I agree, but you would have to build another list then, as 45 points are too much to add them in mainly for the nimbus grenade job. But it should be considered in this kind of missions where a dominating ARO piece costs either too many orders to remove or is threatening your button pushers. My main idea behind this list was to leverage the potential of the 25 point bike with its 8/6 movement to be very order efficient with the buttons. Pushing them on a 16 with 2 dice!
The idea is to get some unopposed shots, even if you loose a couple of models in the process. It sucks, but your situation was already vey bad. If you get to reduce just a little bit the size of the AROing Fireteam, it becomes much more manageable. Anyway, as others have said you were almost doomed to loose from the start.
You're right that different members of a link can ARO to different threats but I did try to say that you should try targeting single link members with a co-ordinated order. I know this can be difficult, if not impossible depending on where your models are and the angles you have but assuming you just use the link members you could have made a punt with the HMG, missile and FO. That is admittedly assuming they were all deployed close to each other and could cycle around each other to the same firing spot to attack and be ARO by just the one enemy sniper. Since you had said they were spread out enough to avoid being caught in the same blast template I assumed it would be possible to pick off single members. The smoke you had should have given you an option to at least close the distance, although it might have required you negating Yojimbo's extreme impetuous order to ensure you were able to attempt smoke placement safely. I do agree with the sentiment that once the oniwaban failed the superior infiltration roll, it was going to be a very uphill struggle for you. The linked HMG was your best bet to break the stand-off from a brute force approach and careful smoke the next best option to let you get out of the deployment zone to at least attempt to get ahead on scenario. I hope the table wasn't terribly open and that were were some safe places from the sniper tower. This kind of experience can be informative though for telling you when to choose deployment rather than first turn. (Even with aggressive lists like JSA.) It may have taken a few orders to get a group of models together to move up the same approach and possibly impossible to do so only proc'ing AROs from a single member of the enemy link but that would be the aim. It's impossible to say if this could have worked without seeing the table and your respective deployments so perhaps I'm just theorising too much. As mentioned, it was possibly a lost game as soon as the oniwaban and Keisotsu HMG failed. Some list changes might help but I do think your list is quite good. I wish you better luck in the future.
You're forgetting that the Shikami is also a generic specialist, so can push buttons. The major downside I see is that the Nimbus Grenade Shikami can't go into suppression fire on the objective. Admittedly, the Shikami is very terrain-dependent. Lots of vertical terrain makes life good, lots of open areas or forests make life bad.
I love the Shikami, it's a fun and interesting trooper (and one of my favourites sculpts), and I try to fit it in most of my JSA lists. But it is SOOOO expensive... T_T
my shikami is usually the datatracker (if not a ryuken9 ODD) and is usually attached to the xenotech. I'll spend as many orders as I need to in order to get him where he needs to be on the first turn That usually means prone on a roof in the middle, controlling a zone or threatening the next turn attack. I usually end up either leaving him there, or closing the distance and using that assault pistol in the active turn, I never leave him out for ARO farther than I can engage.
