Yeah, it's too soon to really be making any sweeping judgements. We simply know too little about what is functionally a whole new Sectorial. So, we'll see! It's fair to note the lack of Fusiliers, and raise the concern about cost for Hackers or Lt (especially the latter), but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves otherwise. There's simply too much still to see (and that just includes the stuff we KNOW is changing, there may be more Hospitaller style surprises still in the works) for us to be certain of, well, anything.
Koni said that Army will be updated at the end of November to coincide with the book's release. I think he said the 30th.
Speculating about the new MO is ok and I like some of the discussion direction, but for in depth analysis you need to see the actual rework, in time of course. Personally I am extremely pleased with Fusiiers going out, they had no place in MO and the list is cleaner without them, yes you do loose that 10pts LT hiding but it is not how MO should look. That been said there are plenty of things to see I would argue the MO articles will need a substantial rework after this one lands.
Yeah, Military Orders isn't being updated, it's being replaced. I was going to say "burned down and then built anew on the old foundations" but I don't want to be accused of being overly dramatic. Everything is going to need re-writing.
I wouldn't have gone that far, but I haven't played PanO since before N3 dropped. I must say that the changes to PanO are nearly what I was wishlisting, and are far more extensive than I was expecting, from the 'November Update'.
Other than the fact that NCA isn't being touched, it goes deeper than I expected too. I'd happily give up half the changes to MO in order to get a few things in NCA revised at the same time, but we get what we get. And, yeah, these changes are HUGE for the N3 Military Orders "meta". Literally the most competitive build is being deleted, the by-far most common Lt is gone and whole swathes of what were sturdy reliable choices are being re-done from the ground up. It's a whole new world!
Regarding NCA, Bolts might see a rework as well. It makes little sense to leave them as is. Then again, it made little sense to leave Rao and Singh as they are, so I don't expect much. At least the new Devas showed up.
But if you listen to some, the changes to Devas and ITS and the addition of some new ITS tourney merc equates to NCA getting some tweaks! I'm happy for MO players, I guess. It's hard to really muster enthusiasm for NCA at this juncture. Bolts could have been fixed a long time ago, IMO. They're happy with it as is I think. Literally just making the CR+LSG, Drop Bears profile the 'default' with the points cost of the CR+LSG would go a long way towards making them an attractive option.
Yeah, fixing CR+LSG and - especially! - Drop Bears price would help. But the whole unit is poorly constructed, though I agree that we might not see any changes to them.
The sad part is that I feel like if we swapped the Auxilia's role(unlinkable cheap-ish unit that get an Auxbot) with the Bolt's(getting in close, linkable "high tech" infantry) and gave the Auxilias the ability to form fireteams while making Bolts take the Auxbots...we might be cooking with gas there.
I mean, the "signature" Drop Bear equipped Bolt is a full 4 points overpriced at this stage (2 points over current new units for Combi+LSG and 2 points over current new units for Drop Bears). It's not that there's a problem with including an option without them, but even with Forward Deployment all the Combi+LSG options are just not worth bringing. I commented in the other thread, but I am disappointed that there is nothing for NCA... assuming that there IS nothing for NCA (we may yet see some tweaks in November). It's not wrong to point to the small things they have picked up second hand, but it's less than the Morats (and the Morat players are right to be offended by their "update").
Although I usually play Joan in vanilla (i.e. not linked and not as aggressive), if she dies, it's usually in the third round. Even with Spitfire option running forward (although in those cases she's usually the secondary or tertiary attack piece). She's not as easy to gank as, say, Custodier.
