I've been contemplating something like this to let me put something reasonably balanced on the table using the starter + the support pieces I'd gotten for vanilla YJ. Starter Army + What I got ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 1 RYŪKEN (CH: Limited Camouflage) Heavy Rocket Launcher, Antipersonnel Mines / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 23) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) KUROSHI RIDER Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33) KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 21) YURIKO ODA Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust, D-Charges, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 24) KEISOTSU Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 17) KEISOTSU Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) DAIYŌKAI Red Fury, Panzerfaust / Pistol, DA CC Weapon, AP CC Weapon. (1 | 49) ONIWABAN Submachine Gun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CCW. (0 | 37) GROUP 2 3 TOKUSETSU EISEI Doctor (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14) YÁOZĂO Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) KEISOTSU (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10) HÙSÒNG Yaókòng HMG / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 25) 5 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
Well I got some games in this weekend, and so far I am quite pleased with the new JSA I must say. I didn't manage to get all units to their full potential during the fights, but here are some highlights: Daiyokai + Haris: During the Supplies Mission I used a Daiyokai Haris Team with 2 Domarus (one of them the Forward Observer) to push towards the middle supplies box, opening it up with the Domaru, and then carrying away the content with the Daiyokai back to safety while the rest of the Domaru stayed behind to continue their advance. A Daiyokai in Suppressive Fire with a Red Fury in the corner of a room apparently was more than enough to make my enemy think twice about going for that package, which meant that I had one package secured for good for the rest of the game. Sadly it didn't get to attack anything, so I can't say much about its real combat potential yet. The remaining Forward Observer then proceeded towards the next box, while the other one I pushed up the field to take out a Myrmidon in close combat (it was a practice match as my Aleph opponent was quite new, so I tried to show him different stuff like CC...) Ryuken Unit 9: I have to say this unit is worth its weight in gold, I used at least one of them every battle, and the mid field mine precense as well as the threat of shock ammunition and ODD help the JSA a lot in terms of defense, making it way harder for your opponents to simply overrun you should you get unlucky and not have turn 1. I used them alongside Yojimbo and once even a O-Yoroi...and the combination of Crazy Koalas + Mines is glorious to behold, and will usually ensure that you'll have quite a bit of punching power left when your turn arrives. Too bad it's not a specialist, as I felt lacking in number of specialists on the frontlines every now and then, but one can't have everything I guess. I also tried out the Heavy Rocket Launcher one, but it didn't get to do anything as my enemy rightly assumed a threat behind the Camo Marker and didn't dare venture into line of sight of it with any worthwhile target. Tanko + Musashi: For the lolz I tried out the new Tanko + Musashi Haris Fireteam, and while I didn't get to murder stuff up close, they still shoot down a Hassassin Impersonator that dispersed into their field of view (unlucky guy really..) and then proceeded to murder a Azrail (or whatever that guys name is...the dude with the heavy armour, minelayer and heavy rocket launcher) with a Flammenspear, greatly benefiting from the +1 Burst of the Haris there. I really can't wait to try out the Tanko more, they have so much potential to do enormous amounts of damage, and their close combat capabilities really limits your opponents options of dealing with them....if he/she doesn't have extremely good odds or smoke coverage, your enemy most likely won't want to engage these bad boys at any range...though that's true for most things I guess... Kuroshi Rider (Lieutenant): Since I played Supplies twice that day I thought to myself....hell why not try out this beauty? Pushing forward looking cool while grabbing some objectives can't hurt. And that's basically what she did :-P I pushed forward, murdered a TO Spec Seargent who had ventured too far ahead and got blinded by my Warcors the previous turn, then proceeded to open the box, grab the objective and transport it back to my deployment zone, with as little orders as possible really. After I delivered the package to a waiting Keisotsu Cheerleader Fireteam, she then proceeded to the other side of the table where my Ninja sadly had failed in her duty to recover the other box, and secured that one as well....good girl! Sadly a Kempei is 100% needed when fielding her as a lieutenant, at least when you play her as suicidal as I do....but it's kuroshi rider damn it, safe and sound is not the way of the game with her! Oniwaban with SMG: I didn't get much good use out of the Oniwaban when I previously used it, mostly because I was still quite unexperienced back then, or grossly miss deployed him. This time my Oniwaban put in work, taking out two Specialists of my enemy as well as locking down the approach to one of the supply boxes as well as the unit holding the other box. The SMG in suppressive fire in cover somewhere in the middle of the table can be quite a effective scare tactic, though this obviously puts the Oniwaban at great risk. Keisotsu + Kempei + Yuriko Oda Fireteam: Didn't do much for me other than cheerleading really....I tried to cover a area of the battlefield with the Keisotsu's Missile launcher, but with only BS 13 even in the Fireteam, it was simply murdered with the first order of my enemy, leaving the area wide open...the additional mine from Yuriko Oda (in this game I fielded 2 ODD Ryuken, 1 HRL Ryuken and Yuriko, so 4 Mines right from the get go) was nice though. It's not that expensive for cheerleading though, and allowed me to use Kuroshi Rider very aggressively and have some specialists in the backline should my other ones fail in their duty and I'd have to take desperate steps. O-Yoroi (Lieutenant): I used this one against my Haqqislam opponent, and it was quite fun. My opponent failed his impersonation with his Hassassins, but just for fun we tried out what would have happened should he have succeeded, and obviously his Hassassin was no long term match against the O-Yoroi, dealing 1 wound to him before getting blown away by the Crazy Koalas.....so against assassinating Haqqislams....a TAG Lieutenant is obviously a fun choice :-P But since he didn't actually get to attack the O-Yoroi, I instead used it to sweep across one flank, murdering several of his units easily and then positioning myself on top of a small building in suppressive fire, basically forcing him to deal with it if he ever wanted to have access to that half of the table again.....at this point however he had little left to take on the O-Yoroi, so this move basically finished the game. He's not much better than before unless you face other TAGS, but he's still the best we got, and a TAG is a TAG is a TAG after all :-P Overall Summary: Playing the JSA felt fastly different from playing ISS or Vanilla Yu Jing like I did the last 1-2 years obviously.....it can be quite hard to deal with long range threats, especially if they have MSV2 as that will cause trouble for your Ninjas/Ryuken or even Yojimbo, and getting that turn 1 is really preferable in most situations for JSA as you really don't want to give your opponent much chance to adapt to your battleplan and block even more routes of advance than he might already have done at the start. The Ryuken, Tanko, O-Yoroi, Remotes, and obviously the Oniwaban are however very potent tools to rip open lanes of advance, and once you are in the mid field , things will get interesting for you and very hard for your opponent to get rid of you. In all my games I quickly managed to take care of whatever infiltrators/skirmishers or other mid field units my enemy could deploy against me, and quickly pushed my enemy back into his own deployment zone, which made it very hard for them to reach any of the objectives without spending a lot of orders on semi optimal movement. On the drawback I had to realize that I used a 10 order lists in 2 of the 3 games because the cool stuff is simply expensive, and with the need to get in close to deal the damage on most occasions, I could only do a few decisive attack moves each round before quickly running out of steam and having to think about preparing for the reactive turn, often resulting in me having to stop a push for an objective or a flank halfway through...which was an odd feeling for me compared to my ISS where I could fuel my Su-Jian with 10 orders easily should I choose to. So yeah....so far so good, I like what I'm seeing, I hope I can continue to play to the strengths of the JSA and not get outplayed by my opponents or run out of steam too early in the future as well, it certainly is a challenge to do so, but a fun one!
@barakiel Regarding the SMG Ryuken, what gives me pause from declaring these the most awesome profile ever is expecting a warband unit to trolololol all over her with a direct template weapon. She starts closer, only threatens close range, and ODD won't save her. Did you get "lucky" on having opponents with low investment in cheap template weapons? Did you find good positioning (support fire, minelayer, etc) kept her well protected? Were your opponents warbands otherwise occupied?
Good question. It's been interesting to see that the Ryuken-9 SMG has drawn mixed reactions from the community, so I'm happy to sing her praises. Usually for midfield units that don't have a Marker state, I do a couple of successive waves of defense. First is just deploying her initial mine up ahead of her, as you say, so the attacking warband has to Dodge/tank the mine before the Ryuken-9 can be engaged. It's a good start. And ultimately, Chain Rifles aren't high-probability weapons. My arithmetic isn't great, but I think the chance of a Chain Rifle bypassing her Dodge, followed by her ARM, is only 24.75%. When I factor in the Warband having to get past a mine, then navigate my Flash Pulse Keisotsu or MSV2 Kempetai watching the Ryuken-9's back, then she Dodges/tanks the hit, the likelihood of a Chain Rifle doing her in is pretty low. The times I did lose Ryuken-9 SMGs to templates in my games so far, it was usually after a 5 or 6 Order expenditure by my opponent (a decent trade for 24 points) or me initiating the attack in my turn to take down something key (sure, I'll take that Posthuman Nanopulser or Galwegian Chain Rifle hit if it gives me 3 unopposed Shock shots and stops you rampaging in my DZ.) You can always Doctor the Ryuken-9 back up from a Chain Rifle hit too. The best defense too of course is just being careful to not overextend my deployment if I'm worried about my units. Deploying on a rooftop, or even very close to my own DZ when necessary, are always good choices. After playing with Locusts and Peacemakers for years, Ryuken-9 (cheaper, minelayer, Shock) backed up by MSV2 options with even more Shock (Kempetai, Rui Shi) are very well suited for warband fighting. If you give her a turn to drop another mine or two and then go into Suppressive, suddenly your opponent has to lay a lot of smoke and then succeed at multiple Dodges just to get a chance to fire that template at her, and at the end of that Order expenditure, she may still Dodge/pass her save. As for being close range, she's better out to 24 inches than any Combi wielder in the Sectorial, which is fantastic. A Combi from 16-24 is -6 vs a target in cover, while the Ryuken-9's only -3 of course, and the enemy's chance to hit back is low/null unless they're Spitfire rangebands or better. She can even do the aggressive flanking thing, giving up her Partial Cover to flank the target for a better shot, which is a nice option to have.
I'll be honest, the Ryuken is the main reason I'm temporarily holding off on Domaru/Tankos, because I kind of want to run lists with 3 Ryuken, 1 HRL and 2 SMG.
