I've got a tournament coming up using this extra, the missions are: Tic tac toe Hunting party Show of force Engineering deck Transmission matrix Joan with an extra seventy five points of irregular mercenaries just seems ridiculously powerful, and I actually suggested house ruling against it (by making Inspiring Leadership not apply to them), but it looks like it will be allowed so I'll take the opportunity to field the absurdity. However, I'm getting slightly lost in the shear number of options, so I've come here for suggestions. My current thoughts on useful profiles, in order of usefulness, are: Warcor. I'm obviously taking an extra two of them. Bashi bazouks. Deployed on the table as cheap holo-Joans to have some decoy lieutenants. Yuan yuans. Smoke(!) on a Warband(!). Probably deploy most of them on the table. McMurder. Overpowered troop, does things PanO generally can't, can be a Datatracker in this list. Monstrucker. A second one of these will be nice if I end up playing many mechanical units. Uhahu. Hacking device plus, primarily for white noise to counter the MSV other people will take in factions which normaly don't have smoke. I may be overthinking this one, but Oblivion is a handy addition by itself if I have a decent repeater net. Libertos. Saito Togan. Adds smoke and excellent melee to a skirmisher. Aviccenna. The best doctor in the game, with patients like kamau snipers and swiss guards.
I think you've covered it. Not sure much else needs to be said... Mostly just figuring out your lists. I'd focus primarily on those cheap, Irregular guys of course. They tend to fill the gaps that other PanO units can't. I don't know if a Swiss fits too comfortably alongside Joan, but it's probably doable. The Nisse are obviously really happy, once you can get some smoke on the table.
be careful going all in on Mercs. if you invest too much (and honestly its funny but running max yuan yuans isnt a great idea imo) you can undermine your abillity to take the tools that make PanO play the way PanO does, and then run into situations where you dont have the slightly cheaper supporting guns those units typically back up. What im getting at is, if you take 3 Yuan Yuans, and spend say 4 of 5 orders on each of them (or even too) you can find yourself in a position were you have no orders for your TAG/HI HMG to be effectively used. Its an easy trap to fall into.
For having played a bit, Aquila is safer than Nisse. Because of all those MSV2 snipers going in core FT. Plus, remember that Taagma Snipers are a thing in Spiral. Don't believe your eyes, you could end with something ugly. And this applies to White noise too. A Djanbazan isn't always a Djanbazan. I would add Sforza to the list, for more Holoprojector mindgames and to have a decent side attack piece. But make a PanO list above all. As @daboarder said, it's really tempting to dig in 18 orders lists full of irregulars but if you end up with Joan killed turn 1 (can happen), you're going to have a very bad game. And even then, lots of mercs aren't that powerful without our standard heavy hitters, like it is the case for CHA without some Grey Rifles.
With a Joan list I can highly recommend not dropping the Yuan Yuans and just using them as Regular Cornerguards/Smokescreens for your DZ. Mercs also make a PanO DZ quite cramped (especially 3 Warcors and the usual Acon Minelayers/Auxilias) Krakot/Libertos go a long way to fix that.
And how exactly McMurder is gonna be your Datatracker if he is irregular troop? I don't think that Joan's IL works when you declare your datatracker.
Only found this: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/datatrackers-inspiring-leadership.22624/#post-84912 Sorry but I'm not as used to fetch in the archives to find the right answer as others are. Maybe ask Xagroth for this.
So, I really liked the list you ran against me in Show of Force tonight. But, at the same time, if there's ever a time to take Uhahu and take advantage of White Noise then it's with the Cutter.
