I was thinking of selling my all painted Cha army stuff, So! I can get more Jsa stuff, But I feel that there might not be a big different in play style between the two armies, I'm I wrong?
Although I've faced them pretty often I've never used the Cha (Caledonian Highlander Army yes?) Although I've used the JSA a bunch and played them against Cha. They both like CC more than most and prefer aggressive attitudes but I think there are more differences than similarities. Cha have some really cheap orders, loads of expendable impetuous troops and tons of access to smoke. Their long ranged options are a bit limited and they can't really do hacking at all. The plan is throw stuff at the problem till it sticks, most of the time you can bring expendable guns and troops making a couple of unlucky face to face rolls usually of little consequence. JSA are much more like a scalpel and can afford to waste models less. They have much more restricted access to smoke but (although limited) some access to MSV2 which makes abusing that smoke much more powerful. Their CC specialists are expensive but potent and usually able to get where they need to be. JSA are much more likely to run a fairly small elite list of tough models than Cha and have a much wider range of more expensive toys to choose from.
Agreed that they're very different. The fact that they both have a general emphasis on close combat, and maybe some mixed link options, is pretty much all that there is in terms of similarity. Samurai are very different from highlanders, ninjas very different from SAS. JSA is light on smoke but has many ways to use it. CHA is heavy on smoke but only tends to use it for one or two purposes. JSA can play a strong defense game with mines, koalas and strong suppressive fire platforms. CHA tends to be more about aggression, using Chain Rifles almost entirely for their area denial. The differences are many.
CHA is the premier glass cannon faction of the game. They are about massed orders, trading pieces and doing extraordinary amounts of damage with an incredibly powerful range game (B5 AP HMGs, T2 Snipers, Camo MLs, Linked MLs) and and absolutely insane short game (the amount of smoke, chainrifles, SMGs and shotguns in the list is just nuts) But despite them having masses of dogged and/or cheap troops CHA generally lacks a little in terms of staying power. they rely more on killing everything in an area absolutely dead before it can come back and hurt them then they do on face tanking damage. the trick when considering them is to not fall into the trap of assuming that because they are a "CC focused" list, that they dont play the range game, they have some of the strongest and most dangerous range attack pieces for their pts costs (64 pts for whats effectively a 5 order HRMC). Additionally, they can play a very strong reactive game, Caterans, Scots and Mormaers combo very well with masses of chaing rifles and smoke to offer a lot of control of the flow of the game in reactive and put your opponent in a position where he cannot strike back at your pieces. all that being said, I dont think the lessons, tricks and skills you use in CHA will typically apply to JSA, who almost want to achieve the same outcome through the exact opposite means, by conserving troops, having tough range attack pieces and trading as little as possible due to the higher cost in general of their troops.
