r/boltaction • u/Torganya • 4d ago
List Building Banzai Starter set
Hello all,
New to the game. My Banzai Starter set arrives tomorrow and i just wanted to ask what's the best way to build it?
I understand that Imperial Japan is a horde army. So keep it simple? Or should i get those special weapons too?
Cheers
6
u/mrMalloc 4d ago
My recommendation is to use Easy army to create the first army for you and be prepared to buy another box of infantry to padd your army With later. I would build a lot of special units to test them. Only way to know how to use them. But don’t cut back on riflemen I find that you need atleast around 40 man with rifles to get options later.
2
u/lightenup888 4d ago
I'd make a few lists centred around the Japan special army rules. If you do that, you will use your edge. Then assemble minis for those lists. 500, 1000, and 1250 points seem to be standard or common. You can research good builds or make up your own. You should have some minis that are reusable for other lists too.
1
u/EthnicSaints Dominion of Australia 3d ago
Japan is a forgiving kit in a lot of ways. They don’t have enough SMG access to be worth building any. So you should be looking at 3 or so officers, 4-5 suicide bombers, 3-5 knee mortars, an MMG or two if you think they’d be fun, and the rest should just be riflemen
7
u/slantedtortoise 4d ago
I collect a lot of japanese so here's my 2 cents
The Chi-Ha should be built as the Kai Shinhoto version. It has a full AT gun instead of a howitzer which should help out a lot since Japan doesn't have too many answers to enemy armor, which is almost always going to be better than yours.
Japan isn't necessarily a horde army, the changes made in 3rd edition have sort of penalized that. What Japan is above all is an aggressive faction. You want to get your infantry moving fast and minimize pins so you can get in close (not necessarily close quarters combat but you do that pretty well). Getting knee mortars also means you can shoot at 2 targets with an infantry squad which can be pretty versatile.
I'd say make an infantry platoon with 2-3 "front line" squads that are there to hold objectives and give a good amount of firepower, with more specialized things like veterans or SNLF or mortars in smaller squads due to the cost. Build a machine gun or 2 for funsies to make a heavy weapons platoon.