Faction Review: Japanese Dynasty

The units from the Japanese Dynasty are my favorites to play. This faction has been around from the very beginning with Rise of the Valkyrie. And most of them have one of the best power ever: Counter Strike. This power lets you attack when its not your turn. All you need to do is roll more shields than your opponent rolls skulls and they're gonna take a hit or two.

The Japanese Dynasty consists of the samurai, ashigaru, and ninjas. There is a total of 15 units. However, the main synergy in this army is with the ashigarus and the samurai. The ninjas with their low point cost are meant to be filler units and don't have any synergy with any faction. The two key units of the samurai army are Kato Katsuro and Hatamato Taro. Kato gives great Order Marker flexibility letting you activate any samurai or ashigaru unit within 6 sight spaces. Hatamato Taro boosts the Counter Strike ability greatly, giving them an equal chance to block as to roll a skull, the high defense of most samurai, this will make them a deadly force, and you don't even have to place Order Markers on them.

My favorite strategy with the Izumi Samurai using only units from RotV. Use the Izumis as bodyguards for the Krav Maga Agents and beef up their defense with Raelin. At that point, the Izumi Samurai have 7 (8 with height defense and can send most if not all squadies packing, and probably a few heroes, too. Your also guarded against ranged attack by the KMA, who now have 5 defense which just about guarantees Stealth Dodge. Use the Deathreavers as glyph grabbers.

A good sample army that has a few readily available figures as of 10/22/09 is
(The strategy is above):
Izumi Samurai- 60
Raelin (RotV)- 80
Kato Katsuro- 200
Krav Maga- 100
Deathreavers- 40
Marcu Esenwein- 20
Total- 500

I'd like it if someone who knows DDM and RPG more than me could possibly make stats for them. Contact me if you can or have.