That is what it seems like... /sadface I guess the "good news" is that it's only 3 missions (Acquisition, Frontline, and Safe Area).
In Frontline and Safe Area you're probably stuck banking on the Malignos, trying to find a high place where he won't get nabbed and use his points to bomb the relevant scenario areas. It's not the greatest thing but not the worst either; the high cost of the Malignos has some utility at least. For Acquisition I'd just ignore it since you can get to ten points without a Liaison Officer.
By implication if must be, yes. As an aside I'd also note that it's very easy for Onyx to write lists that are very hard to score Concilium Watch points from. A unidron link with all plasma weapons plus all our other usual staples are pretty much in accordance with the Watch restrictions thanks to plasma being totally fine and legal. You just need to keep any Malignos away from journalists and your Ikadrons back in your DZ.
Hmmm, I certainly didn't read that as optional. Isn't it a lot like Datatracker? Were lists where there was no valid datatracker allowed for missions that needed it?
I doubt it ever came up because it's very hard to write a list without a legal datatracker. Still. I've posted a thread up here: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/liaison-officer-lists-without-forward-observers.34941/
I've had to rewrite several Shas lists because I had no valid DT (well, valid, but not something I'd want out of camo the whole game... I guess that's a distinction I didn't make).
Its worth noting that Liaison Officer only disallows Hidden Deployment, but markers are ok. Designating a camo marker as your LO pretty obviously reveals whats under the marker, but at least they have marker state as a defence (especially if infiltrated on top of a difficult-to-get-to rooftop).
I really don't think its worth worrying about Concilium Watch at all. It is such an incredible parley of circumstances for it to come up and just not worth it most of the time.
Too bad that CB did not allowed us to pick Forward Observer on Spec-Ops profile. I do not know a lot about other sectorials or so... Does any other army struggles with this problem?
Spiral Corps only has forward observer on TO Camo models, but they're cheaper and better than a malignos. As noted though it's not a huge malus.
You can now score using the Blackjack, since the mission now states that Heavyweight, pilot, operator and TAG models can score
Ah, I see that now. Just went off of the scoring notes without looking into the details before posting.