Infinity Unit Review: Yojimbo, Sword for Hire

A katana wielding mercenary on a motor cycle, backed up by a pair of cuddly explosives. This 23rd century Ronin is a welcome addition to the JSA and Ikari Company forces.

Stats, Special Rules, and Equipment

Incredibly fast, mounted on one of the fastest bikes in the game, for a blistering MOV 8-6, Yojimbo can get anywhere he’s needed on the table. His impressive CC24, PH14, a DA CCW and MA4 means he can take on nearly any other model in close combat with relative ease. Kinematika L2 is fairly standard on a bike, letting him dodge/engage up to 4”, though don’t forget about the bike penalty. Irregular and Impetuous are great at providing discounts to this troop, who would otherwise cost a ton thanks to his incredible weapons and special skills, especially NWI, which lets him eat an ARO and keep fighting. No bloat here, everything on this profile is made for killing.

Yojimbo carries both regular smoke grenades, and a bike-mounted smoke light grenade launcher, allowing him to place smoke within 8” on 17’s, or up to 16” on 15’s. His ranged weapons are pretty limited, a contender being a bit of a last resort, or opportunistic tool, and the nanopulser for a short ranged direct template. CrazyKoalas add one more interesting tool in his kit, after moving Yojimbo up the field, you can set the CrazyKoalas to Standby mode to give a bit of area denial.

On the Table

Yojimbo has two main roles on the table. He’s a fast area control piece, and a close combat scalpel that can wreck just about anything he gets in combat with. Close Combat should not be considered his primary job, or really the primary job of just about anything in Infinity, it’s just incredibly risky, but given the opportunity, he can get stuck in and kill something.

Primarily as an area control piece, he’s bringing two tools, his smoke, and his CrazyKoalas. Smoke is fairly obvious, put it in places where the enemy can see your troops advancing, or toss it in front of your MSV2 units for laughs. Since Yojimbo is both Irregular and Ex. Impetuous, you know you’re going to be spending at least two orders on him in a turn. Ideally, you will move up the board with your first order, up to 10” for the Koalas, then with your second order you can move them an additional 6” and set them to Standby Mode. CrazyKoalas aren’t quite the murder machines they once were, but at the very least, they’ll force your opponent to waste orders dodging, and in the best case, the enemy will fail their dodge.

In JSA, Yojimbo is the cheapest source of smoke, which makes him pretty easy to justify taking. Ikari Company on the other hand, has plenty of inexpensive sources of smoke, and so will often directly compete with Desperadoes in the same role. Something to keep in mind with Yojimbo though is that NWI is amazing when you have a direct template weapon, he can walk around the corner, eat an ARO, shoot a template, and live to do it again.