I assume most folks have seen this already, but here's the render for the new boarding shotgun + light rocket Echo Bravo from the GenCon seminar. I'm relieved it isn't the Hacker! The PanO Red Fury still eludes us, which is rough, because that's the one profile that can't be easily converted. This LRL guy feels a bit too similar to the Kamau HRL for my liking, but I do really like kneeling minis in general. He looks fully detailed... I don't see any "blank spots" on his chest or abdomen to accommodate the positions of his arms. So hopefully that will allow for some clean conversions. It'd be fun to convert a Red Fury or second Combi + LSG using this guy as a basis. Still no sighting or confirmation date for the Helot box. Am hoping Interplanetario's info dump will announce a Helot box in November or December, since we did hear rumors that Helots would drop before the end of 2019.
I was silently hoping that it would be this profile, but I'm slightly disappointed that he isn't holding the BSG. We still don't have an accessible BSG in a blister pack for conversions!
I agree with you @barakiel, the mini looks really great and detailed but pretty similar to Kamau HRL... at least the EB is left-handed :). Also If I remember well, this is the first miniature with a light rocket launcher in PanO (the old Montesa never had his miniature with this profile).... however, It looks very similar in size to the Heavy Rocket Launcher, while in the design it looks a little different. I don't know but I thought it could be a little smaller like the old panzerfaust of magister knight (and also Aquila Guard?), thinking in the high-tech army that PanO is and considering that this guy comes from "the sky" landing in the middle of the battlefield. In any case, it is an excellent miniature that is good to have, because in my case it is my most used profile.
@Cadmo Converting this guy to be holding a boarding shotgun, with the old PanO miniature launcher, would be a great conversion. As @ThananRollice says, it's hard to get a PanO boarding shotgun, but I may prioritize this as a conversion project once this EB is released. A miniaturized launcher makes a lot of sense for an airborne unit that's also carrying another weapon system.
I was so pumped that this is the next EB to see daylight. I was really hoping that it would be a double arm blister like the Taskmaster RF/HRL, but that is a super-stretch anyways. It’s my most used EB profile and I love the sculpt. Very characterful and I love the kneeling rocket launcher poses. I’m not surprised about the lack of other PanO releases, we just got the ORC box so I’m betting we will see at least a blister in November and definitely a box before the end of the year. Please Helots, RF/LRL/SMR/universal proxy. Very surprised about the lack of O-12 releases until at least November though. I would have expected a Kappa SWC box at the very least, if not a blister or two of fun things.
Q&A at Gen Con gave us a release date for Helots as "this year", this was confirmed by Bostria's marketing babysitters. We also only have 4 October Infinity releases shown during the seminar so there may be another surprise coming for October to be announced at Interplanetario.
Yeah, I'd have preferred the Red Fury, but this is the other profile I'd rather have. And I don't think the similarity to the Kamau will be too much of an issue, given they will seldom be playing in the same parts of the table. LOVE that the sculptor gets props (great to see). I'm in two minds about the similarity between the HRL and the LRL. On one hand I'm like "of course they are similar", but at the same time I'm still missing those cool old shoulder mounted Panzerfausts so any opportunity to do something like that feels like a bit of a miss to me.
I don't mind as, on the contrary to Panzerfausts, it's a reloadable weapon so it has to be convenient. If you wanted a reloadable Panzerfaust like LRL, you should have scultped it like the Uhlan's Feuerbach. I don't say it woundn't have looked cool, but maybe the sculpt would be harder to have in a shock resisting shape. I love this pose. The fact that he isn't firing but more in a middle of something make enough difference for me to not get bored.
Absolutely gorgeous model, just reaaalllly would have preferred the Red Fury. Ahh well. Anyone want to run me through why they take the LRL instead of the other profiles in VIRD? @barakiel ?
Maybe because this is the most unique loadout with the Paramedic one? You can easily proxy the Red Fury one with an Akal Spitfire at the moment. We have no paratrooper with a LRL on the other hand. It's the same reason the Crusader only recieved one sculpt for his MULTI Rifle + LFT. It's a signature of the unit.
Templates. This guy is loaded up with them and is really efficient at clipping other models in fewer orders. I had a scheduled 400 point game and I took this guy just because I knew the enemy DZ would be crowded. He also has very good rangeband spread. On a side not about sculpts and updates: Someone asked if the PanO support pack blister would be updated soon and Carlos found the question difficult to answer. He eventually ended on "Yes and no". He almost made it seem like in N4 every faction would either have the same support pack, probably with some flavor swapping heads or whatever, or maybe the basic troop box will come with some spare arms to represent a Doc/Engineer and pal bots would be identical across faction and sold separately. He seemed like he couldn't give a straight answer because of the marketing people staring him down.
Carlos specifically said that 2020 would be an opportunity to resculpt "faction essentials." I'm hoping/expecting that this means we will have updated support packs and dronbots sometime next year. I don't think it'll be something like a universal support pack and head swaps. He said that the old style of spec ops packs with multiple weapons and heads would not be happening anymore. The best we'll get from now on in that category is arm swaps like the new Mowang.
@Musterkrux Good question. The LRL/BSG is basically an opportunist. It waits for a grouping of enemy units, or a tough opponent who is facing the wrong direction, then hits them with templates, fire damage, or (perhaps) AP depending on circumstance. The best uses I've found are stalling an enemy in the midfield, pinning them down through Jammer and linked AROs, then bringing the EB on to pick on the weakest enemy and splash a template off them. If your opponent messes up, you can sometimes get a terrifying run through the enemy DZ, but I find most decent opponents won't give you that kind of gap. Instead, you can use the EB to come in behind midfield opponents, and use those templates to take out link teams, Haris teams, mines + the guy who dropped the mine, etc. Opponents tend to get sloppy once they see you haven't deployed any blast templates... If there's no Clipper, Kamau HRL, etc., they'll get a little more casual with not spacing their guys out and leaving gaps between them. The EB LRL is really good at preying on those targets, or else just outflanking something tough and slamming a couple of Fire shots into them. The big challenge is that this EB isn't great at winning gunfights. Burst 2 is just ultra-unreliable, so you can't use him to force his way past serious opposition. That's why I say he's an opportunist... He needs to find targets that are looking in the wrong direction, or that are all grouped up, in order to maximize his impact.
At the end of last year, they did say that they were planning to update the remotes for all the factions, so that process is probably already in development.
