Yu Jing attack piece review #1: Hac Tao, Hsien, Rui Shi and Su Jian

I thought I'd go over some of the main attack pieces in Yu Jing to explain how/why I would/wouldn't use each of them. This is the first in the series. Generally in infinity I think you want 3-5 attack pieces and 1-2 defensive pieces (i.e. snipers). There are a few considerations for each. Yu Jing doesn't really do traditional defence (your defence is to smoke dodge and shut down the table), but I'll talk about that in a future article.

First up the Su Jian. It's a transformer, that's really cool! It has a good mix of weapons with the flamer and spitfire. The spitfire is especially great because the mobility form will get you forward quick, so the spitfire range band is actually better than the HMG band. It is decent at taking a hit because it is a HI so it can claim cover. Ideal situation for this guy is using the high mobility form to get somewhere high in the middle of the table, and then raining death from cover with the spitfire and high BS.

And now I will tell you that the Su Jian is actually shit. As I have said before, if it doesn't have camoflage/ODD or (preferably) MSV2, or both (intruders!), then you probably don't want it as an attack piece. Killing stuff in infinity is mostly about winning face to face rolls, and without the aforementioned, the MODs against you will often be so unfavourable that no amount of dice will help (this is why TR bots are actually terrible). For example, if the Su Jian is ARO'd by a Pan-O sniper in cover with TO Camo, the Su Jian is hitting at -9. Assuming good range, that means you are rolling 7s on 4 dice against 17s on 1 dice (assuming she got you in the open). If she rolls an 8 or better you've lost and there is nothing those extra dice can do about it. That is not how you want to spend your active turn. Your attack pieces need to kill other people's attack pieces. Your Guilangs are good enough to kill everything else.

Next up, the Hac Tao. In the same situation above, the Hac Tao is hitting on 8s and the sniper is hitting on 11s. That is much better. Now your multiple dice really do give you an edge. You've also got a tad more toughness with ARM5. The problem with the Hac Tao is getting into position to do damage. I would prefer to just run a full TAG (you will need to change army for that though - the GuiJia is shit for the same reason as the Su Jian). The Hac Tao also has the surprise element, but it is hard to make it work, especially against a seasoned opponent. You don't ever want to be ARO 1-shot with such an expensive piece, but only a fool of an opponent would leave anything really open at the end of their turn for the Hac Tao to get a good surprise shot off against. Maybe against a sniper, but then they are probably camoflaged and in cover, so that surprise shot won't help a hole lot. Executive order is fun, but not the safest thing given how much fire this guy draws.

Next up is the Hsien, who demonstrates how you really want to play infinity. The match up against the sniper is 14s on 4 dice against 17s on 1 dice. Pretty solid. But what if the Hsien is in a cloud of smoke? Now it's 14s on 4 dice against 11s on 1 dice. And that is how you win infinity. MSV2 allows you to ignore everything except cover. With a HMG and BS 14, that makes you very good in all 1-on-1 contests on your active turn, and the Hsien can take a hit in return. Add in smoke shooting and suddenly you have a brutal attack piece. The only time the Hsien is perhaps not as good as the Hac Tao is against link teams who ignore the smoke penalty, but in those cases the smoke still shuts down the team's ARO crush, which will wreck a Hac Tao if it can't isolate individual models when shooting. Unless they're Jannisaries or some other monster BS 5-man team, that should be enough for the Hsien to mow them down with a few orders because of his superior dice pool.

This is what a Rui Shi is. The model is at the top of the page

Finally, we have the Rui Shi. 2 points less BS is a problem, but he is 1/3 the cost of the Hsien and brings the important MSV and gorgeous range band spitfire. This little guy can do work smoke shooting. Plus it's fast at 6-4, which makes it efficient at getting forward to kill things and then retreating back behind LoF terrain, which is the main way I play (the reactive turn is just never good odds unless you're Ariadna and shooting multiple D.E.Ps and a flamer). If you have a hacker that can grant marksmanship supportware, the Rui Shi becomes a beast. It's only weakness is that it can't take a hit with ARM0, so you need to be careful with it.

Next time we will look at some other pieces: the Gui Jia, Karakuri, Dao Fei and Yan Huo.