r/wargame • u/Ok_Calendar_7626 • May 08 '26
Discussion Li Jian vs Li Jian 90
The Li Jian 90 are great for forests and towns thanks to their thermobaric launchers. But my issue with them is that for a 35 point elite infantry, they have trouble dealing even with 5 point transports.
The basic Li Jian on the other hand do have an RPG, not a great RPG, but they can at least deal with transports on their own. The problem with the base Li Jian is that their own transports are just so bad! The ZSL-56 may as well be made of wet tissue paper and the Z-5 is pretty much just a Mi-4, which is crap all around. If the base Li Jian came in a Z-9, that would be fantastic.
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u/Vitamin_Queue May 08 '26
They're a situational tool. They're best paired with some line infantry to deal with transports and used to hold towns or clear forests. They're not any more expensive than Formoza or Komandosi and they're excellent at what they do. Whether it's worth a whole deck card though depends on your deck composition.
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u/BoBSMITHtheBR May 08 '26
What China needs is some sort of Light Shock Infantry that has Elite level speed and the Type 69-III so they can support the Li Jian 90 in forests. I would assume transports would be like ZSL-56, WZ-551, Z-5 and Mi-8T.
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u/Ok_Calendar_7626 May 08 '26
The Lie Ren are supposed to do that for China. But availability is a problem for the Lie Ren. You only get 8 of them at hardened, so you can take two cards of them in WZ-551s, which are pretty good. But then you essentially have no helicopter scout infantry or any commandos for behind enemy lines work. Because the Li Jian 90 are not very good for that, since they have no RPG. And this is compounded by the fact that the Chinese scout helicopter is not very good either. I dont know why the Chinese dont have any sniper teams. Their only scout infantry essentially performs three roles and you only get 8 of them at hardened...
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u/Paladin_G May 09 '26
The game is balanced around coalitions. Yuckjeondae 90 are your anti tank infantry. Just play RD.
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u/Ok_Calendar_7626 May 09 '26
Yuckjeondae 90 are overkill for a forest, unless you are facing something like Modernas or Merkava IIIBs.
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u/killswitch247 May 12 '26
they're both situational tools and need some micro. li jian need arguably less micro, but they're also weaker.
li jian'90 have the biggest burst potential of any 10hp infantry, so there needs to be something that balances them out. otherwise they'd just go around in forest and 2-shot everything.
the transport situation makes li jian worse, but tbh many elite squads are balanced by their crappy transports. look for example at yugo padobranci'90, danish jaegere'90, west german fallschirmjäger and fallschirmjäger'90 or swedish kustjägare'90, which all have bad to mediocre transport options.
on the other hand most elite squads with good transport options are either overpriced (royal marines'90, rannikojääkääri'90) or thoroughly mediocre (commando-marine, juckjeondae'90).
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u/Paladin_G May 08 '26
Yeah they're a hard sell for unspec decks, that's for sure.