My only issue with Mercs was the monstruckers. They seem way too good. A universal cheap engineer is a huge paradigm shift for a lot of armies. But then I thought about it. Their inclusion makes sense from a metagame point of view. E/M, glue, and Isolation is becoming much more common in general, so it is good for there to be more options to be able to recover from those states. Overall though, I see most of the Mercs for flavor .
Well, that's called a "bandaid fix". And if they will get a model, we'll be stuck with said bandaid for editions to come.
My preference would be to have a limit on mercs of one or two. I find it adds to the sameness of army’s to face off against a bunch of 8 pt points and cheap mercs.
I'd put it differently, I'd say Mercenaries extra screws factions which already have access to most of the tools that mercs have over while factions that do not benefit tremendously. Generally speaking JSA has little to gain from mercs besides HD+, they are sufficiently feature complete that the features they lack or need tend to also be barred for mercs as well. But in the context of faction-specific vetted mercs, not the merc extra, it would be nice to safeguard the look-and-feel of a faction by limiting them to say... the Retreat threshold. So, then they'd need to decide whether a character is a Mercenary Character or a native Character for JSA, but if even one of them are considered a merc, Yojimbo + Mushashi + Saito together would be disallowed at 300 points. Other thresholds are of course possible, but that'd make bookkeeping even worse in a game that's notorious for it.
Honestly, limiting native Japanese characters in JSA despite them being initially built around JSA theme is like the opposite of what people in "limit mercs" camp are trying to achieve, I think.
Mercs naturally belong in NA2, but we know Saito is not at home in JSA, though the other two might be. The important thing is to make it a non-issue unless intended to be. So if JSA regularly keeps trucking 40-60 points of mercs, that shouldn't be a problem, but if a government faction keeps trucking 80+ points of mercs that should be a problem that needs fixing. However, I think the issue is more that Morats have become indispensable to a lot of factions so I'll concede that what I'm suggesting is fixing a non-issue when the issue is that some mercs provide either the only tool for a problem (Krakot veteran) or a comparatively cost effective tool (Monstertruckers Engineer or Libertos skirmisher).
Cheap smokers and AD doesn't count? I don't think I would ever play a competitive game as JSA with SoF where I wouldn't take AVA Yuan Yuans, tbh. Massacre Eclipse also looks pretty reasonable to me.
I've never felt those bring something to JSA that is clearly worth 1 SWC. With Yu Jing I can always find a lot that is (and often it is Saito for competent melee in HD with smoke), and I don't feel any more strapped for SWC with one or the other.
Eh, JSA's problem is that there aren't any super-shooty Mercs, because JSA cannot get a BS16 B4 weapon in a link team. Well, and that they have no Veterans, and very limited smoke. Uhm, I really don't like that option. Remember, JSA has 3 total sources of smoke, and two of them are Mercs. So you can expect and almost guarantee that a JSA player in ITS is bringing Yojimbo and either Saito or Shinobu (rarely both, since Saito and Shinobu really have the same job). Totally agree with that.
Has CB said if they are coming out with a Monstrucker? More and more seem to be taking him and I like him too. He's cheaper and better than most of my Eng options. I'm actually finding frustrating, and stupid, that many of the Mercs are not in NA2! I'd love a Monstrucker in Ikari, or Wild Bill in Dahshat.