I've never used Yuan Yuans, but I always assumed one would just drop them in, use their irregular order to take a shot at something or smoke out an ARO piece, then leave them alone to be chain rifle speedbumps on the opponent's turn. I find it's rarely worth ramboing with a chain rifle, everyone can just dodge and it's only b1 dam 13 anyway, so you don't end up doing very much damage for the number of orders you have to spend.
@QueensGambit I don't use their chain rifles more than once per turn. But getting them to the needed position is another story. For how little they can do, spending 5 or so orders on them is very punishing. Usually, I do drop them via Inferior Combat Jump, but I had my fair share of games where they got scattered and died to a free ARO shot. Points- and orders-wise, losing them is not a big deal, but they are a valuable DZ disruption tool that can wreak havoc if dropped properly. There's nothing like dropping a smoke near the Daoying camo marker and then assassinating him with the intuitive attack. Long story short, I developed a habit of valuing them more than they're worth. It's just that, there are so many things in the enemy DZ that can ruin your day even if you're in the full core link, and it's easy to get addicted to Yuan Yuans after you see what they can do.
Yup, EVO kameel is a good investment in such lists and I tend to take it more often than not. It is also an all-around useful toolbox with the supportware programs.
Never had such issues, since I always have the EVO and have only one Yuan in each group. I see them more as a tool-box. One is mainly providing smoke for my Djanbazan, while the other one is a passive speed-bump or makes use of deployment-mistakes. Everything of this does not take more than four orders in most cases. You are right, they can not to everything, because they are not good enough for all this jobs and you have better things for serious tasks. But if you restrict yourself to a few support-tasks, they are a real added value!
Usually if the the table allow me to enter from side I deploy one in my dz, one enter from side table and if the previous two are alive I spend one order to cancel the impetuous order and use him on 2nd turn.
That sounds like a good mantra. Funny thing is, I cannot even remember the last time I had a successful yuan yuan blitzkrieg murdering the enemy cheerleaders because my regular IA opponent doesn't even have cheerleaders most of the time – one baggage/flash bot at most. I might even want to try using all of them in my DZ or airborne-infiltrating them into the midfield instead of the enemy DZ. Have them smoke the objective approaches and all that. @Doa I've never tried spending a regular order delaying the impetuous troops before. Does it prove stressful on your opponent when they know you have one more warband in store?
I agree that a support role is the way to go. Sometimes that means hitting Dr. Worm with a chain rifle but many times just getting smoke down or leaving them as guards is fine too. It has been a long long time since I've had a warband do a lot of damage on either side, and that was a krakot that took like 10 arm rolls to do it.
True story. I just started playing QK recently, and I’m trying to get a handle on things. My friend just started playing IA, and he’s cycling through stuff to practice for Rumble. We’re playing show of force. Now, he doesn’t really rate the guijia, but thought he’d give it a spin. His first turn, guijia shuffles up, takes cover and enters suppression fire. It basically makes a third of the table no mans land for me. My first turn: yuan yuan jumps in, opposite side of a building from the guijia. He hacks transport but I still stick the landing. Booty roll: E/M grenades. I spend YY’s irregular on a spec fire grenade toss. Hit. Failed BTS. KTS run roughshod over the TAG. My friend felt partly vindicated about the guijia, but also felt like that was an unlikely series of events, so he’ll try again. FWIW, the other YY failed his landing and deviated right into LOF of every member of his Hai Dao sniper link.
Yeah I'm not saying anything about the guija but that is very unlikely to happen against especially if he covered it.
Has your friend read @daboarder 's primer? I personally don't rate the Guija in IA. But that mostly seems luck / bad play. Playing vs QK, you know YYs are going to drop turn one, so pushing your TAG early is asking for trouble. Even without the EM Grenades, smoke + putting 1-2 YYs in B2B with it is a viable option to pin it down efficiently. Honestly playing vs QK that's one of the greatest advantages of YYs: you need to not over extend because you're likely to have to deal with YYs dropping in behind.
@AssaultUnicorn I cancel the impetuous if I have already two of them alive on the table,not important if deployed, infiltrated or jumped. I believe that two on the table are enough to put smoke, make some damages and having enough orders to play them smartly. Deploying the last yy on 2nd turn could be an ugly surprise for a distracted opponent and can give me another tool for damaging haris/solo pieces without msv. By my experience rarely i manage to ramboing yy, too often it depends by table, landed rolls and aros. Smart opponent, knowing to play against qk, will deploy his cheerleader scattered through the dz. In addition having three yy on field, your opponent will spent his 1st turn to kill them and the flash bot and is good when your opponent spent order to make unimportant kills but losing smoke forces you to gunfight I manage to play 3yy in group with 3 flashbot, kameel Evo and warcor, because Evo repeater are too valuable with his +3 bonus to combat jump and the option to give b2 in aro to flashbot Take all my words with a grain of salt, I am not a great player and currently I am playing with tactical window to train for Italian satellite. Sorry if isn't wrote in good english
Yeah, during our debrief on the game, I acknowledged that the guijia thing was a solid move on his part. Outside of landing outside of LOF I couldn’t really approach the tag without getting smeared. One of the things we acknowledge, though, is that “dice happen,” and when the odds aren’t in your favor, what are the options for recovery? So we talk about how to change things up to give ourselves a fallback and such.
I consider that a bad move for me to exploit. Watch her back. Maybe your meta isn't as AD heavy as mine but you can teach them. edit: I sound like kind of a jerk but I'm just saying it wasn't only luck. Getting it IMM2 in so few orders was luck. But you had tools to counter that and could have pulled it off without the grenade.
This is why we play when the stakes are low... Keep in mind, though, this is one part of a larger tactical and strategic picture. IA lacks bodies a lot of the time, so “perfect defense” isn’t always realistic. Also, he’d lost some to my AROs. For my part, he knew my YYs were in group 2 because he knew what all was in group 1. He eliminated the regular orders in group 2, so the possible damage from YYs was as contained as possible. On both sides of the table, I had to deal with a hard target on ARO. Yuan Yuans jumping is just better than 50% at the best of times, and he forced that into a f2f for good measure. Was it only luck? No. Luck played a part, but I did make a pretty good choice. Did he make a mistake? Arguably yes, given the outcome. However, he took actions to mitigate the risk he knew he was taking. Will he calculate risk differently given this experience? Probably. I ended up winning that game, 3-0, based solely on points killed. I eventually broke through, but couldn’t complete the mission. Sometimes you lose, but if your gonna lose, lose small, right?
With how my batreps are going, this thread slowly turns from "learning to play QK" to "learning to play against IA" lol. Today's game of Supplies saw a Yuan Yuan land behind the linked Shang Ji HRL and not only survive his CC attack but outright kill him. We've talked about how chain rifles feel week against HI link teams, and I now start to think that hitting the enemy in a CC attack with yuan yuan's DA CCW is a more preferable option. In that very same game, I was fielding the core of kaplans and, well, their performance was kinda meh. The sniper managed to kill a poorly positioned tacaware zuyong in one burst and then held his position, waiting for the Haidao to go out into the open with the 4-man link and try shooting his 3 B 13 BS against kaplan's 2 B 18 BS aro. The kaplan rolled a 2 and a 20. The Haidao landed all three shots, one of them being a crit. For the record, here are the dice calculator stats: Now, I understand that this situation is very unlikely to happen in general, but it made me consider using some other, cheaper fire teams. Kaplan Core costs only a little bit cheaper than a Janissary core with Hafzas and Bill. And they don't seem to be doing well against IA, or maybe it's that I lost my mojo. Another bad habit I got is the tunnel vision of "screw the mission objectives, I'm gonna be killing your models throughout the entire game". The IA guy I'm playing against is very "in-your-face" with his attack and aro pieces and that forces me to deal with them instead of doing the objectives, and it makes it extremely easy for you to just punch each other and not score any objective points. This also leads to habits like "first turn good second turn bad". Anyway, I need to try using some toolbox units to help accomplish my objectives and maybe also bring back Feuerbach Azra'il out of the shelf for some ARO duties.
A mistake with the power of hindsight. If it worked it would not have been :) I just dislike chalking things up to only luck as much as only skill. You had a very high chance of at least removing his LoS by getting engaged, which would give you options. I have a very bad habit of going for unlikely victory over guaranteed ties. I'm not cut out for tournament play.
@AssaultUnicorn well sometimes crazy rolls happens... If your sniper Kaplan will be killed all the times despite having very good odds you can think about some macumba or jinx :) 10 days ago I played against a dashat link made with 4 zuyong+Valerya, and in 2nd turn i manage to put a chain rifle template all over the fireteam and I killed Valerya and all zuyong took a wound... Who would have ever bet about this result? XD
Don't get yourself boxed in the struggles you have against IA. I experienced them as a quite unique opponent. So you need a special strategy, which is only valid for them. If you have to play against other factions, your recent conclusions may be wrong (but aren't in general). You know I am a fan of cheap defensive links, so nothing to say about this. Chainrifles against HIs are more an opener as a solution and with Kaplans it is the same as with Druze in QK: too expensive for what they add in a full link. What works for me most of the time is to have a bunch of bodies, consuming the attack-force and some button-pushers to score the objectives. To accomplish both, IA is not always flexible and mobile enough. Take some Hawwas for midfield-struggle, all Fanous, some Ghulams and you have 150 points left for fun and button-pushing!
