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Reinventing JSA: Some Thoughts

Discussion in 'Japanese Secessionist Army' started by barakiel, Jul 19, 2019.

  1. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    That's basically what they did historically in 1947, used all their contacts to change from politically powerful to economically powerful.
     
  2. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    Yeah, this has always been a theme of JSA. I'm pretty sure the fluff contains Japanese people turning to the works of Yukio Mishima, a guy who literally formed a militia to defend the Emperor in the case of a "communist attack." Here's all you really need to know about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima#Coup_attempt_and_ritual_suicide He committed seppuku in 1970. His ideas were always based on a romanticized version of pre-war Japan. If you want to go down the rabbit hole a bit, he wrote a short story called Patriotism (憂国 in Japanese, which kind of has the connotation of "Worry for My Country's Future") that is... certainly interesting.

    The whole idea of samurai castes still existing is kind of ridiculous in the fluff, if anything, social class starts to become irrelevant once there's huge economic inequality the way there is in YJ.
     
  3. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Well, the Edo-era samurai basically all ended up going into business after the Meiji Restoration (1868). The only traditionally-samurai job that stayed in the hands of those families was the police (who were the lowest-ranking samurai in the Edo period).

    Their pride as samurai didn't allow them to be less than perfect at whatever they decided to do, and the traditional master-servant relationships they had with various families helped create the Zaibatsu corporate conglomerates. The Zaibatsu were mostly broken up in 1947, but not completely.
     
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  4. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    And CB is far from the first to do something like this, either. Ehum, Mishima from Mutant Chronicles....
     
  5. eduiguima

    eduiguima Member

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    I'm not that savvy in the game to know what could be done to make JSA more on par with the competitive meta nowdays, all i know is that JSA was the first army i bought and Shikami was part of it, because how cool the mini is. As a first army learning the game, for it really looked like i was playing on hard mode, and i always tried to use the Shikame, but with little effectiveness, and that frustrated me, so i always wondered what i would do to make the profile more effective to new players(i'm not saying he's not effective, but he's really complicated to play well with...).

    The thing is, i don't know how CB could change his profile, as his profile is a little "stiff". I doubt they would change the movement value to 6-2, as only profiles with chemical enhancements, REM or alien races have it (maybe a mobility armor, but i think it's too rich of a technology to JSA). I doubt too they would want to remove Superjump and Climbing plus, as it looks like the fluff of the character is interwined with it (defy gravity and etc). Dual wield, one of the mini has 2 swords i think they would not remove it. Fireteam:Duo is a recurrent skill in many HI, but the easiest one to remove and put something like FD2, and that's it...It's a step foward.

    But with Defiance around the corner, i was thinking that it's an opportunity to introduce new characters in the game (some don't like a lot of named characters but it's a irreversible trend now that some defiance char will be introduced on Infinity..) so i was thinking a Shikami character would be really cool, a old assassin of the Fukuro clan, Taokey Fukuro , a shame to the family for renegading the 2 swords style of fighting and using 2 pistols instead but given a pass because of the exeptional results on missions and disgraced by the clan for killing his brother, is given the chance to embark on the Defiance and if back alive, redeem his honor (Shikami fluff says the Fukuro clan has no honor but i imagine that killing a brother would be too much even for them....).

    Taokey Fukuro, disgraced assassin

    HI, Cube, Regular

    MOV 4-4 / CC 21 / BS 13 / PH 13 / WIP 13 / ARM 3 / BTS 3 / W 2 / S 2 / AVA 1
    Skills & Equipment - ODD. Martial Arts L2, Kinematica L2, Superjump, Climbing Plus, Specialist Operative, Foward Deployment L2, Veteran L1

    Contender, Nimbus Granades, Assault Pistol X2, DA CCW, Knife

    maybe CC21 is too small and a Shame to JSA, so maybe 22 is better like Tanko.

    I think i'm with too much free time on my hands, to write that much....
     
    #85 eduiguima, Aug 12, 2019
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2019
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  6. grampyseer

    grampyseer User of the "ignore" button
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    Hats off guys. This is a decent discussion with polarized view points that hasn't devolved into shrieking: well done.

    I think that JSA need faster Shikami. I like what a 6-2 move might do for the profile.
    I think that JSA need a more durable gunfighter. A Daiyokai that's either tougher or linkable with more units would do the trick.

    I think that those two fixes would do a lot for the fun factor in playing the faction. I have no problem with JSA being a bit lower on the power curve, but you should get to pull off interesting maneuvers during your game.

    I just played in the Gencon Grand prix. The missions were Looting and Sabotage, Rescue, Transmission Matrix, and Unmasking. These missions practically scream "JSA."

    I played Shock Army. Had I taken JSA, I would have had no chance. The tables were far too open to allow moving into JSA's optimal engagement range consistently. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I see to be JSA's biggest hurdle: table skew. If you have a couple of games in sniper's alley, you're hooped. I can say that the faction works very, very well on tables that are individually balanced. But, man, when you play in the feast or famine "dense table here, open table here" dichotomy that seems to creep into tournaments, life can be hard. I'm not sure how to fix it.
     
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  7. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Shikami are very terrain-dependent. They thrive on dense urban tables where they can superjump up the side of a building and land on the roof (MAS District 5 buildings are about perfect), then run and superjump from rooftop to rooftop like an anime ninja.
     
  8. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    Ideally N4 has a big chunk about proper table setup, how many buildings of about what size to include, how much scatter, how many firelanes of about what length should be where -- not rules per se, but guidelines with pictures of what good tables should look like.
     
  9. nehemiah

    nehemiah Well-Known Member

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    Over the weekend I played in an event which used missions pulled from the Daedalus' Fall using the Domaru Karakuri Haris with 2 MK12 Karakuri. The Karakuri are absolute beasts due to Total Immunity, and the Domaru is great as a CC threat to keep units back.

    I think the Daiyokai needs something more than just added durability to make it a solid unit, otherwise it is just competing for space the Karakuri already have a firm lead. Some things I could see for the Daiyokai are either a boost in its CC and MA, (to make it a unit that, while not as durable as the Karakuri, can stand on its own if it gets into CC), or to give it a longer range weapon such as a Heavy Rocket Launcher to give it a battlefield roll as long range support that can defend itself from a skirmisher or two.
     
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  10. eciu

    eciu Easter worshiper

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    Strange I thought all armies and sectorials are equal and its only player preference when it comes to a army/sectorial performance....
     
  11. daszul

    daszul Well-Known Member

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    Well, I think the Daiyokai is pretty competent in CC.
    Maybe it is not his best attack option, but even Achilles might think twice to attack him in CC.
    And the long range support seem to be the Tankos, already.
    The problem is that Fatality L1 is rather weak.
    If he had Total Reaction instead...
    (Or Neurocinetics with a points discount)
     
  12. Andre82

    Andre82 Well-Known Member

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    Yes... some are just a bit more equal lol
    JSA might be bringing a well practiced sword to a gun fight but that sword can still kill you all the same, it's why cops freak out about knives.
     
  13. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Not entirely.

    Armies and sectorials are much closer in power levels in Infinity than in any other tabletop game I have played. But there are still some bad matchups and some player-play-style issues in play with Infinity.

    JSA is not a good army for a player to start learning the game, it is dependent on terrain and CC, both of which take a lot of experience to set up well. This is rather unfortunate due to the aesthetics that are likely to draw new players into the game.
     
  14. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    JSA also has pretty poor specialist selection, which can hurt them a lot depending on the objective.
     
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  15. eciu

    eciu Easter worshiper

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    It's obviously not my opinion. I was just quoting someone ;P
     
  16. csjarrat

    csjarrat Well-Known Member

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    I'd like to see some eclipse smoke, maybe on a mushashi FTO to give him some relevance and better justification for his Harris. I'd also like to see some assault skills given to key CC pieces making the order efficiency of CC much less of a burden on the faction.
     
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  17. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    What if factions that were meant to be using HI had Tactical Awareness on their Rifle and sub-Rifle *mobility* HI? Let's unpack that a bit:
    What if Domaru and Neko had Tactical Awareness on all profiles except the Spitfire, and all those TacAware profiles were 4 points more expensive? Would this drastically shift or benefit JSA list diversity or would the increased cost be too much to be useful?
    I'm considering Tanko to be low mobility HI here, being built without access to Yu Jing tech while Domaru have armour as good as their Samurai could afford.

    (For comparison reasons, also imagine that Guarda, Zuyong, Shang-Ji, Ectros, Haidao, Zhencha, Hulang, Asuras, Hortlak Janissary and Asawira as well as their respective named characters had the same for any profile with weapons with their +3 exclusively in the 0-16" range)
     
  18. Ashtaroth

    Ashtaroth Aragoto GP Organizer
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    At a glance, doesn't that make lists go for more Order spam? You could just include one or two of them and suddenly the link teams have 1-2 extra orders. Meanwhile other factions would be hardpressed to compete, since their seemingly advantage of having more orders than the sturdy guy, quickly vanishes... I dunno...

    As other have said, JSA biggest problem is delivery - since all their weapons work best at close to mid range, only having a few select troops with long range fire - I wouldn't mind some troops being on 6-2 MOV, maybe one or two HI with Forward Deployment, or just Shikami's mobility (really, that guy gets everywhere very quickly, it's nuts!)
     
    #98 Ashtaroth, Sep 23, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2019
  19. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    It is more orders that can only be used on specific models as link leaders, which isn't far removed from having 6-2 movement on non-Terrain surfaces.
    Of course, Shikami would qualify under the rough requirements, I just forgot they exist.
     
  20. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    Except those orders are still at minimum triple the cost of regular orders in JSA. If everything was bumped 4 points for TA, the cheapest order would be the Tanko at 27, which is still triple a keisotsu.

    I think this type of change would make the HI links finally playable in JSA, especially the Haris. If my Domaru Haris is producing 2-3 extra orders each turn for 8-12 points more, that's way more playable. It also makes active turn use of the HI core actually feel decent since it might finally have enough orders to get into a safe position at the end of a turn.
     
    barakiel likes this.
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