Mei Feng's crew - Too much fun?

[Bruglyother]

I have been thinking of something similar. I was eyeing out some workers, miners, kang, Willie, Johan, Joss etc to experiment with Kaeris and Mei. Let me know how this goes for you. At the moment I need to go model shopping as I only have the miners.

I have got to get back to this. I took a hiatus from my arcanists during a recent league. I will say that the last time I ran this I stomped a Nicodem crew. The miners allowed me to pull off a key alpha strike, and Mei doesn't need that many models for Rail Walking if used carefully. As I said, I'll have to get back to playing with this. It will have to fight for time with my two weaker/newer crews though (and soon a third.)

[sssk]

A bit of threadomancy, but it's better than starting a new thread on the same topic right?

I've played a few 35SS games with Mei so far, using some combination of Kang, Kaeris, Emberling, Railworkers, Willie, Gunsmiths, and Fire gamin and here's my findings:

Kaeris and Mei both seem to want a lot of stones. This may be because I'm playing Kaeris like I do with Marcus, but the net result is that Mei seems to spend a fair bit of time feeling fragile and hiding. I think I'm going to excluding Kaeris from my crews for the next few games at least, A) because she's becoming a crutch, and because I find she reduces Mei's effectiveness. We'll see what happens...

The emberling is pretty cool. I like the extra card in hand. Mei has lots of handy (1) spells for it, but I've been playing it very defensively (essentially as a 2SS extra card in my hand), which I don't think is the "correct" way to do it. More on this later...

Kang is a lovely melee piece. I can't advocate his "you can try..." trigger enough. I like to save up those high masks for this rather than Mei, as whacking someone in the face with a shovel/hammer during their turn is hilarious and powerful (the best combination). I think I'll be linking the emberling to Kang in turn 1, and then (1) seismic punching him forward, (1) floating in front of him, and (0) vent steam to hide him (and others) during the advance. Then when Kang wanders forward, the linked emberling will bounce with him to continue his consealment. A first turn method which is intreaguing me (depending on the strategy etc) is to set up a train of Kang-Emberling-Mei. Then seismic punch - walk - seismic punch with mei, and seismic punch - float - link with the emberling, so Kang is 9" forward before he's even activated. Hopefully that'll let him get stuck in sooner.

Rail workers haven't pulled their weight for me so far. They're a bit slow, and seem rather squishy. I'm not sure if that's just because my cunning opponents hit them with stuff which ignores armour/targets willpower to avoid the armour trigger, but they seem a 5SS anticlimax considering their potential on paper. Admittedly, when they do actually hit something, they aren't bad. It's just that when there's something to hit, they seem to be dead before they can hit it.

Willie is amusing, and can be pretty nice for his blasts. He seems to be public enemy number 1 though, so doesn't survive too long, and also has no actual synergy with Mei. Perhaps a metal gamin would help to protect him, but when I'm choosing crews, I tend to put him in because he's amusing and a distraction, rather than because I'm actually expecting him to achieve anything. The psychological area control of dynamite markers is pretty good, and being able to target stuff with no line of sight is also pleasent. Needs more investigation.

Gunsmiths usually put in a good showing, and give a nice ranged element to an otherwise combat oriented crew. You have to be careful with where/when you vent steam. A gunsmith usually vies for position with Willie in my crews. Either I know what I need doing, in which case I take a gunsmith, or I have 6SS left, so I take willie. At the moment they just seem very fragile. df4 doesn't seem to cut it in the current cb climate. That being said, you really can't argue with the hard way, and a high tome.

The fire gamin is...a fire gamin. These are generally being phased out of my crews as they rarely pull their weight.

As for Mei herself, I'm finding she's pretty safe when she's already activated, but if the opponent can set up a strike at the end of one turn and then get initiative at the start of the next, she tends to die a hideous death. She eats through quite a few cards from your hand, and 8SS isn't enough for her to share with Kaeris. There has been a fair bit of discussion in this thread (a few months ago...sorry again) about whether railwalking targets are necessary or not. I think they're very very necessary, as otherwise she seems to spend 2 ap walking/charging, and then runs out of steam (pun intended) and can't kill anything. The best suggestion I can make if you have no railwalking targets is to stick her on defensive stance, put up vent steam, and try and get in the way of things. If someone is silly enough to attack her, they probably won't do too much, and then you can beat them up next turn... as long as you get the initiative.

In addition to a more seismic punch oriented play style, I think the next thing I'm going to try out is a steampunk arachnid swarm (or two). They're cheap, high df, mobile, can reduce the df of enemies (to then railwalk into and attack), have very solid attack, and their defensive trigger (3" push) can have you railwalking a bit further. It strikes me that for 1SS less than a pair of railworkers, these guys will give a lot more activations (one for the swarm, then scatter and 3 for the individual arachnids), more rail walking targets, and with df6 they might actually survive long enough to railwalk on. Obviously if I need significant models they're maybe not the way to go.

So there's some slightly disjointed thoughts on Mei Feng so far. I've not tried some models which people are really liking (Large SPAs, rail golem, mech rider, Joss), purely because I don't like the models (even the golem!), so don't own them. Might give Johan a try sometime though.

So a month on from the previous post, what crew compositions are people finding work well for Mei (preferably not 10T, as we're in the arcanist forum)?