By Luke

Overview

• Mission: Supplies
• Forces: JSA versus O-12(300)
• Deploy First: JSA
• First Turn: JSA

So as an introduction I should say that this is a very poor battle report and is more a ramble of list match up thoughts and a ramble.

This is from a game of supplies me and a local gamer Gaz played. The mission was chosen randomly and I already had 2 lists already built and packed. I chose this list because frankly, my other JSA list had multiple TO specialists and Oniwabans who would just do the turn 3 trick of kill and pick up, which makes for an uninteresting game.  

Deployment

After the roll off (which I cannot remember who won but I think I lost) I decided on a fairly balanced deployment with a defensive linked missile launcher fairly central, my LT tag on the far right and a luduan / ruishi holo on the far left. My plan was to project threats from multiple angles and generally on deployment I leave any hard ARO units out only watching diagonals / lanes a troop would have to spend at least an order or two to get LOF. 

My opponent opted for a similar deployment. He left the warcor, and a TR bot out as a hard ARO as well as the epsilon sniper up on a tower. Everything else null deployed and his team sirius bot / hacker were in a really hard spot to try and get them out of as they were supporting each other with hacking and glue templates. 

My reserve was my less valuable o-yoroi who wasnt my Lt who went in a very central position ready to start slicing the pie on my opponents standing / available ARO units. Whilst my opponents last unit was another TR bot. 

I was mildly worried about an andromeda infiltrating up but frankly my valuable units were all comparable in CC and with Koala / warcor / TR bot coverage I felt fairly safe.

In the above image the closest table is the one we played on. It’s a bad table where the towers are too tall to effectively play around and the DVs leave a lot to be desired. 

Luckily for me each of those towers will happily hide an s7 tag and allow some pie slicing around them. 

On to the game… without any actual pictures I will give as much detail into my thinking and the pace of the game over a mechanical report.

Turn 1

Top of 1 – Luke – JSA

My two classifieds are a net-undermine and HVT retro engineering. My plan for this turn was to leverage the 2 tags and try to permanently remove my opponents ARO units and scalpel out any true anti armour units. 

I keep Yojimbo impetuous but don’t use it yet.

I have 2 orders docked from G1 and have 7 regular, 1 irregular and 3 Tag order (tac aware and LT)

My first few orders were on the tags free ones shooting the warcor, 2 TR bots and the epsilon sniper. 

Immediately I don’t feel held back from the lack of 2 orders and I am able to spend a few on yojimbo moving up, dropping a koala next to a gang buster and him bagging my net-undermine classified (failing a few rolls)

I reposition the TR bot to cover the team sirius and call the turn.

I am feeling pretty happy at this point having achieved everything I wanted fairly easily.

Bottom of 1 – Gaz – O12

Gaz is feeling on the back foot at this point and I think he is regretting some of the group positioning choices of his list as he cant move anything out of G2 into g1 to burn a lot of orders on the epsilon HMG.

His law keeper moves out to fight my yojimbo, we are both in good range and Jimbo crits his bike off the board with the contender. 

He has parvati go and pick up a TR bot and the epsilon sniper. He spends a few orders moving a varangian and the team sirius and the epsilon on his flank to smoke trick my TR bot and start trying to get a line on one of my tags before retreating and ending his turn. 

Gaz is feeling much more on the back foot now after not being able to reposition at all and spending several orders picking units up that died. All whilst not killing any consequential units. 

Turn 2

Top of 2 – Luke – JSA

I am feeling in a very good spot. I have my fill complement of 9 regular orders 1 irregular / impetuous and 3 tag special orders. 

My first few orders are on the free tag orders killing the epsilon dead as well as the TR bot that was repaired. I spent an extra order totally finishing the TR bot off.

I collected a supply box with one of my tag pilots and moved my yurika engineer towards the midfield to prepare to grab another box and get my 2nd classified. 

It is all feeling very much in hand with my overwhelmingly superior fire power.

Bottom of 2 – Gaz – O12

At this point Gaz is struggling, he moves some units around the groups to make one big order group and starts smoke shooting my stuff. He nearly kills my tag with a supply box (she guts away out of sight) he then tries the same out of smoke on yurika who blows him to bits with a panzerfaust and Gaz calls the game there. 

Post Game Analysis

So the game was really short, fairly methodical and brutal. I attribute the win basically down to a huge swing of match up variance in my favour. My opponent didn’t skew towards anti armour whilst mine did skew towards armour. 

I would say my opponent’s only misplay was leaving his sniper out for ARO, and deployed in an area that it couldn’t get down from to try to kill my armour on his own turn. 

I think Gazs best play was to smoke out the supply boxes, grab and make a big dash behind as many AROs as possible. I also think a rejig of his lists groups would have helped.

In our local meta TAGs haven’t made a huge storm with the N4 introduction and I think the meta hasn’t corrected to deal with them. Either with offensive hacking, CC monsters or serious weapons like fuerbachs or missile launchers. 

Don’t forget to bring some scary guns, basically.