Coming up on Sunday I am going to do an 8-game league over the next few months playing JSA (in which it is 5 league games followed by a three-game tournament). I am looking at some suggestions for some lists and what strategies I should lean towards: The list of the rounds and missions are here: April 30th-May 20th | 150 Points | ITS League Round 3 Scenario May 21st-June 10th | 200 Points | Quadrant Control June 11th-July 1st | 250 Points | Supremacy July 2nd-22nd | 300 points Limited Insertion | Safe Area July 23rd-August 19th | 300 Points | Supplies The tournament I am not sure what the missions are yet.
I'm also wrestling with list building right now - it's fairly easy for missions that don't require specialists (common in escalation leagues) but it becomes an issue as I'm now looking at how I'll try and build at max points. >.< So to answer your question, and then move forward to my own issue... I'll assume you own some YJ remotes, JSA starter pack. Just to give examples. At 150 points you're just doing a kill-off, so I lean toward something like this: Kill off ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 7 KEISOTSU Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) KEISOTSU Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 9) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Combi Rifle / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 22) DAIYŌKAI MULTI Marksman Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, DA CC Weapon, AP CC Weapon. (0 | 52) 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) 3 SWC | 150 Points Open in Infinity Army It shoots stuff and has a the ryuken SMG to defend if you lose initiative. At 200 points for quadrant, you want to add some mobility - and once you can use fire teams, obviously that helps. Quadrant Control ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 8 1 KEISOTSU HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 17) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Combi Rifle / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 22) DAIYŌKAI Red Fury, Panzerfaust / Pistol, DA CC Weapon, AP CC Weapon. (1 | 49) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) KUROSHI RIDER Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33) ONIWABAN Submachine Gun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CCW. (0 | 37) 2.5 SWC | 200 Points Open in Infinity Army After that, you're looking at 250, so you've pretty much built your box out: Quadrant Control ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 1 KEISOTSU HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 17) KEISOTSU Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 17) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9) KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Combi Rifle / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 22) DAIYŌKAI Red Fury, Panzerfaust / Pistol, DA CC Weapon, AP CC Weapon. (1 | 49) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) KUROSHI RIDER Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33) NINJA Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Tactical Bow / Pistol, DA CCW, Knife. (0 | 29) WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16) GROUP 2 1 HÙSÒNG Yaókòng HMG / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 25) 4.5 SWC | 250 Points Open in Infinity Army And at that point, depends what you own. I'm struggling with how to get proper specialist coverage at 300 points, as JSA feels very scarce on it - none of our heavy hitting profiles have specialist options, so I'm a bit lost. I feel so spoiled by my vanilla YJ where I can easily put defensive, offensive, and specialists tools where I want them during deployment, and then have a wide range of tools for any situation, re: List A ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 19) CELESTIAL GUARD (Kuang Shi Control Device) Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 13) Zhanshi YĪSHĒNG Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15) YÁOZĂO Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) HÙSÒNG Yaókòng HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 25) HSIEN Lieutenant HMG, Nanopulser / Pistol, AP CCW. (2 | 61) HAC TAO Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) MULTI Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 67) GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 26) KǍNRÈN Forward Observer Boarding Shotgun, Chain-colt / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon, Knife. (0 | 26) NINJA Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Tactical Bow / Pistol, DA CCW, Knife. (0 | 29) GROUP 2 1 1 SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) 4.5 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army It has so many specialists who can start in the midfield, along with defense and obstruction units, and a few sledgehammer options with the Hac tao and Hsien. I have no idea how to re-create this kind of list in JSA.
@Fyeya I have some of the older stuff, but only Yu Jing remotes I have is the Lu Duan and Rui Shi. That said, I like the first list. Made something different a while ago that had more Keisotsus and an Oniwaban instead of a Daiyokai, but I might give the Daiyokai a spin on this one.
Out and about on mobile at the moment so don't have any example lists to offer at the moment, but I can speak generally about specialists: My general go tos are ninja and aragato: ninjas for infiltration, aragato for mobility. Both units also have access to better character profile that is also a specialist. (Saito and Kuroshi respectively). Even if you're not running a mobile keisotsu link, yuriko can absolutely do work on her own. Hyper dynamics helps her dodge and she can firefight reasonably well at most range bands between her panzerfaust and her combi. Plus she has mines for added utility. I can't imagine running a JSA list without at least one FD Ryuken, which means you'll always have sabotage covered.
Yeah, I tend to reach for both the Ninja and Aragoto KHD just for how cheap it is and how easily it can take care of Assault hackers. That said, I try to fit in Saito since smoke is so good but rare in JSA.At first I was not that found of FD Ryuken due to lack of marker state but she can help mine up the feel and start going for an aggressive push early in the game.
Check with other players and make sure you abide by your meta regarding list building against your particular opponent. I play the ryuken back a bit if I don't have first turn. At <200 points she's a bit expensive to hang out there to absorb only a couple orders. It's ok to hide prone on a roof and wait for your turn to setup better suppressive. She seems to have little problem clearing the field before going suppressive all by herself. Bikes and ninjas for specialists. Keep them well hidden until they finished their job. Domaru is a good choice when combined with a HI face punching team. More than other factions I feel jsa needs to get by with only 2 or 3 specialists and focus on aggressively all of their opponent's. Hopefully the points they've wasted on paramedic and other spec profiles will be the power gap to crush them. Been thinking about this: the domaru are sort of like our big living landmine for holding objectives. They have a lot of tools to successfully camp the obj and at only 27 pts they will disproportionately cost your opponent orders and models trying to overcome it.
The only other idea I've is to do a Domaru+Daiyokai Haris, to squeeze in a FO with the big guy, it just seems like you'd only be able to handle one half the board - I guess ninja isn't bad, but every game I've had her just die, so I guess I'm not sure how to use her properly, and Kuroshi just feels fragile >.<
I played Daiyokai MMR, Kempei MSV2 + 2 Keisotsu, Yojimbo, the good ryuken and a keisotsu lieutenant today in recon at 150 points. It worked pretty well and my opponent mostly came back from a lucky crit. I personally feel like the Daiyokai is an awesome piece for 200 point games. The relative sparse coverage of ARO gives all of JSA a much easier time maneuvering around, and your opponent isn't going to bring a hacker so you don't need to worry about that. (And you can do smoke + msv2 at 150 points, which is pretty good, honestly.) I wouldn't play any links except the Keisotsu + Kempei at 200 points or below, except maybe the Keisotsu + Kempei + Domaru link to beef up a Domaru Spitfire or something. 150-200 points lends itself well to bikes due to the fact they'll be unlikely to catch bad AROs at that size. It's also pretty good for Saito or an SMG Oniwaban -- assassinate their main attack piece on turn one and they really won't have much to catch up at that size of a game (especially if they bring a 50-60 point heavy hitter.) Especially in quadrant control, since you can deploy, kill something, move to a quadrant and recamo -- and force you opponent to drop 40 points in one of their home quadrants to score or engage your other units. The SMG Ryuken is also really great for holding these since dislodging them is so costly. Bikes are good too because of their ability to move from one quadrant to another with just one order. I think you can start taking some bigger stuff at 250 points -- maybe the Daiyokai or Musashi Haris. I still wouldn't take the full 5-man HI link here, especially since Supremacy is a another quadrant control mission (I think its weird your TO would put 2 of these in one league btw, especially one after another. I would definitely mix the rules up.) I would pretty much take the same list. The Aragoto KHD is pretty standout due to being a bike that can hack consoles for 0 SWC. 300 Points Limited Insertion is just code for "HI Link and a TAG" to me. You've got an FO Domaru now, I would probably just take the Domaru 5 man with an FO, 2 Missile Tankos, and whatever else, an OYoroi Lieutenant, a Kempei CoC and whatever else? And then just stomp your opponent, and park your Domaru FO and your OYoroi pilot on consoles at the end. (And seriously, your TO has really bad taste if they only wanted to play Quadrant Control missions. It gets boring at a point. Or they're planning on playing one of the sectorials that does area control really well and want to benefit themselves. Either way its bad.) Supplies is one of the few missions where I really like Shikami but Bikes are really good here too. I would just plan on packing three Aragoto bikes and 1-2 Oniwaban, use your reserve deployment to position to kill any pieces watching the consoles, and just run up and grab all three on turn one if you can. Combine with the SMG Ryuken for maximum area control. If you can get even two of the three back (likely the sides) to your DZ on turn one, you've basically won this mission, and the fact that Aragoto get there and back in an impetuous order plus a regular order is pretty dumb. I would probably start with this, Ryukens in group 2, and add whichever flavor of Keisotsu link I wanted to group one: Japanese Secessionist Army ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6 3 ARAGOTO (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25) ARAGOTO Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 28) KUROSHI RIDER Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33) SAITO TOGAN (Specialist Operative) Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, EXP CCW, Knife. (0 | 40) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) 1.5 SWC | 174 Points Open in Infinity Army
