Only situation I find using empress myself would be in ranked battle, deals decent aoe and enemies rarely coordinate well against it, so its a cheap/effective way of utilizing 3 free-ish ninjas when you don't have full access to a godly 12 lineup.

But indeed, in 4v4, Empress is too easily countered/broken apart. The only issue I have with windmain is the lack of other viable builds that could not be done with another main. The typical prenerf-Tobi builds are so much better with fire main (you don't have to run kurenai) + longer combo/more damage, even with lightning main variant. (Tobi+Hinata+__Main__+Sasuke/Kakashi (combo linker)). The summon build is interesting, but I feel is about equal to empress power, and both behind Tobi lineups. So for a cheap effective team, I would not recommend wind at all.

One way to actually abuse wind is to consider what does it actually have that the others don't. It actually turns out that the hurricane attack is quite potent, 0 chakra no battlefield cooldown skill. So you can essentially cast it for free along with another 20 chakra mystery + possibly some others with a bigger reserve at turn 1 and cause a 4v3 situation. So while tobi can guarantee a Turn 2 wreckage, as a wind main you can potentially kill their main linker turn 1, which breaks apart many lineups that rely on turn 2 for damage.

Good Ninjas for this:

Temari: T1 hurricane jutsu + 20 chakra to team for another T1 skill
Iruka: Damage buff + Turn 1 skill
Wind Blade Asuma: Damage Buff + 20 chakra to team for T1 skill
Gaara: T1 Barrier buff, giving 40% damage buff to wind
GNW Neji: Turn 1 skill + 16 hit combo starter/acupuncture.
Shurado: High T1 damage
Ochimaru SW: Abuse clones for T1 chakra for other skills, proceed to weaken/kill with mystery T2 and can possibly chain if your target didn't die turn 1.
Baki: Ninjutsu wind passive buff, assassination debuff, strong T2 assassin mystery as well.


Just thoughts to consider, if you glass cannon T1, 4v3 becomes much more manageable. I feel wind is not strong enough to win without taking an early advantage.