Good day fellow mercs, or should I rather say “KONNICHIWA!”? I just finished 2nd in my first season of my FLAGs very own Infinity league, and decided to ramble on a bit about my experiences. I picked up Ikari toward the end of last year I think, after a friend decided that this particular brand of mercenary company wasn’t for him. Back then I still tried to convince myself that Ikari would have such a big overlap with my 2nd hand Yu Jing army, that I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of money on new stuff > insert hysterically laughing emoji here < (The only sculpt that actually overlapped was the ninja from red veil…). At first I was very shaky with Ikari, never having played lists with that many orders before in my Infinity career. But after going 1 in 5 in my first games (a test game, my first league game and then a 3 round tournament), including my first league game vs Onyx Contact Force, it started to look up. In the end I managed to pull off a 5 in 7 record, taking the aforementioned second place behind vanilla Nomads. And here’s what I learned along the way: 1. When picking up a new army it can be well worth it to play a few games with exactly the same list. Once I commited to creating a TAC list and bringing it every time I got better with Ikari much fast than before (when mission tailoring). 2. When you have several impetuous and extremely impetuous models in your army, determining the correct order in which to activate them can be very important. For instance first throwing smoke with a warband in total cover atop another warband to block AROs that it would’ve otherwise received had it been activated first. 3. Don’t forget your impetuous Krakot order. This happened to me serveral times. And once you spend a regular order this one is lost. 4. Wu Ming don’t have cubes. This means no re-rolls when reviving them. Which in turn means my early favorite haris (Wu Ming HMG, Wu Ming Haris, Brawler Doctor) suddenly looks a lot less attractive. 5. When a Doctor is too expensive for your list, and all you want to heal is your Tanko anyway, a Keisotsu Paramedic is better than nothing. 6. EVO Hackers aren’t necessary to play Ikari. They’re really not. I didn’t ever bring one and it never bothered me one bit. Usually the only model in my core link that’s visible is my Tanko, and when he goes down that link isn’t useful for me anymore anyway (other than for orders). And there are PLENTY of great offensive pieces to spend orders on. 7. Ninjas are really good in CC. Duh. Also, Ninjas really suck at shooting things. 8. Just because you deployed your core link in a defensive ARO position doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider moving them across the board to get at your opponent from unexpected angles. Especially if you brought a MSV2 Brawler along and get to drop smoke to cover the advance/planned shooting lane. 9. Never ever activate your Rui Shi without throwing Assisted Fire on it first (lost a firefight with Major Luna because I wanted to save that order -.-) 10. My Krakots are incapable of rolling either of the 6-4 movement results on the Metachemestry table. In all seriousness though, Krakots for me personally are great on paper, but factually had a lot less impact in my games than expected. 11. Learning how the get the most out of your Yuan Yuans is well worth it. That includes consideration if you’re better served to drop them in or walk them on. 12. Karakuri in Viral Outbreak (Dire Foes) are just mean. I didn’t realize until round 3 that they have structure, too, so I do feel slightly less bad for bringing two :D BONUS: Surprise-FOing a target with a Ninja and then lobbing indirect EM-Grenades at them with a Druze link is something I really would’ve liked to do, but never got to :_( So there you have it, 12 nuggets of wisdom (maybe?). And to anyone still on the fence, playing Ikari so far has been an absolute blast. From the sheer terror/annoyance that Yuan Yuans create, to the immovable object that the linked Tanko is, and the guided missile Yojimbo that EVERY opponent has been super scared of – Ikari is a ton of fun! Try it!
All great points and thanks for the write-up. If I may add a few things too. 6. I agree the EVO is not a must. But ti’s really nice when you have it because it can do more than just keep your link going or the +3 to drop troops. 7. They do suck at regular shooting but are fantastic in suppression against armies without MSV! 9. Amen brother. I forget all of the time! 11. Or, just deploy them normally! Deploy the like you would with Shaolin in YJ. Put it next to the Rui Shi and you are ready to go! 12. Karakuri have become one of the best troops in the game i feel. Mini specialist TAGs.
Mass impetuous is the thing I struggle with most in Ikari, but that's mainly a product of the factions I've learned the game with which have virtually no impetuous. As far as EVOs go I include one for a variety of reasons, and none of those are TeamPro. Don't get me wrong, I think TeamPro is really good, I just never find myself with the order spare to turn it on. In my horde list the EVO is there for 3 reasons; +3 to YY drop is the main one, pretty self-explanatory Saves me having to grab another basic hacker to Assisted Fire the Rui Shi Baggage. The horde list does not retain its points very well at all, and having a little bit of baggage really helps push those VPs up for tie-breaks.
Would you consider putting TeamPro up using a command token if going second? Once active it sticks around for the entire game.
Generally not. My command tokens almost exclusively go to turning Irregular orders Regular. I think it's usually better to add redundancy into your Ikari lists, like the Brawler+Tanko haris to sub into the core with it inevitably breaks.
Pretty reasonable. My advice to locals playing the faction is basically a carbon copy of yours but with less authority or experience, so it'll be good to point them here now in future :)
Rob, you're being far too fair an reasonable for someone on the internet. Just to make sure you haven't got your wires crossed, I'm not the OP here, but @BlackCadian 's write up is super solid.
Wow, thanks for the many good replies! Glad you found this useful! Hey, thanks for the comment and the additional great points! That ninja in suppressive is a great idea, and yes, I also noticed that a babysitter with smoke is something I have to provide next time. Now if CB would only bring out some sweet new Karakuri sculpts... :) You know what, your second point on EVOs is one that actually is something I hadnt considered for some reason. I have a list with a Rui Shi and a Lu Duan, and was never really happy with the Keisotsu hacker that I had to bring along in my link for Assisted Fire. I’ll see if I cant make this work with an EVO instead, thanks!
In my completly unbiased opinion point 8 is a terrible idea and you should never ever do it again. I mean what sort of twat of an oponnent would just asume the links stays put and not position for it? Not me, obviously. We pandas are always prepared. And thus such a dominant species, that we nearly take over everything.
