So a friend of mine is getting into JSA after playing Haqq and Ariadna, and so far his impression is that JSA is hightech Caldonia playstyle-wise. I was curious on what insight you traitors-(Excuse my Yu Jingness), the fine Sovereign Citizens of JSA within this sub could provide to help my friend make the most of his army. Any specific models to call out for highlight? Any experiences you'd like to share? I figure I'll learn how to fight JSA on the board, but was just wondering if there was any helpful info ya'll think a new faction player should know. So far he doesn't have a TAG, is sad his only range is basically missle launchers though he is stoked about using Tankos, and otherwise feels like he is jumping into high tech camo melee Ariadna to which he is excited for. Appreciate any replies or tidbits.
I don't play the faction myself but I've played against it quite a bit and Yojimbo is a goddamn superhero.
He is indeed. Kitsune is very good as well, expansive and very squishy, bit if played well, very deadly.
Hi! I've been played JSA beven before it became the Japanese Secessionist Army, I think I can help you a little, even if I'm just average as a player. Briefly I would say first thing that JSA as an army is not that strong. You will play in hard mode in every game against the powerful armies such as nomads or CA and the other sectorials like varuna, kosmoflot ecc.... Most of your orders must come for keisotsu, as they are the cheapest thing to use, and with a kempei as a pointman for the core you can even shoot down some weak enemies or do the msv2+smoke trick. The real aggressors of jsa, in terms of alpha striker and heavy hitters, are the single models. Kitsune for assassination, O-yoroi for shooting, ryuken for midfield aggression(the non hacker submachinegun if very strong for the points), ninja killer hacker for the cyberwar. The bikers(aragoto) have good uses as fast specialist in missions like supply or unmasking(if u can use them properly) and pieces like the Rui shi and the Lu dan can use the smoke provided by yojimbo and kuroshi to great use. Yojimbio is almost an autoinclusion since is the easier and cheapest source of smoke(VERY needed for the cc specialist) and its VERY deadly for only 18 points. Domaru haris is something you can run (be aware of cyberware fields tho) and could be deadly; the Dayokai+domaru+tanko is a very strong CC/shooting haris, but the premium haris is the karakuri's one. Karakuri+domaru/oyama + Yuriko is the winner of the army(specialist roadblock+cc monster+engineer is awesome and resilient). Hope I could help you, if you have some pieces you'd like to try I can give you feedback on them^^
Well if JSA is like Hightech Ariadna, nomads are the weakest Hacking faction. We neither have mutts and bears with a lot of cheap smoke neither do we have an overabundance of AP and long range weaponry. There are variable was to play JSA and in my eyes every single one is viable. As already mentioned in another post you will almost always play a uphill battle. You have few Sources of smoke and all of them are characters and either expensive and squishy or irregular. Keisotsu are the worst line troopers in the game and even if they are dirtcheap they are to expensive for what they bring. I mostly just leave them on the shelf. The humble keisotsu, the TR bot and the O yoroi are the only troopers with HMGs and there is one Single multi sniper on a ninja... so there are not much reliable ways to contest Hard long range AROs. The karakuri, domaru und yuriko haris is one of my favorite harisses in JSA. A domaru, daiyokai and tanko 3 man core are often my second go to. And enemy impersonators trying to Assassine ypu domaru lt. are in for a Bad time. Had a fun experience with two fiday recently When the samurai dodged the into Melee and had burst advantage in ARO. Good Times! Ryuken are great, one single ryuken in suppressive once stalled a Samaritan xeodron haris for 2 turns and even killed the Samaritan and took 2 wounds of a xeodron. The ninjas are compared to other skirmishers pricey have no deployables and are frankly not that great in CC because of their weak phys. (Thats at least my experience) Oniwaban are even more pricey and really don't like templates and are lacking a reliable way to get into CC. But to Catch an opponents link unter a surprise boarding shotgun template or two can be great. To fully leverage JSAs Tools is hard and needs a lot of patience and sometimes a little bit of ultraviolence. I started infinity with JSA and man was that a rough start but i love my samurai.
JSA has always had a weakness in its lack of shooting prowess. When I played JSA most I tended to fall back on the O-Yoroi a lot as it was a competent shooter, good in CC and had some board defense with crazy koalas. Keisotsu are largely toss but make for a cheap battery of orders and kempetei with msv and link bonuses are fairly decent at clearing midfield of camo. CC is easily the focus of lots of the elite stuff in the faction and it's been made slightly easier to get into CC thanks to the dodge changes in the active turn in n4. CC still remains very order inefficient however so you should only really commit to a CC rampage when it doesn't detract from getting the mission objectives done or leave you overextended
Hey there! I've so far played about 30ish games with JSA and here are some of my impressions so far: - List building with JSA can feel a bit tough, since their unique nature means that they can struggle to cover all the traditional essentials when listbuilding... - ...But they don't really always have to, since they're so different - I've joked with my friends that it's quite cool to play a Faction that almost universally ignores Guts Rolls and (non-Sixth Sensed) ZoC AROs! - Like people have said, JSA can struggle to put out traditional firepower when you're not running the O-Yoroi, though HRL Ruykens are good (if unreliable), Coordinated Flamenspeers from Tankos (or Coordinated FOs from Keisotsus/Weibing/Kuroshi) can usually get the job done (though there's an oppurtunity cost to pay there) and Daiyokais can brute force their way through most face to face gunfights in the active turn (even if it sometimes takes a few tries)! - (After playing years with RTF) I've found JSAs Specialists to be rather weak, so it's often two turns of annihilation, followed by a last turn scenario play for me... - I've found that the solution to most problems (post FAQ on Fireteams and Stealth) seems to be to put up Fairy Dust with EVO, Smoke off the tower AROs with a Group 2 Yojimbo/Kuroshi/Saito and then send the samurai Core charging in - they usually carve the heart right out of the opposing force, though few of them ever come back... - Domarus are surprisingly versatile if you can get them close enough - 4'' into a Berserk is terrifying, B2 Chainrifles with DMG14 are nice and PH14 E/M Grenades get things done! - I've never shot so many Pistols as with JSA - surprisingly often the Chainrifle Domarus/Flamenspeer Tankos have to whip out their sidearms to get the best results! - Tankos are for shooting, Domarus or melee - BS13 Flamenspeers/Contenders are excellent on platforms with two wounds and 3 ARM, yet Monofilaments CCWs are too unreliable for my liking. DMG 16 E/M CCWs on the otherhand are amazing, and you can always Berserk if you don't fancy making a f2f roll! Hope some of this helps, have great day!
Following a question on reddit infinitythegame, there was a little debate and I spotted these comments that seemed interesting about how JSA works these days. https://www.reddit.com/r/InfinityTheGame/comments/1b6kg09/jsa_tactics/
