I routinely get no returns from this unit. The game plan is typically to deploy in full cover when I have second turn, and use the mine for protection. In my first turn, I want to spent 1 order and hit suppression fire in cover. That's all I tend to ask of the major, and she's been folding like a cheap lawn chair since Kurage Crisis. What am I missing here? How do you all set her up for getting returns?
If you put her in suppression turn 1 you're immediately nominating her as an ARO piece. and we all know what ARO pieces are supposed to do. DIE. I like the Ryuken in Active turn, killing other midfield skirmishers or creeping up a flank to an enemy TR bot or other ARO piece and forcing unfavorable odds on them. She's good in suppressive but if you do that turn 1 you're inviting your opponent to just shoot her with an MSV 2 HMG outside her range. maybe hold off until you have killed some of your opponents offensive pieces before you have her lock a zone down.
Important disclaimer: I am an Ariadna player and lack experience playing Ryukens. However I play Foxtrot FOs in a similar way and I have a wild guess what you might be doing wrong wit Ryukens. I presume you are trying to lock down long firelanes, but this is not their forte. If you put these guys in SF in the middle of the field (relatively far away from the enemy DZ), on an elevated position or overlloking a long firelane, chances are pretty high, your opponent will have a sniper or a HMG trooper in a agood position (that is more
Yeah, I do a lot of skirmishing and gunfighting with my Ryuken-9. Giving your life to stop an opponent reaching you, or reaching a critical objective, is a good task... But not always a role you want to initiate on Turn 1. She may have more work to do than forcing your opponent to outrange her, or sneak a Chain Rifle up close. Ultimately that's all a Suppressive Fire Ryuken-9 can count on doing; forcing the enemy to waste more orders than they want, to initiate a high-probability exchange. You can't count on a smart opponent trying to bash his face against -12 to Hit. So as @MikeTheScrivener says, your Ryuken-9 will almost certainly die once you commit to Suppressive. But if you wait until the end of the game, when your opponent has fewer Orders, fewer tools remaining, fewer options to throw at you, that Suppressive Fire becomes more powerful and more likely to force your opponent to commit a fatal number of Orders trying to "solve" her as a tactical problem.
I've played her as a reactive turn piece (with minimal order expenditure in the past), but tonight I had a game where I deliberately sent her out in the active turn, and she single handedly took apart a dakini link. In a faction with lots of CC-oriented midfield units, she's just good enough with her smg to operate there.
It's worth remembering that an SMG with X-Visor is on better MODs than a Combi Rifle from 16-24", with better ammo and ODD on top. Which makes the Ryūken a very capable active-turn attacker.
For sure. Out to 24 inches on 9s vs targets in cover isn't bad. I use this a lot for my active turn skirmishing.
Maybe I should try that for once. I always used the smg profile as suppressive fire roadblock and it worked well for me. But I can see the effectiveness of the Ryuken-9 smg being highly dependant on the table set-up. I try to cover firelanes greater than 16" to take full effect of the x-visor. The Ryuken-9 even managed to hold off entire link teams for me... but mabye that were just lucky rolls. I have greater problems finding a place for the HRL profile in my lists...
Now that the Ryuken-9 SMG and Kempetai Marskman rifle exist, plus pricey little choices like Haris leaders, Keisotsu LT and the 1.5 SWC cost on the Rui Shi, I find JSA is the most SWC-hungry Sectorial I've ever played. The Ryuken-9 HRL didn't stop being a decent unit, but now it's hard to justify 1.5 SWC on an unlinked BS12 unit that has tons of competition for those SWC points.
the problem is the the HRL shares Ava with the smg profile the army has enough backline support that it can function without a 1 shot BS12 HRL, and lacks mid-field denial pieces.
Yeah, I sometimes feel this way, too. When making a JSA list I always end up spending all my swc instantly or I take a shikami and Saito/Kitsune and end up having spent only 3-4 swc. My go-to ARO piece is the good old and tried keisotsu ML in a 5 man link. I really love it. edit: typos
exactly! for 1.5 SWC we have two linked missile options that are always going to be better due to burst, BS, SS2, ect.
That's so funny. I'm actually having fair success with 2 Ryuken HRLs. Combined with Yuriko's mine, it can be a really daunting ARO shell game. Obviously, you want to be very choosy about when you reveal, as the surprise shot modifier is important to save for the active turn.
Very much so. And this is from the guy whose favorite JSA list is DoTanko link with O-Yoroi, Yojimbo, hacker, doc, engineer.
Giving in to the diversion that is the SWC discussion, although JSA definitely can be very hungry for those points I'm not struggling when it comes to lists. I'll be at a tournament this weekend and neither list hits the 6 SWC limit, it's just about what things you like and their combinations for list building. As for the main topic, I find that treating a piece exclusively as reactionary is a mistake in itself. Ryuken are great in suppressive fire because of how all the mods stack, not to mention their X-visor which helps them retain accuracy. However it's still better to have burst 3 against burst 1 (or 2 if it's a link) than 3 vs 3-5. (Even if you can add an extra mod to the roll.) Ryuken are pretty great mid-field aggressors, able to lay mines to lock down an area from incautious enemy advance, gun down a fairly wide range of targets advantageously from a 16"-24" range. Going second it definitely best to deploy them in full cover and use the mine to protect your troops. It just helps so much to ensure you have a decent group of models left after the opponents first turn. In the active turn, if you can get within 24" of something then let the Ryuken hunt it down. That ODD that makes them so potent in suppressive fire mode is still awesome in the active turn. Even if there isn't the Ryuken is worth moving up to mine the area before trying to lock down a modest section of the board with suppressive fire. If you used forward deployment then it may not take many orders to get them into a good position and always remember to try not to over-stretch things. A Ryuken may be a solid piece on the table but if it's the only thing defending a flank the opponent may still decide to risk things and hope for crits/luck to solve the problem and then sweep up the now open flank.
I think the big thing with the Ryuken9 with SMG is that they're absolutely meant to die. They're not specialists so unless you need them to plant D-charges they're not pressing buttons - they're preventing your opponent from pressing buttons. If I'm playing a multiple combat group list I almost always start by adding two, if not 3, of these lovely ladies because they provide such good midfield zone control & speedbumping. Use their mines to protect your flanks from AD troopers walking on the board edge, deploy them in total cover with an eye for locking down a firelane that is no more than 24" long and hopefully long enough that it'll take at least one order of movement within LOF before that large template can be brought to use. They do make fantastic active turn attack pieces because you can choose your engagement usually and 3 dice on 9's at 24" will certainly trump most things firing back with one dice looking for ones or twos (or forcing a dodge from most line troopers - even PanO). Obviously avoid visors and frankly other camo'd troopers if you can. Accept that she's going to die - hopefully requiring your opponent to sink several orders into killing her (and her mine), by at least having to maneuver the correct attack piece into position, even if you go down to the first actual attack. The following is the list that I played in all four missions at Onslaught last week. You'll note that combat group one has (4) real heavy attack pieces in the Ryuken9 and Oniwaban SMG. Each of these models can rambo effectively, and end its turn in suppression fire if it is able to find a great position. My typical tactic is to scalpel with the Oni, then spend a couple of coordinated orders to get the Ryuken and Oni into position for a suppression fire overload. Group2 is meant to suss out other camo pieces and MSV defenders using a combination of the robots and Saito's smoke. The hope is that my opponents' first turn is spent digging themselves out of the suppression corridors, meaning they haven't even got around to the minefield in the midfield until their second turn. Midfield Mods ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistols, Knife. (0.5 | 24) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistols, Knife. (0.5 | 24) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistols, Knife. (0.5 | 24) KEISOTSU Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 9) KEISOTSU Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 17) KEISOTSU Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 14) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 21) YURIKO ODA Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust, D-Charges, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 23) ONIWABAN Submachine Gun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CCW. (0 | 37) GROUP 2 5 RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 20) TOKUSETSU EISEI Doctor (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14) WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) SAITO TOGAN (Specialist Operative) Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, EXP CCW, Knife. (0 | 40) 6 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
It's a good list. You and I are building Keisotsu links quite similarly. Dat Yuriko Panzerfaust....Dayuum! My own list did not perform so well at Onslaught. I'll chock one game up to some atrociously bad dice, but Clay beat me through sheer ineptness and inattention on my part. Eh gad, was that a poor game on my part. Are you playing at Sentry in November?
to be fair, at Onslaught the Ryuken were really only effective against my first opponent, playing shasvastii. Devyn just walked past them all with a Garuda HMG because I failed to secure my left flank and allowed him a free entrance where range bands were favourable to him. Able was able (lulz...) to use Jaguars effectively, leveraging my desire to dodge against their chain rifles to get into CC and cut the girls in half with their DA ccw's. My final game... well... you remember how that went. Keisotsu ML was the hero I needed (even if I didn't deserve her). I'll be at the SB event in November. I believe I may try to bring the Morats out, even though two of the missions really skew heavily to the JSA general in me (engineering deck + frostbyte); I just really think the community needs a break from the fury of my daisho.
As others have said, she eats rifle/combi rifles for lunch in the 16-24" band. I've had success using her as a skirmisher/counter-attacker and then dropping into suppressive turn 2 or 3.
I felt like you but then I find out a solution about using the mayor: spam her! A single ryuken is not effective at all in my experience and die quite soon; but 3 of these beauties are terrific. I put them in a single, little group, with another SF piece (16 point REM for exemple) and, if I have turn 1, I simply put all of them in SF with a single order while my main group storm the enemy lines. Back up them with some keisotsu to extra defense against DTW or MSV2 pieces and enjoy ;-)