Just played an interesting game against Bert. 500 points no figure limit. He went with Romans x6, Marcus, Me-Burq-Sa, and Marro Warriors. I played Admiral EJ-1M, Crimson Widow, Izumi Samurai (as pirates), Dreadnaughts, and Kate Crawford as filler.
It took me a few turns to get the hang of the synergy, and I definitely regret some early placement choices. I got lucky that Me-Burq-Sa did no damage to an Izumi from range (and in fact got counterstruck to death when engaged). Then it was all Admiral churning through romans, with 1 Izumi sitting on Wannok for 2 rounds killing two more. All told, Admiral killed 16 romans on his own while the Dreadnaughts and Izumi screened for him. Unfortunately, he fell to the Marro Warriors (after taking 2 earlier wounds from romans) with only 3 MWs, 4 scattered romans, and a Marcus left on the field. I conceded as it was not a winnable endgame for Kate with water on the map.
I had several chances to win. The big strategical error I made was not realizing Crimson Widow could be moved with Boarding party. When I'd gotten down to only 1 Izumi and 1 dreadnaught, having her in there for the extra attack for the one other bonding turn she took and the boarding party bonus would have been really nice, but she was just sitting near my startzone. I did realize eventually, and she was key to some more Roman kills, but it was too late. The other chance I had was an initiative flip where Admiral cleared out 3 romans and left an exposed Marcus to a 4-dice and 5-dice attack from the remaining two dreadnaughts at the end of the round, but Bert won initiative and managed to evade devastating mortal blows. A dead or severely wounded Marcus would've really changed the game. The final chance was Admiral blanking his last wound away to a Marro Warrior attack from low ground...would have been a tight endgame for sure.
Final thoughts: Admiral EJ-1M is quite good. He consistently killed romans every turn, sometimes up to 3, completely ruining shield wall and stringing out the romans still in the start zone while moving pirates around to keep him protected. His base stats hold him back. Bert attacked him 3 times. A 3v6, a 2v6, and a 3v7, but that was enough to put 3 wounds on him and send him to Davy Jones' locker thanks to some poor defense dice. That fragility will hold this army back from being top tier. One more life or one more defense and moves from quite good to very good.
The Izumi are by far the best Hire Crew squad for Widow, although I think Tarn might fare okay. Nothing else comes close to these two for Admiral purposes, with Izumi easily at the top. The Dreadnaughts are good simply because they are the most survivable of the unique pirate squads. Any of the other unique pirate squads fold like paper, and having an extra figure doesn't do much when ideally you're screening mainly with Izumi. Admiral is the key piece in all of this, especially with the added toolkit bonus of being able to flex OMs to the Dreadnaught hero killers/heavy hitters after seeing the initiative outcome, or possibly even Izumi if you really need some key repositioning. I think after all the rounds we played, I only ever put 1 OM on Izumi (first round 1st OM to get them developed) and 2 on dreadnaughts (first round 2nd OM to develop them and Izumi with Widow's Midnight Raid, 1 later hoping for some mortal blows on Marcus with a 4v3 from the single remaining dreadnaught, which failed). It's an amazing army, and has the potential to be competitive with some practice.