IMO, it's a mistake to eliminate them all. Firstly, because the existence of private companies in a blackops is logical. And second, because Druze and Kaplan are iconic from infinity. From NA2, I play Ikari and it will be sad repaint some miniatures and say goodbye to another ones...
The solution I'm hoping to see is one or two merc factions, with very developed and particular fireteam composition rules. For example a Kaplan pure core which gives reroll to failed doctor rolls, a Druze pure core that adds one armour to every member, a FoCo pure core which ... gets you likes on social media?, etc. Strict composition rules, very few wildcards, etc. In that way you could have a large Merc roster with lots of very distinct ways of playing it, depending on which fireteam you built around. Yes, a Merc team with a pure FoCo fireteam could still take a druze haris, but harises would have no special rules attached, and so you'd be encouraged to wildcard into it. I think it could work really nicely, but it would take a bit of thought from CB's writers.
I like my mercenaries in ALEPH. I tend to play ALEPH, but I like the feel of the mercenaries in the game. They definitely should'nt be autoincludes, but I would love them to stay. I like to take as many as possible. Some people don't like them for fluff reasons. I imagine those people being the Star Wars imperial officer, that does not like Darth Vader hiring bounty hunters. And I imagine my lieutenant being the one to hire/instruct those guys, as ordered from high command. ^^ I am sad, if they take this gimmick away from me. ___________________________________________________________________ With the ITS Extra "Soldiers of fortune" you can take Hannibal as an Lt. and make a pure mercenary army with almost every generic army list.
I've suggested for a while to release Authorized Bounty Hunters as the prize models. They've got the potential to have tons of loadouts, character designs and model poses, they're widely available in pretty much every army, and they'd make an excellent trophy collection for a really good player who wouldn't be using all the ITS minis at once anyway.
See, I would argue that Druze are also an iconic part of Haqqislam. A nice reminder that we are not all tea and warm smiles.
They are a separate minor faction, they have their own Caravansarai as their main base of operations, literally camping the yet to be finished new gate in Bourak and they are not even Haqqislamites themselves.
That isn't much different from having a mini that is available for your vanilla, but you will likely never play because you can't figure out how to use it *looks at Wild Bill*. On the other hand, there's the situation where the prize mini ends up being so powerful that everyone and their grandma have it in every game (Libertos, Digger...). Arguably, that's even worse. P.S. Personally, I'd prefer the prize minis to be civilians. Anyone can use those. Or maybe small terrain pieces, like cars.
I really think they could do a Generic NA2 that’s made up many different things with low AVA. This would represent the many small mercenary companies that can be a bit of a mix of troops. Many iconic characters as well. Possibly even more named characters than even Steel Phalanx. Then there can be the sectorals. I think two would be good. The “bad” guys and the “good” guys. There would be a lot of troops that are not in either sectoral though. And of course some troops that are not in the generic NA2. I would say Druze (bad) would be one such with higher AVA on certain troops, especially Druze, fireteams, etc. They would have the Yuan Yuan, Ninja, Wu Ming, etc. For the “good”. I’d say a merger of Foreign Company and White Company with Kaplans being the stars.
