I do agree, the game is most definitely always going to be better with asymmetry. But, as I think we all agree; my point was that our cool toys are generally also seen elsewhere in other factions. Then those two factions have so much more to fall back on than Pano. Maybe so, but those are points I could use elsewhere on a fireteam that won’t be immediately blown up or trapped by a good player. Those 11 points to me are the difference between putting in another fugazi, vs space for liang kai or a beastmaster. It’s a no brainer, but it really shouldn’t be. Compare to brother Constantinos. The same problem most our units face as mentioned previously. I’d quite like to see him with a killer hacker device and FD+4”.
I am working on a bunch of idealised changes across the board. I would love to get your opinion before I share them, if you’re interested, you seem to have a good knowledge of what should be the driving force of modern Pano.
Sure, I'll be happy to help. As you and archon get, the idea isn't for PanO to expand into other factions' design space. There's more than enough similar units being added to different factions. PanO should see its own space expanded in its own, unique direction. Guarda de Assalto is an interesting case. I'd argue that a well-armed, fast HI with BS 15 still has its merits. I wouldn't like it to get any Specialist skill, to maintain unit specialisation. It should be a good breakthrough unit, clearing the way for actual specialists to act. And it is, but it loses competition for that role even within Acontecimento - to Knight of Montesa. It is unique for having Eclipse ammo on the bot, but after GL nerf they aren't a reliable delivery method. What I'd do would be to beef up the Auxbot: ARM 3, NWI, BS Attack (+1 Burst). Now we have a proper SWAT bot, able to obscure operator's approach, armed with what amounts to light assault shotgun, and able to take some punishment. It'd give GdA its unique purpose again, while keeping with PanO theme of peace through superior firepower, and at the same time not encroaching on any other faction' design space.
I honestly think just giving the auxbot PH12 and eclipse grenades instead of launcher would be enough to make the Guarda de Assalto relevant again. Eclipse on 15s is just about reliable enough to build strategy on. It's a good example to me, in that it shows Pano don't necessarily need all bells and whistles, they just need their profles to do what they are meant to do... Hospitallers need a tac-aware profile and a linkable tinbot so they can paintrain. Knights in general need other weapon options than fricking spitfire. Orcs need specialist profles because lord they're bland. Trinitarians need to be in vanilla because vanilla suck That kind of thing. Not massive rewrites, just a few buffs to make us want to play all the lovely models that CB produce for Pano. Pano exist in this weird liminal space where they get the best sculpts and the worst design space! :D
I think that the overall invasion of PanO space is due to the current amount of profiles and miniatures existing in the game. Such design discussions are also reaching in Yu-Jnig where a lot of HI units starts to be the same. Infinity has a great range of minis and it starts to get harder to create brand new profiles without ressembling existing ones. PanO still has the "Best shooters / Equipment" thing going for them, but as far as I see it, it's just a better BS/weapon access rather than a different gameplay. Infinity has a deep rule system, and N4 is still a great game. In the future, we'll need some cleanup, either by merging miniatures in single profiles or by reducing the amount of loadouts; then rethink what are each factions strengths and weaknesses and define them clearly. Maybe having more design choices like Ariadna, were Hackers are non existent and T2 is a exclusive ammunition will create unique ways of playing the game. Sectorials are a good answer to this, but the existence of Vanilla factions makes any "spicy" addition a headache to understand overall game impact. TLDR: Keep old miniatures support, have less profiles but more unique, build on that
And an easy solution to this is to make ITS to function with sectorials only by default, and left 'Vanilla factions' as a tournament add-on in the same way 'limited insertion' is.
Great idea ! We already saw a scission between Yu-Jing and JSA, maybe this is something that could happen to every faction ? Vanilla did make sense in N1/N2, but today we have sectorials such as Corregidor that have as many minis as Ariadna at launch. I just wonder how many players are into Vanilla; most of my group plays sectorials and we don't do competition; I don't wish for the rest of the community to loose access to their favorite armies builds.
Or just fix the Grenade Launcher rangebands, since precisely nobody considered them an actual problem outside of X-Visor, Core Fireteam, special-ammo options... which were left untouched anyway. This is not really a good way of handling things either. A lot of people, myself included, prefer the Vanilla playstyle without the restrictions of Fireteams (I mostly got into NCA for its Hexa AVA, ALEPH loaners and weirdly good Hacking late-N3 and stuck with it to stay away from the special-character-soup that has begun to consume Infinity entirely like a tide of locusts) and the game would be worse off for their removal. My preferred solution for this is and always has been to make scoring units less arbitrary; things like ditching the Anti-Materiel requirements for Looting and Sabotaging, standardising Unit Clasifications and Specialist type access across factions, and drastically curbing the scoring power of Characters and certain solo units (like the EVAder AP Spitfire) that are capable of both sweeping opposition and doing a support trooper's job. A few exceptions in a faction's field of expertise are fine, but they really should be stand-out exceptions rather than the rule and access should be balanced across factions.
It's such a difficult problem to tackle - I have to admit myself that I've been one of those that have been bled out of PanO, although I started with them back in N2 and never felt the urge to truly jump boat. Playing White Company tho makes it hard to truly come back - even the nowadays great Bolts don't lit the urge to field my beloved NCA anymore. Being able to have such a toolbox (and specialists!) available is worth giving up the Superheavies, heck, finally I can properly support ORCs, Nisses and REMs with Smoke and a solid HD+. Even the TAG game is on point with the new Guijia, although it's a shame I can't bring a trusty PanO one.
I hear this more and more. I was recently playing against one of the best players in the world, first thing he said in our post match discussion was; ‘you should look into foreign company.’ That seems to be the mentality for people who want to get into pano but don’t want their downfalls.
WinterFo, NCA, and MO are all candidates for sectorials that should have something closer to MAF levels of fireteam flexibility to get the full bonuses.
An easy, but terrible solution. Not letting a large group of players to play their favorite faction in tournaments would be a HUGE mistake.
I think it's a case of the "grass is always greener". I can only talk about this from outside of PanO and think of things that work against me. But also feeling the same way about Yu Jing. I'm not sure giving more or special ammo would make PanO "more PanO". I think as mentioned PanO seems to be more about Quantity with some Quality. They can show that by having higher AVA and more variety within the troop. Having more available to choose from can be fantastic. Especially in a limited Vanilla. I also wish I had as many TAGs to choose from. PanO can pick the best TAG for the mission. It might even be a matter less of giving something to PanO but rather take away from others. The few things in YJ I think that come close to PanO are the Shang Ji (mainly the AP HMG) and Yan Huo. But the Yan Huo was countered by the Boyg. But that's about it. I would love to have the Hulang to have something better than an SMG or Combi Rifle and a BS that PanO has for example. I think the Karhu was a big addition to PO. A troop that can get almost anywhere with Climb+, negates some or all mimetisim and yet has mimetisim themselves. He seems very PanO to me with the ability to take the Feuerbach. Edit: I'll add though that now that Super Jump as become better, I'm going to be looking at the Ye Mao again. Though I think the Karhu FB is better than the Ye Mao AP Spitfire or Missile Launcher. Especially in WForce or WCompany due to being more flexible with fireteams it can go into.
I'd agree that the introduction of the FB Karhu was a massive deal for any faction that can take it. Also that Pano tags are really great! :) But it's not 'grass is greener'. I suggest that you need to give them a go really, to see what it's like. For example, trying to run a HI and TAG army with access to only an ava1 engineer that's overpriced and wip12 is a pain. Playing without monks or any other kind of warband is a big pain. No smoke, obviously, and a very poor hacking game with tinbots being very hard to access (and -3 not -6). Skirmishers and midfield presence very limited. It's quite hard playing Pano and YJ are just in a much better place right now. Even the alleged advantage of Pano shooting is really debatable these days. Your Claim that Yan Huo is countered by the Boyg is a great example... - What are their BS skills? Both at 14 - but wait, weren't Pano meant to trade off loads of advantages to have a single point of BS advantage on profles? Apparently not! Okay, let's look at loadouts: - Missile +1B or MK12 +1B (really boring!) or: HMRC, MHMG, Missile +1B, or Missile +1B Neurocinetics (really intresting and powerful options!) - Let's look at haris options: YH gets to link with ... well ... so much it's not worth gong into. Suffice to say, cheap order fillers, tinbots, guided, nco engineers, you name it. Now the Boyg? Can't link with an engineer. Or a tinbot. Or an nco. Or with cheap cheerleaders. Taking into account that worse guns, the identical BS stat, the worse support like engineers and tinbots, the same price, and the worse link options, do you see why, if you wanted to run something like a Boyg list, you'd be way better off going for a Yan Huo list instead?
In fairness he was inadvertently correct. And it helps highlight the pano problem. Most other factions have such normalised benefits that it’s hard to believe Pano doesn’t have them. I come from CA, needless to say after investing in Pano and spending probably hundreds on their models, I already feel at a loss.
I feel you AlphaStrike! I even contributed to that feeling a few games ago with my Spiral against your SWF, even though that game came down to the final throw of the dice :D That's it in a nutshell though. I still don't think it would take much to make Pano feel better to play. Just loosen some of the weird restrictions on them, which are a hangover from a very different edition of the game. I do still think Pano has access to some outrageously good units: Teutons, Karhu FB, Bolt sniper, Cutter and Tikbalang are five of the best in the game.
You certainly did add to that feeling, and I know even yourself thought about shipping off to white company or foreign company when you wanted to play NCA in our previous tournament, but you always come to the tournament with something non pano afterall. And honestly I’m considering doing so myself as I have access to most of those models from aristeia. It wouldn’t be much at all to fix their competitiveness, but their level of intricacy and fun is another issue. The thing about those units, and how good and interesting they are, is that they leave a giant void between everything else in the faction, they shadow our supposed character models who are intrinsically dull. I come from wanting to throw the anethematic and agent dukash and victor messer into all of my lists becuase of how cool they are. Now I only run Agnes, and only because she makes a varg harris more affordable.
In my opinion, What new Svalarheima brought is what PanO in general needs retroactively to be applied to the entire faction, preferably without changing the theme of PanOceania been a professional military force. The thing PanO needs more in my opinion is the skill sets that would mark them as a professional only military, NCO, Tactical Awareness, Number 2, Lieutenants with extra orders and extra command tokens. The Bolts are an excellent example unit to showcase how old PanO units can be redone, another thing mentioned above is Morat style fireteams, I would agree that it would make more sense for the Orc teams for example instead of having so many variants of Orcs, to get the skills when they are in a fireteam in the relevant sectorial.
One could say this invades Invicible Army design space, where zuyongs get number2 and the whole HI theme revolves around order management (tac awareness, NCO and extra tokens) I think PanO should have a stronger advantage in equipment and raw firepower : ammunition with superior damage, access to MSV, immunities to specific AP weaponry...etc This will better reflect their industrial / technological power in my opinion. I strongly agree with the need to redefine the faction as a whole rather than in niches profiles (such as Sval did)
