Strategies for Shaolin Team?

 
Play someone very weak?  That should work fairly well...
 
Seriously, one obvious thing is that the only units on the team that are stars are the poisoners and the Shadow...so gear them and take care of them.  I still put gear on other units at times, but I'm revisiting it. 

1. Amazing crystal rush team. Drop bamboo on your or the enemies crystal bonus square, sacrifice your guys at the enemy crystal... doesn't work if the opponent anticipates it, but this is VERY effective.
2. Set up combos, make your positions interlock tightly, move your Windblade's together because they can combo with each other on 3 targets. Windblade + poisoner are a great combo too, upgrae the windblade and you can get 2AP kos with windblades.
3. Learn how to use bamboo to do nasty things like combine with your dragon-breath for a range-stomp. Or trigger the opponents switch on the train-map or to cover their attack bonus tile while you pressue them at the same time. Don't just drop bamboo for sight-blocking, use it for really crucial moments to get maximum value. The bamboo should immediatly give you a direct benefit or it will just be a waisted move/piece.
4. Avoid getting AOE at all costs, your healing SUCKS worst than any team other than TF2. And in a ways you heal worse than TF2 because your guys don't self heal, but you get 3 healers instead of two, so that helps. To avoid AOE don't pump out a ton of guys when facing TF2, Dwaves etc. who have massive AOE options, you can't afford to heal lots of guys at the same time.
5. Monks are expendable, let the opponent focus on them, they just hold your fronts. The 25% reduction is nice if you can get it in before your Monk dies, but don't rely on it.
6. Poison: sometimes its better to not KO a guy, cause then your poison vaporizes. It's better to injure some guys and to not KO until you can actually stomp (guy, with bamboo or Shadow)
7. Shadow: best use it to deter a "swap" of units, since you can range stomp and rez with it. Range 3 also helps to get combos out. Beware though that the Shadow will STRIP all your buffs from you OWN guys as well as opponent guys, so don't rely on him to rez your own guys! (if upgraded)
8. Crystal kill presure is very important, you want to tank yourway towards a crystal assault stance while making any attack against you be w/i range of multiple Shaolin guys so that you can get multiple attack-multipliers vs retaliation.
 
So the two main strategies I've seen working (for me or against me) thus far are:
 
A) You position yourself for a Crystal Kill, use bamboo to grab Crystal Assault squares and force the opponent to attack you (making you get multipliers very easily against them, possibly rezing them to fight against the opponent)
 
B) Harass attacks where you first pre-poison the enemy, or slash them with AOE windblades and go for a head-long assault.
 
Between the two, B) is harder because your Windblade isn't as good as a Grenadier at harassing because he has to use sometimes 3 or 4 AP to engage and retreat, leaving him with only 1 or 2AP attack with. A Grenadier can very often use 3 AP of the 5 to attack and only 1 to engage because of the range... so AOE is not you best suit. It is better to get AOE with a combo. So one guy moves forward, creates a threat (maybe via poison or via some initial AOE) and then the opponent either has to start swapping guys (which you will win if you have more guys ina small area and they don't have AOE advantage) or they have to pull back, in which case you gained ground to go for option A) or more of B).
 
Biggest weaknesses:
 
Very vulnurable to AOE because of very poor healing capabilities. (Council heals more + potions, DE heal themselves and range 3, Tribe does mass-healing, Dwarves have high armor values and self heal... TF2 medics self heal! Shaolin? hmm)
 
Hard to get high-damage output unless you already have lots of guys in range of the target at the start of your turn. So positioninf is crucial! Don't waist APS moving around, secure the center of the map!
 
(Okay controlling the center of the map is important for ANY team I supose)
 
Hope this helps.
;-)

 
Even then it's painful to equip the poisoner. 650 base HP, why ;_;
 
 

A +3 Windblade on an attack tile, backed by a Taoist is a royal pain in the assault. Team her with a twin and your opponent will hate the sac they'll have to make.