Hello! After I tried Infinity almost 3.5 years ago (at that time with USAriadna), but ended it again, I am now starting a new attempt. So the game is not entirely new to me. This time I chose the Minis I like and then chose my group. It has become JSA. I read that they are not so easy to start with, but if I start right away, it will be fine. The first boxes have been ordered and are expected. There are: - JSA Sectorial Army Pack (logical, best entry) - Domaru Butai Box (high-tech samurai ...) - both Shikami minis Well, I'm not even asking for a list. I rather ask where the JSA has its strengths and weaknesses and how do my minis fit in there? What do I have to pay attention to, what tricks are there? Which minis can / should you play aggressively, where should you be careful? It would be nice if you could share your knowledge! Thanks in advance!
First off: Willkommen, i started with JSA myself and am still pretty new myself and by no way a competitive player. If you play for fun and aren´t totally competitive you will be fine. JSA as it is is a pretty agressive army and shines in close quarter Combat and i don´t necessarily mean Meelee. But that is actually a viable tool for JSA opposed to a lot of other armies. Domaru are absolute monsters in CC that can kill/neutralize almost anything even if it costs their own life due to berserk and great Weapons. T The JSA isn´t good in shooting it´s way out of the deployment zone since we only have 3 options for HMGs and the Keisotsu aren´t really something you want to attack with. So there is one point to work around. My experience was that coordinated orders with Tanko ML, Karakuri or Daiyokai Panzerfausts can work against ARO pieces. But another tool in JSAs box are the superb Infiltrators with the Oniwaban and Ninjas. These guys can do a lot of work! From Alphastrikes(Oniwaban), Specialist duty(Ninja), decapitation, killing TAGs with Monofilament... They will find a way. Generally your Samurai really like smoke to screen of their approach so i Strongly recommend to get yojimbo since he is a cheap way to get smoke access (other ways beeing Shinobu and Saito), Kuroshi has smoke too since N4. Both of them will eventually die since they are impetuous bikers but thats what we get. Yojimbo is great in many ways , he is incredibly fast, has crazy coalas, smoke and can kill most things in CC. Another great option is the Ryuken 9. especially the smg one can be a real pain in the ass when placed in Supressive fire and in cover the opponent has a -12 to hit when he has no MSV2 and because of the X-visor you hit your opponent on 12 when out of cover up to 24 inches, with AP or Shock ammunition. Karakuri are really good with 3 Structure and total immunity they can take a lot of punishment. The MK12 and Multirifle options are my favorites. just keep them out of meelee! The Rui shi and lu duan are two other great pieces i would strongly recommend. They are great discount attackpieces. I recently came to love the lu duan with its Heavy flamethrower and MSV1 burning entire lfireteams to a crisp through smoke... The O-Yoroi is a TAG with Marital arts 3, Stealth, crazy coalas and an AP-HMG, he is one of the best gunfighters in JSA and no Slouch in CC too. He can escape hackers through stealth (all of our HI can do that as well wtih cautious movement when the opponent hasn´t Sixth sense) which is neat. The model has aged pretty well in my opinion, but you can always proxy it for another TAG (the Guijia comes to mind). My Recommendation is to play and try things out . There are a lot of great profiles and different ways to play JSA you could build a List with Just bikes and REMS for example, go Samurai heavy with Domaru, Tanko and the Daiyokai, play a game of hide and seek with lots of Ninjas, Muderdolls that just won´t die, or a mix of everything. As i said at the start i am not extremly experienced myself since i started infinity not quite two years ago and haven´t gotten in as many games as i would like, but i hope it helps even if it´s just a little bit.
One thing about JSA is you are going to be playing asymmetrically towards almost every opponent you'll come up against. JSA has a strong turn 1 alpha strike capability but in lists that don't really have all the tools you'll need and not as aggressive JSA lists you'll be have to learn to play around your opponent. Don't ever make it a fair fight cause you will lose on avarage just by stats and having worse guns. You'll need to learn to throw smoke in areas you need to push forward in and run ninjas and oniwabans to take key pieces out or even just to break the mooks from the fireteams to cripple them. One thing you'll learn is what JSA is good at they are kinda avarage compared to other armies that are also good at the things JSA does. JSA has a decent midfield defense with ryuken minelayers and our access to crazy koalas but its nowhere near as good as Ariadna or spiral cor. JSA has an abundance of TO infiltrators to scalpel out key assassination targets but we dont do it as well as impersonators like fidays and speculos. JSA has a lot of CC but not many good delivery methods like SP has to push teams of good gunfighters who are also CC monsters up the board. When you play JSA your way to win is how you'll answer these questions to come out on top as an underdog faction. We have varios combos of certain playstyles that lead to a unique one other factions don't and it forces us to play around conventional strategies that other armies just take a linked HMG to answer.
