I assume the bravo echos have no visor at all and that its eyes are just decorative. MSV 2 AD troop for Pano sounds like a nice thing and I'm not getting my hopes up for nice things being given to Pano... Man, I've gotten really sour about Pano recently. I blame combine army and onyx. The aliens get nice things and get to brag about it.
Shush, you, don't give CB any ideas! Yep, way back when. The Fusigal in the picture was even wearing a 'garrison cap' (every trooper's least favorite headgear). Yeah, Echoes really need to be different from Akalis, especially. Crusaders at least have Zero-gee.
But impersonators are usuallu in my own DZ, and whole point of AD is to land far out of own DZ (preferably enemies DZ).
Been thinking a lot about Echo Bravo. I think there's a good chance we see something pretty creative here. I realized that we've seen zero generic AD regiments this year... JSA, TJC, Kazak, Vedic either have no AD, or already have AD units very well defined. Raoul is the only example we've seen this year, and he's admittedly amazing. So this is a chance for CB to apply that 2018 year-of-sectorials creativity. Just brainstorming, but the LRL and Red Fury are very good with AD level 5. Missing the jump, then walking out of your DZ with those weapons, is pretty dang points efficient. That's already quite good.
LRL by itself doesn't seem that great, its only burst 2. Now if it was LRL + assault pistol then that would be a far better profile but it doesn't seem that Echo Bravo has assault pistols. If that Red Fury is 1 SWC that that would be great if the price of the unit isn't inflated like the crusader.
I can see Echo Bravos being rather efficient. With the special operations theme of the sectorial, having less than Superior Combat Jump seems unlikely.
Im actually thinking the visor on the bravos looks more like a HALO helmet than an actual vizor. If it is a visor a biometric woukd suck so totally what id expect to see
Since we'e speculating... Echos are nicely armored (hell, before seing a better dossier I thought it might be a HI), but their design doesn't follow the usual PanO MI look. What if they'll end up being an LI? ARM 2, BTS 3 is actually possible...
I'm hoping for 4-4 on it. Kamau already set the precedent for well geared light infantry in Varuna. AD5 with 4-4 and 24-inch ranged weapons is actually a very clever combination of rules. Take the chance to drop, and if you fail, you place safely, and can walk out of your DZ with 4-4 and a decent ranged weapon.
Even Combi + LRL is fine (LRL is really cheap to get for a Fire Template that gets to roll FTF). If that is a MSV of some sort or even an X-Visor it's safe to say it'll be PanO's best AD choice by far. @barakiel I'm absolutely certain that won't happen, but have we considered Varuna might get our 2nd MSV3? 40 points AD MSV3 sounds... hella nice.
Is there fluff yet on Raoul Spector? I could imagine the Eco Bravo being similar to him? Like Emily is to Bolts.
There is, in the Uprising book. He makes a deal with someone from haq to live forever, provided he streams everything he does to a sultan or something. One of those 'be careful what you wish for' deals.
In the YuJing forum there was talk of a look in IA that gave a sense of a stand alone limited insertion sectorial. How do you guys feel about that being the case here? Without Fusiliers and high Fugazzi AVA it can be more or less where we are going here, even the cheerleaders have good range weapons and camo
Less he makes a "deal", more that he stumbles into the mad, depraved sultan's lair, passes out, and wakes up with the choice to either provide experiences or end up very deceased.
I would not mind that one bit. If I want to play 16 orders I will play Acon or NCA. As long as the sectorial is “high speed low drag” and can do things with a minimum order expenditure (multiple links, infiltrators, highly lethal single pieces) then a 10 order list focused on elite models can work. But the stars have to align to get those models, sometimes. We are looking at specialists that can still murder, lots of deployment skills, resilient units, things that have a high probability of doing what they came for (high wip specialists, gunfighters that kill multiple targets in a single order, etc). Everything has to be lean, mean and work like cogs in a machine.
@Teslarod MSV3 is an interesting idea. Curiously, I guess we don't know that much about it, because it's always been on very heavy, ultra-sophisticated units. But I guess there's no reason why it couldn't be on a light platform too? That would be pretty interesting. This brain storming exercise with the Echo Bravo is an interest thought process in brainstorming and optimizing an AD unit. @Make PanO Great Again :P I definitely think there's potential for Varuna to build that kind of list. I'd have to do the arithmetic on Cutter + ORC Core, but obviously there are going to be viable, strong Limited Insertion lists like that. I do think that Varuna will probably be viable in the intermediate Order range (15 Orders or so.) Even a 5-man Kamau, 2 fugazi, 2 mules, 1 Doctor is 10 Orders and still leaves a lot of points left for additional troops.