I was promised low effort, you sir do not lie. Also you have to try Raúl and Saito in NCA....its so efective that stops being funny
Really? I barely saw the "smoke-combo" with SoF in Pano. Truly it isn't the great thing. Almost every faction have the combo excep ariadna and pano. The Marut can do it without SoF, ¿really is worse than an Aquila Guard with HMG? I think not. The same comparation can be made between the Nisse and the Intruder. It is an efective strategy in Play with Pano because no one is used to find smoke in Pano, so they don't take the same tactical decisions as agains others factions, wich have smoke with the extra SoF. That is the real problem and not the Smoke in mano. Eventually Pano have smoke, when the rival put it on the table. XD.
From one side, shooting through smoke isn't big, your opponent will just dodge (and there's MSV2+ or Sixth sense, that just ignores it). From the other side though it means you can't leave your ARO pieces out, or they'll get murdered through smoke. Most ARO pieces can't really shoot back with -6 (+ cover + maybe range) properly, neither can they dodge. You can leave out your 30+ points MSV2 ARO piece, which is expensive, and will die the same to HMG burst like anything else. What remains some linked troop with +3BS, SSL2 and B2 that AROs the same with or without smoke.
He can get to the enemy DZ reliably and fast, throw some dropbears and then challenge someone to a shootout, but not only he will be in a good position to win it but there will be a sideways tamplate from the dropbear catching a lot of cheerleaders.... even if you loose he has NWI so you keep going. Used him in a ITS less than a month ago, NCA 17 orders, him in one group and a Spitfire Garuda in the second working in tandem from the same flank, it was devastating.