offence. This combo was also VERY discard intensive so couldn't have done without arcane res. And as it was still felt like I needed more cards.... Maybe if I had a Mech rider for some card draw.... So many goodies.

 

 Also I think I missed 1 or 2 "our claims extend" opportunitys to get more stones which could have made Amina survive longer or potentially give MEI more suits to keep beating up on models with ply. Only thing I killed was the strongarm and was able to let him burn to death. This was also critical as it made for one more turn when he didn't score for ply.

 

Amina was interesting, I had to choose between springing my set trap at the end of turn when he was all activated and using her early to try and prevent him from targeting me. Opted for the latter and came close to paying for it. Not sure if I had the cards I needed to pull of the latter. I might have tried it if I had a better hand with cards I didn't want to just discard for effects. 

 

Lots of fun, lots of thinking to do. A good dose of Malicrack.

Thoughts anyone?

 

 

 

[Ludvig]

Sounds like a fun game!

You can only gain armor once from the steamfitter, after you have armor from any aource it doesn't add more armor with the trigger.

Did the stalker score breakthrough? I would have thought he would be your number one kill priority. Picking setup on him seems like a mistake because he is the most mobile model and usually wants to activate late while he was probably crucial to the enemy plan for VP. If you had activation control from turn one you could have killed him.

Why do you think you had too few threats? Sounds like you got most of the stuff you aimed for done and had activation control on the last turn which means you killed as many models as you lost? A model like an arachnid that can eat markers might have been a bigger boost to deny him marker schemes and the strat since it has auto positives on damage 

[frumpypigskin]

2 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Sounds like a fun game!

You can only gain armor once from the steamfitter, after you have armor from any aource it doesn't add more armor with the trigger.

Doh! Didn't re-read the small print on the trigger. I suppose that makes sense to limit it that way. I don't think it would have made a huge difference. She ended up getting taken out by Vonschill with armour ignoring attacks but thanks for the pickup! 

I think I tend to summarise abilitys for ease of recall and if I don't come back and re-read at the time I can skip small print like that. For example, right up until putting amina on the table I didn't notice the 1/2HP limitation to injured workers act.

 

2 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Did the stalker score breakthrough? I would have thought he would be your number one kill priority. Picking setup on him seems like a mistake because he is the most mobile model and usually wants to activate late while he was probably crucial to the enemy plan for VP. If you had activation control from turn one you could have killed him.

Thank you! This is great feedback! You're totally right! I'm definitely still on Malifaux "stage 1"(figure out how to score my VP) and that is just the sort of thing I need to help transition to stage 2 (stop the opponent from scoring their schemes too).

I had picked the stalker because I'd assumed that he'd be relatively isolated, I'd also thought I'd have trouble killing him while staving off Schill and strongarm at the front together.

 

2 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Why do you think you had too few threats? Sounds like you got most of the stuff you aimed for done and had activation control on the last turn which means you killed as many models as you lost? A model like an arachnid that can eat markers might have been a bigger boost to deny him marker schemes and the strat since it has auto positives on damage 

I suppose it could just have been the way I was using them and that he had heaps of heals and armour for me to get through with just MEI, Kang and a rail worker. (With all the strongarm suits I didn't have much faith in Willie but probably underutilized him. 

After Kang went down and I let the Automaton die on Turn 4 my models started dropping like flies. At the end it was just Willie, MEI and the out of position emberling.

[Franchute]

11 hours ago, frumpypigskin said:

Amina was fun, was definitely annoying, had 2 plate metal on her for 2 armour

You cannot do that unfortunately. Once she is armour 1 you are not allowed to make her armour 2. You'll see: just check the crow trigger of weld metal plate.

[Ludvig]

@frumpypigskin

It's fairly common to miss small stuff like the armour thing. This is one of the more complicated mini games I've come across since almost nothing is standardised.

As someone else said Willie is a pretty hard counter to the midnight stalker since he just needs to walk around to auto-kill it in two actions, he negates its main defense.

With setup and ply chosen you don't really need to kill a lot of enemy models. Let the strongarm charge in and say thank you for the 3 setup vp (and possibly ply that turn as well). In many ways it is helpful to kill enemy models of course but the ply setup combo requires no killing. If they spend most ap killing your tough models while you kill their only scheme runner and just ply their hitters each turn they might end up scoring 0-1 points for breakthrough andnothing on the strat while you are digging gold on both the stat and setup.

As long as they don't land a severe hit you could technically win the strategy with a single model left standing that wins activation and does ply on one of theirs.

If they charge you early thatmodel can't ply you that turn (except for von Schill) but any model you have left alive can ply one of their models so a single model of theirs attacking a clump of you models should not be attacked but just plied for info with as many models as you need to take the strat point that turn. A perfectly viable tactic for a late turn would be Mei using ply on an enemy, railwalking away and killing her last friend to deny the opponent ply that turn so you win with a single ply point. 

Just a few thoughts, sorry for the wall of text. I'm a sucker for the non-killing aspects of this game.  Many masters are almost impossible to take out unless you have the perfect counter to their particular defense. I rarely try to hit them unless I picked assassinate (or equivalent later scheme).

[frumpypigskin]

On 8/23/2018 at 1:36 AM, Ludvig said:

@frumpypigskin

As someone else said Willie is a pretty hard counter to the midnight stalker since he just needs to walk around to auto-kill it in two actions, he negates its main defense.

I appreciate his blast dodges his defence, but his "reborn" heals him to FULL each start-of-turn as well as allowing him to place... So Wille only gets you so far without fast or something else...

 

On 8/23/2018 at 1:36 AM, Ludvig said:

With setup and ply chosen you don't really need to kill a lot of enemy models. Let the strongarm charge in and say thank you for the 3 setup vp (and possibly ply that turn as well). In many ways it is helpful to kill enemy models of course but the ply setup combo requires no killing. If they spend most ap killing your tough models while you kill their only scheme runner and just ply their hitters each turn they might end up scoring 0-1 points for breakthrough andnothing on the strat while you are digging gold on both the stat and setup.

As long as they don't land a severe hit you could technically win the strategy with a single model left standing that wins activation and does ply on one of theirs.

If they charge you early thatmodel can't ply you that turn (except for von Schill) but any model you have left alive can ply one of their models so a single model of theirs attacking a clump of you models should not be attacked but just plied for info with as many models as you need to take the strat point that turn. A perfectly viable tactic for a late turn would be Mei using ply on an enemy, railwalking away and killing her last friend to deny the opponent ply that turn so you win with a single ply point.

I love all of this! Shudda-coulda-woulda. Will do next time! I would have got 3 for setup on turn 2 while strongarm was busy wailing on Kang (who was subsequently finished by Vonschill) but I chose midnight.... Who is probably always going to activate kinda late to get into position and then go early to wrek face. Lesson learnt -> setup goes on beater > give beater tarpit bait throw scheme markers down late > profit.

On 8/23/2018 at 1:36 AM, Ludvig said:

Just a few thoughts, sorry for the wall of text. I'm a sucker for the non-killing aspects of this game.  Many masters are almost impossible to take out unless you have the perfect counter to their particular defense. I rarely try to hit them unless I picked assassinate (or equivalent later scheme).

Killing the strongarm with MEI was almost incidental, it took the ply off of him which he took from Kang turn 1 (he had discarded an upgrade Schill could hand out) this fast charge plus ply worked well for him and kept him in the running for the strategy in turns 2 and 3 otherwise I would have scored those turns.

Thanks again for the pointers. I'll be doing some M3e this Weeknd but will hopefully get in another match of M2E with MEI soon and discuss again here or in the "last list" thread.

On 8/18/2018 at 8:12 AM, katadder said:

Usually when playing mei I try not to take the real backfield schemes but if needed Willie can get there. 

Also mei can get most places if need be by the end of the game

@katadder do you ever bring a SS miner? Just picked one up, it struck me that the emberling incorporeal'd it's way through terrain fairly well to one corner and the SS miner and it could do breakthrough and then I'd get fed extra stones to keep amina alive and help mei go off... Could have used him instead of Willie maybe as ply and double vent steam seems to be enough incentive to get the opponent to wade in...

[Ludvig]

@frumpypigskin

Models cannot take the ply action on turn 1 so I hope you meant the strongarm did that turn 2. like the use of von Schill to allow a charge + ply though, a lot of people rate von Schill as super weak so that's a nice strategy specific move for him.

Learning from failures is how you get good, sometimes you just pick the wrong model for certain schemes. I must admit to confusing Willies walk blasts with his death blast, I thought two walks would guarantee a kill. That makes the stalker even more annoying. Double positives is tricky to come by. The mechanical toolkit could get a construct a positive so you can stone or focus for another one. Can't remember off the top of my head if arcanists have a construct that could force a shot that does 6 damage in a single severe. In a pinch you could have Joss stone and maybe even burn imbued energies to charge it. That's an awful lot of resoures for a model that cost but blocking those 3 VP could be worth it.

[cbtb11235813]

Imbued Energies Envy (a common take for me) can do it pretty well. Or even without IE. Built in positive, focus as a (0), 2/5/6 damage. (0) focus, focus, shoot puts you at , so even if Stalker is in cover, you're at a straight flip, and usually at least a straight to damage, if not better. Only downside is being at Sh 5, it may take some cards to pull off effectively 

[madaxeman]

I used Rail Lines last night for the first time - it proved to be a very handy trick to give the 50mm base Rail Golem an absolutely enormous threat range, allowing him and Mei to bounce off the MechPig and then drop maybe 10+ attacks onto an area way outside where they started 

Added to a MechPig for the + on attacks from charges, and a Steamfitter to toughen up the Golem's defence as well as being able to pick up another "locomotion" tome from the discard pile and the Golem felt close to being the massive 11-stone beater it looks like it should be.

You'd probably pick the MechPig and Steamfitter anyway on the basis of their own utility, so its not like you are building a crew around one synergy. 

[dannydb]

I realy do like rail lines- I've in the past played howard meifeng sling shot, however have been half tempted to try a fire golem in that slot, especially with the fire golem's synergy with mei feng and burning