Bikes in the new JSA.

I find that all bike lists either crash and burn or shred your opponent. which i suppose is thematic.

The list effectiveness is highly dependent on mission and what your opponent is playing. going first helps.... a lot. generally, if you leave a bike out in the open, it's dead. the key is trying to hide them on reactive turn.

to be honest, there isn't a whole lot of ways to build "all bike" lists. what you have here looks fairly standard, yet effective for something like Quad control of firefight. I played something very similar at 200 points and it did fairly well.

 

I haven't really tried a full biker list in the new JSA yet, mainly cause there's too many fancy toys I want to test first and biker lists haven't changed that much. I do love me some bikers though, and Yojimbo will always find a spot in my lists if I can somehow manage to.

I do agree however from my past experience with biker lists....they either win in a blaze of glory, or crash and burn hard :-P

 

I think one problem you'll run into with all bikes is problems dealing with well placed long-range AROs. Even with the high movement and Mimetism bikes bring, you likely won't have the firepower to deal with mimetic snipers in cover (except maybe on the Spitfire, and even that could be mixed depending on range bands), and the alternative is smoke, which is really expensive.

 

Did you just say my boy Yojimbo was expensive? Cause for what he does he's not I'd say :-P

But yeah, Yojimbo can't be everywhere, and a sniper with MSV2 will make it even harder for bikes to come through. but at least we have some Ryuken/Ninjas/Oniwaban to rip open a way if need be ^^

I think it's about bloody time for a NINJA BIKER or a Samurai Biker to appear! O.O gime that TO Camo Bike! Or that 2 Wounds Armour 3+ Bike! :-P

 

I've been having a lot of fun with the new KHD Aragoto that I thought should have been a profile since before HSN3 dropped.

 

IMO the only change in the Bousouzoku list is swapping Kuroshi Rider for Asuka.

I'd take remotes for the other models, just to have no models on foot.

Japanese Secessionist Army
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 9 1 6
KUROSHI RIDER Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33)
ARAGOTO Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 28)
ARAGOTO (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)
ARAGOTO Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 26)
ARAGOTO Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 26)
YOJIMBO Contender, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 21)
HÙSÒNG Yaókòng HMG / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 25)
WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)
LÙ DUĀN Mk12, Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21)
RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 20)

GROUP 2 3
PANGGULING (Total Reaction, Repeater) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21)
PANGGULING Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25)
CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

6 SWC | 295 Points

Open in Infinity Army

Sadly, too many SWC to take the Smart MLbot.

 

and you can still take a warcor! hahaha!

 

I picked up the bikes a while ago with the intention of building a list that I just never quite finished out. I'm thinking of using the JSA starter to get it done with pretty minimal additions. How does this look?

Japanese Secessionist Army
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 10 3
KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9)
KEISOTSU (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
KEISOTSU (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
KEISOTSU Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 14)
KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 21)
RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24)
RYŪKEN (CH: Limited Camouflage) Heavy Rocket Launcher, Antipersonnel Mines / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 23)
ARAGOTO Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 26)
ARAGOTO (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)
KUROSHI RIDER Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33)

GROUP 2 3 1 3
ONIWABAN Submachine Gun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CCW. (0 | 37)
ARAGOTO Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 28)
ARAGOTO Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 19)
YOJIMBO Contender, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 21)

5 SWC | 300 Points

Open in Infinity Army

 

If you drop the plain Keisotsu, you can give the Aragoto boarding shottie a spitfire. My usual biker gang has two Spitfires and two hackers.

 

How do you deal with the deployment zone issues? With so many 55mm bases and the volatile nature of the the bikers, I found it rather complicated to not get stuck in a traffic jam. Especially when you have the 2nd turn and your opponent has setup some Core-Link Missle-Launcher-Profiles as ARO pieces.

 

Haven't really run the list yet, so I don't really know. Just messing around trying to turn the starter box into a bike list. I'll probably actually start dropping the Assault/Shotgun bikers for the Daiyokai; just so I can use the whole starter. He's much harder to cut from lists now that I have the physical model in hand...

 

Good deployment is highly under-rated as a skill by new players. But the really good players start with a solid deployment plan.

In that specific case, hopefully you deployed second, so you could see that ARO coming (if you didn't, why the hell did you give up every advantage by deploying first, allowing your opponent to deploy in response to what you did, AND gave him first turn?!?). You deploy the bikes out of LOF of everything.

When I run all the Bikes, I try to set Yojimbo so he can go first and launch smoke up in the ML's face (8" move and launch smoke close to 16" away, so the impact point should be really close to the edge of the opponent's DZ. Ideally, this will catch the ML in the smoke cloud).

Then I activate the rest of the bikes. By the odds, you're better off Dodging than shooting, even with a Motorcycle's -3 to Dodge. You're going to be inside 24" for the ML's shot, which is +0 range, and you have Mimetism on the bikes to counteract the +3BS from the Fireteam, so it will be shooting your bikes at straight BS. Problem is, you're shooting back at a minimum of -6 (-3 for range and -3 for cover), so BS6 at best. Move-Dodge is a legal Impetuous Order, which at least gets you to a PH8 dodge.

 

Why are we move-dodging the bikes at all?

 

Impetuous phase, though since only Yojimbo is X-Imp, he's the only one where canceling the X-Imp order costs a Regular order.

You can simply choose to cancel the Impetuous orders of the Aragoto and Kuroshi, let someone else deal with the linked ML. Assuming that you have someone else that can, since I rarely take an Oniwaban/Shinobu/Saito with my biker gangs.

 

If Yojimbo can't block I would advise not spending "free" orders on killing your own guys.

 

He could just remove that ML and one FO from the Keisotsu. The list mostly uses them as order monkeys anyway, and a Spitfire upfield is so much more important. I’d move the Oni in the first group in exchange for the Raide... pardon, Ryuken HRL, it doesn’t need as many orders and it often only gemerates and order for,themrest of the team, which is covered in the first group. Losing one there won’t hurt as much if the Oniwaban bites a bullet.

 

Well, because there are certain missions where having the 2nd turn is 50% of the win. And my opponent for sure does not choose to get the first turn if I choose tableside + deployment.
But with such a list, going first should be your only option I guess.

Well... thanks.

Which does not matter when the ML chooses to shoot at the point where it is further than 24" away.

1 dice on 8 vs. 2 dice on 14 does not sound like very good ods for activating a 20+ points model.

To sum it up, It all depends on the terrains you usually play on. I had games where it would not be possible to hide 8 55mm models in total cover at all.

Blocking the path of Yojimbos Impetious order and lobbing his smoke to block other impetious orders sounds like a good option for me. But I hope you hit the 15 to put the smoke on the table. Otherwise many impetious orders have to be canceled and the advantage of insanely fast progression is wasted.

 

What kind of missile launchers are you playing against? Yeah sure if they're BS11 in a 5 man or BS14 in a Haris, but you should be doing other things to deal with linked line troops or big missiles to begin with.

I rarely take regular impetuous orders on turn 1 -- it's the later part of the game where they can dash across the field really easily where the impetuous orders are important, imo.

 

However I often position to threaten with it so they're tempted to deploy with the intention of countering it. Usually if Ajax (the main guy I have experience with) uses that Impetuous order you really messed up and are about to pay.