The good news are, that WhiteCo seems like the faction that will absorb ForCo. We've yet to see for the non-character units, but seems promising. The bad news are, StarCo seems to be completely dismantled with its core characters being separated.
Valkyrie going to WinterFor is going to be a lot of fun if they let her go into any Fireteams. She's pretty scary. The StarCo trio no longer being together makes me sad though.
6 or 7 armies and i managed to not get a single one... FML BTW, another 2 new additions to Kestrel outside the shown sectorial chart
I think WC is the most boring of all the merc companys. The fluff talks about Aleph and all they have is one single entry from Aleph. Besides this its basicaly Koldström sprinkled with Kaplans. Now they are the refugee camp for lonley Aristos. Massacre will also go the WC and stays - of course - in CJC also. There was a 2nd post. Valkyrie in SWF makes kinda sense by her look. I wonder why she was not there before. Instead Svarla got Shona - who is good, no question, but if she stays here (what I wish, bc I have painted her already for SWF) we have two strong female CC figthers and a bunch of Knights. First make for nearly all Aristos N versions - now try to seek new homes for them Laxmee has Nomad origin. Okay now she want to go see new oasis. They could use a good hacker. What does Hannibal wants in SWF? They have not enough characters? I would see him more in Haq or Pan O, but wait there is only Kestrel left as a suitable new home. Uhahu is Nomad, so she goes back to the roots ... maybe Bak is a bit low on good hackers ;-) Emily is Pan O so ... And Knauf? Pan O needs more good snipers? Why he will not got WC? Whats about Wild Bill? Not a main ForCo but he was there.
Remember, PanO kinda don't have that many good snipers anymore. Most of Kestrel's new ones are better suited for ARO than aggressive play, I think the closest competition for Knauf (even unchanged) would be the Nisse that hasn't been relevant since early N3. Kestrel is very focused on its high-Burst guns and Fireteams for aggressive play right now, with SWF leaning more on Karhus for a slightly more flexible approach. They've changed MO twice since I played competitively so I don't have a clue how they build anymore, but I suspect unlinked Black Friars and precious Trinitarians are rarely spent on sniping duties. I get post-Uprising flashbacks when I try to theorycraft N5 PanO lists. So many options just gone, most without replacement and none carrying on the spirit so far. Hilariously enough, thanks to my pre-Uprising Yu Jing models and generic PanO units, I think my biggest WYSIWYG faction is WhiteCo now. How very silly...
Before the N5 announcement, I wanted to collect ForCo especially for an "A" team. Glad I did not start, now I will maybe consider WhiteCo, if the fluff is good enough. In N4, WhiteCo was so bland and with no character whatsoever, that I never even considered it for real.
Well Knauf, Emily, Mia and Hannibal are all ex Hexahedron agents (well Mia is suspected as one) so been repatriated in PanOceania makes sense. I do not think Mia and Hannibal need a lot of persuasion to be assigned to a PanOceania force, Mia is if I remember correctly from Svalarheima and will follow Hannibal around anyway, on the other two, either Hexahedron has pulled a lot of strings to get Knauf and Emily on Kestrel or the BCA has made an offer they cannot really resist.
Still, I hope CB won't continue the trend of going overboard with special characters and other new units through N5. It makes sense in some armies, but not every one, not even most of them.
I fear not for Kestrel. The sectorial could get more troops over the time and has already good ARO sniper, a HD sniper and enough active shooters that makes an active sniper a niche. But its never good, when a sectorial has to relay on a merc to close said niche. Maybe with some parts of it. Its has already big Pan O parts. They even could trade Karhu for Bolts. Hopfully the got a bit of a nice vibe in it. At moment I think WB is quite plain and boring. When I finished my "A-Team" sometime in the midtillfar future, I will give it a try ;-) Mia?
I'm not all that worried about Kestrel to be honest; its links are crazy enough to cover most shortcomings, it's more Vanilla's roster that worries me. If you want something with better ranges than a HMG, your best bets are probably either the Blink, that ancient Nisse, or maybe going all the way up to a Swiss Guard Missile Launcher. I run into enough armour locally that I don't trust a standard HMG as my only gun to shoot me out of the DZ, so I'm relying on either Hacking finally getting back into some semblance of reasonable faction balance, switching up to a full TAG Multi HMG, or using a secondary gun with some armour-cracking ability.
Ancient Nisse still can do and the Bolts are also there, pure Duo - if Available- will still hit on 16.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Bolt Sniper lost its MSV1. They only gained that equipment when FoCo released, and were the only profile in the army with an MSV outside the one Brawler Sniper so were necessary for Classified coverage. With no more FoCo I can see the Bolt being put more in line with the rest of the field. The Nisse might actually wind up being better than it used to though, given half its issue was its surprisingly high cost and N5 seems to have heavily discounted nearly everything.
You realy thought Bolts were designed to fit ForCo? They are formost NCA and they got update over update until they finaly get hot stuff. Many of the NA2 had to relay on the basic bs12 msv Brawler sniper. And why should Bolt sniper loose its MSV? Its very fitting in the actual equipment sets of N5 for Pan O.
