How to Judo - A Guide to Steel Judoka

Steel Judoka is one of the best squad in Into the Breach.
It may be the hardest squad to get start with as it has the lowest initial damage and provides too many options every turn for new player to choose from.
It's not the best squad on position manipulation (Fire Behemoth). And it's focused too much on pull.
But due to the increased enemy damage against enemy, it can exploit much more from moving enemy around and solve many situation that other squad cannot pass without civilian casualties.

Introduce On the Judokas

Judo Mech - Prime Class
Base Hp 3
Base Move 4
Has Armor (reduce received weapon damage by 1)
The default weapon of Judo Mech is the Vice Fist. It deals 1 less damage than other melee weapons, but moves the target 2 tiles instead of 1. To accomplish a 2 tile force move, the other squads may need 2 attacks, while the Judo Mech requires only one.
The upgrades on Vice Fist are not quite impressive.
The ally immune doesn't mean you can throw other Mechs around, but you can save objectives like a Mine Robot, a Tank or a Refine Bomb by moving it. It's barely useful.
The damage upgrade may accurately not be wanted as we may want to keep thrown the alien alive to kill other aliens or block the spawn point.


Siege Mech - Range Class
Base Hp 2
Base Move 3
The default weapon of Siege Mech is the Cluster Artillery, which is probably the best artillery in the game.
The damage of this weapon is only from 1 to 2, which is lower than the average of artillery, but it can damage 4 tiles (and leave the center untouched), have building immune and do damage while pushing the enemy. The pushing can easily be converted into damage by pushing the target against a mountain or another alien, which fills the damage up to par. While the other similar artillery (Artillery Mech and Bounder Mech) has to choose from damage of push.
Something to remember - the cluster artillery won't damage the center tile, so you can feel free to shoot it on an Earth Mover or an terratransformer and push while damage all bugs around it.


Gravity Mech - Science Class
Base Hp 3
Base Move 4
The default weapon of Gravity Mech is the Grav Well, which is a 1-tile pull that fires like artillery.
It can be used as a long-range pull or a damage weapon. You can pull the alien behind a mountain or another alien to crash the alien into it and damage both.

The passive for the Judokas is Vek Hormones, which increases the damage deal of enemy friendly fire. It allows more possible moves for the Judoka, for example, if there's two hornets attacking the same building, the Judokas can just move faster one in them to attack the other. Both hornet threat can be solved - one is displaced, while the other will be killed before attack. The other squad cannot choose to do this as a hornet cannot kill another hornet without the Vek Hormones passive. It's adviced to upgrade +1 damage (+2 in total) for it early, as it allows every alien can kill another of its kind with one hit.

Progression of Judoka

The mechanic of Judokas will automatically progress without any investment. The position manipulation needs no upgrade, while the enemy damage will increase by themselves. So you don't need to invest too much on their default weapons.
Early on, the building immune upgrade on Cluster Artillery will be critical, as it's the only multiple move measurement you have in early game. Then you can choose from some secondary weapons or increase the damage of Cluster Artillery or Vek Hormones passive.
You will need a secondary damage weapon on Judo Mech before facing the Burrowers, which is immune to pull and push. And for damage, it's always better to upgrade the secondary weapon for Judo Mech.
The Siege Mech is good enough and no further weapon is needed. So if you can get a good Science Class Weapon, it can carry the Vek Hormones for Gravity Mech.
The Gravity Mech can get a push weapon or any other position manipulator as secondary.
It's adviced to get a push weapon for Judo or Gravity Mech, as the Judokas have too many pull weapons and lack of push sometimes. Though pull's generally better than push.

Judoka in Action

On the field, the ultimate goals for the Judokas are throwing aliens into the water or valley, create alien friendly fire and deal good damage via push and pull.
You can just simply count like: the Judo Mech moves a bug by 2 tiles, the Gravity Mech moves a bug by 1 tile and the Siege Mech moves bugs in a cross area by 1 tile. And think what you can do with those position moves.
It's very hard to show the tactics of judoka on the field, so I will use some gameplay examples to demonstrate this.
There're very little situations that cannot be solved by a well equipped Juduka Team.
Talking about unsolvable situations, I want to show this picture of another squad.
Note: for Judoka, this situation will result in 2 alien kills, 2 spawn point blocked and no power grid lose.

Action 1

Turn 4
Starts with a normal 2-star mission. It started with no alpha and the blobber didn't use its bomb well, so it could be an easy mission.


So the concept was simple - if the bugs surrounds the earth mover, then just bombard it! Cluster Artillery wouldn't damage the center tile. The firefly would directly be sent into the valley.


Though serverly injured, the blobber still had its usage. The poor blobber would block the spawn point and get slain by its own brothers.


Just don't let the Judo Mech idle.


Turn 3
As the blobber blocked the other spawn, only a psion was spawned. So it was a cake turn. As there're 4 spawn points on ground. We would like to block some of them.


Just kill the hornet. No one else can do this.


The Gravity Mech pulled the psion for 1 tile.


The Judo Mech just threw the psion for 1 damage, so it would be killed by the spawn.


Turn 2
2 of the 4 spawn points were blocked, so only 2 aliens spawned. They're shooting on opposite sides, so it's perfect to make them attack each other.


I've got +2 damage on enemy friendly fire, so the hornet would left 1 hp to the firefly. So it could be used for blocking spawn.


The Judo Mech moved the hornet by 2 tiles.


So the hornet would be killed by the firefly, while the firefly would be killed by the spawn point.


Siege Mech moved to a better position for the next round.


Turn 1
3 bugs spawned. They still tried to surround the earth mover. 3 vs 3 was everything but a challenge. We just needed to figure out how to score more kills.


I've bought an acid projector as a push weapon for Gravity Mech and it worked just perfect - we can only push a manits with non-damage weapons.


Push the firefly down, so it would kill the mantis.


Throw the hornet alpha in mantis attack range.


So the hornet would attack the dust. The mantis would kill the hornet. And then the firefly would revenge the hornet.

Action 2

This act happens accurately earlier than Act 1 and the artillery had no damage upgrade yet.
Turn 3
It starts with the pod incoming. The blobber has dropped its bomb on the railway and we need to remove both the bomb and the hornet to protect the train. The mantis has webbed the artillery, if it's not removed, it will directly kill the mech.


The first setup is to free the artillery, so it can shoot from a better spot.


As the bomb has only 1 hp, we can use the crash damage to destroy it, so we shoot the blobber, use the blast to damage and push the hornet into the bomb.


As we cannot kill any alien on the first turn, so we need to block the spawn points to reduce the amount of aliens for the next turn. It's not wise to release too many aliens, while also not wise to block too many spawn points early on.


Turn 2
One more hornet was spawned. The psion tried to block the train. And the mantis webbed the artillery again. all the three threats needed to be neutralized or there will be civilian casualty or mech destroyed. The attack order didn't provide any chance to set up friendly fire also.


The first step was simple - pull the bomb into the hornet, so both will be neutralized.


As the artillery was at a good spot, so I didn't wait before the shot. It's better to kill the mantis first and move the Siege Mech back to avoid the hornet attack before the shot.


Kill the mantis, but the hornet will attack the Siege Mech.


Turn 1
The last spawn was a hornet. Just another 3 v 3.


Just threw the hornet for fun - the plan didn't involve Judo Mech.


Siege Mech repair itself - Harold will shovel surrounding tiles with repair. So the hornet would crash into the Gravity Mech and the bomb would return to its maker.


Happy to meet your own bomb, Blobber?

Action 3

Turn 4
Another 3-objective mission. 3 hornets and 1 psion.


The hornets scattered and threatens the civilian buildings. The right 2 bugs were surrounding the same building, so they would attack each other with a 1-tile move. So we just send the Judo Mech to stop the left hornet.


As we needed only one move to make the hornet alpha kill its minion. So we used the Siege Mech to bombard the psion as well as destroy a mountain. It's good to see the hornet received one damage from push as well.


Pull the alpha to kill the minion.


So there will be 2 hornet alphas and 2 new spawns on the next turn.


Turn 3
A blobber and a firefly alpha emerged and the blobber dropped a bomb right beside a building. So all 4 threats has to be neutralized or there will be civilian casualties.


On the left side, the firefly could directly shoot at the hornet, but the hornet will act first, so we could throw the hornet back a little bit to avoid power plant damage. The Judo Mech had armor to tough the attack.


Send the bomb back to its creator. Surprise!


Typical way to covert pushing into damage. A squad without good pulling and pushing would accurately do less damage per than Judoka.


There would be only a firefly left on board.


Turn 2
Another building was surrounded by 2 bugs. Though we could still move the firefly alpha to attack the mantis, we wanted to kill the firefly on the other side of the map. A firefly without any mountion or enemy around cannot be killed by an artillery shot, while a mantis gets killed by just scatches.


So kill the mantis would be nice. Plus another mountain would be destroyed on the way - the multiple damaging capability of Cluster Artillery was so awesome.


Throw the firefly alpha so it would kill its minion. Only the Vice Fist or the Teleportor can make such a move.


So the Gravity could just relax and watch the show. It's position's just good. It's blocking the right corridor and making aliens go left right to the Judo Mech. And we would want pushes and pulls from the side.


Turn 1
The final turn was still a 3v3 cake match as we had have welly reduced the number of bugs by kill in previous turns. There's definetly no alien friendly fire can be created as they're scattered. Judokas hates scattered enemies. The firefly alpha couldn't be killed with less than 3 actions, while we would need some actions to neutralize the mantis and the hornet. So we just left it being. Lucky bug!


First we could free the Gravity Mech.


Then we could acid the hornet so it would be killed by one artillery shot.


Just finish it! Without the acid shot, the situation could be solved as well but with 4 less exp.

[Arri Shi]

I know that your pilot choices focus on giving the gravity mech more utility, and while that's admirable, I find that I have better runs with Henry Kwain or Phospero on the Judo Mech, because it has such an awkward weapon that's highly dependent on positioning, any pilot that can assist with moving it into position though enemies or above hazards will greatly increase its utility, plus any sort of buff to the Gravity Mech can be easily found.

[neila (Very nice Player)]

wrong, they are actually the worst squad.

[Zagreus]

Additional Move after turn pilot is very useful. You can put yourself in harms way to get that perfect attack then move off often on emerging vek tile.

[hibikir]

For an outrageous pilot choice, pick the Mantis, and put it in the gravity mech: Now it can push and pull, does amazing damage for level 1, and its disadvantage, not being able to repair, is minimal in a team with so much position manipulation.

It feels like cheating.

[Burusagi]

I spent my first few coins and unlocked this squad but I just cannot get started with them: the lack of damage at the start just makes the Vek overwhelm me or smash every building... :S

[Tundra]

Assuming you have the mantis pilot, you can use him and your judo mech instantly has a secondary.

[Blastom]

I needn't care about start pilot much.
For this example, I start with lv1 Harold on Gravity Mech - so it can push.

I think most of the unique pilots can be used on Judoka. Like the fly pilot can make the Gravity Mech good bug sinker; Camilla can block mantis - Judoka requires constant movement; The 2 extra movement pilots can keep Judo Mech in good position at every turn start; Harold can provide an initial push for Gravity Mech, etc.

[Saber]

As a side-note, what starting Pilot would you recommend?

I'd usually went for the Flying Guy since the Judo throw can now be used on basically any terrain, making some of the positionings easer.