True, I can see the box not going OOP ala Margo + Duroc when the French got shelved. Theyre still in production. Remember when we got the Blizzard force lists? They had a decent amount of MO in them. I fully expect Hospitallers and Order Seargants to have some amount of AVA in Svalheima if and when it comes out. IIRC there are a number of monasteries located on Sval
It would need a very hard lore justification to even get NCA OOP. NCA is the main PanO army by a huge lead. Remember that this is the only PanO army deployed on both continent and still able to stand against the combined. VIRD is just maybe 5% of what represent NCA field presence on Paradiso. It's just a division compared to the most important army of the Hyperpower. How do you justify its retirement without retiring the others?
It has been posited that the Order Sarges in the Blizzard Force lists were a stand-in for an as-yet-undesigned/unrevealed Svalarheima LI/MI.
Yup, I've heard similar – I still don't see why OS can't be AVA 2 or 3 in the sectorial anyway. It would make sense thematically, and from a gameplay standpoint.
Keep in mind that the narrative reason for removing a Sectorial from production doesn't have to be "they were wiped out". Acontecimento still have a massive presence on Paradiso, but they are so heavily pressed that everything they have is being fed into that meat grinder and spare Acontecimento forces aren't as available for special operations as they once were. The same reason could easily be used to justify "Frenching" NCA. 'though, as has been pointed out, it could be MO who go. Especially when you remember that the Hospitaller Knights are expected to be an element in Svalarheima...
I mind too much if CB were to trim down on the number of knights and them move them into Sval and other sectorials. The Sepulchers could be moved into NCA, then you could rework the Hospitallers as the main link knights, and the Teutons into an HI warband and leave the Montesa for other sectorials. That would you to keep a lot of the variety of the knights around while not making them the sole focus of any faction. All that being said, if they were to axe NCA I don't see any reason that Aquilas, Swiss, Hexas and the like couldn't stick around in vanilla in the same manner as the aspects in CA.
My pick for axing from a company perspective would be NCA. Knights have a lot of new resculpted miniatures. NCA discontinuing could remove the very old Auxilia box and the starter, remove the Uhlan/Tik box as acon is also discontinued, remove the locust as no one likes that sculpt anyways and probably remove the Hexas as they also look dated... Ironically, the Bolts wouldn't be removed as they are in Foreign Company.
I like the Locust, both the mini and the profile. The Hexas are so old, they look as if they were from another game. Anyway, it's a lose-lose situation for me as for now I play only MO and NCA.
Well, so do I but the MO range, outside of the new sculpts related to the Hospitallers' Order, is outdated. You can get rid off the OS starter pack, the OS Spitfire blister, the KotHS blister and the Teuton box. I don't know what they'll do with Seraph and FK Spitfire blister but I can see them putting them in SWF, keeping them anyway or just getting them OOP too. And the Santiago box is already disappearing in September. Putting NCA OOP, it's stopping selling one of, if not the, most selling sectorial of PanO. And outside of the half of the starter pack, Auxilia box and Hexa Spitfire, everything is CAD scultped. Outside of Varuna, it's the sectorial with the most up to date minis we have at the moment. Add to this that the Teutons are nearly in the same state as ASA, with their forteress nearly cut from the ASA group deployed in Paradiso. NCA represents like 60-70% of the troops deployed on Nostralia and nearly 90% of those deployed in Septentria. You can't say such a huge army is not at disposal for any mission you could need them in. This would be getting French'ed in a more historical way than just refering to MRRF.
Thanks for the info! How useful are the Santiagos for vanilla PanO according to your experience? I am tempted to put some on my shelf just in case I want to expand past NCA at some point. Alternatively I'll just paint up my Montesa in Templar colours and use it as universal knight proxy. It seems ironically fitting to me to represent a profile without mini by a mini without profile. Those dynamic poses do look amazing though...
Well, I find the Santiago good both in MO and in Vanilla. Others might say the contrary but thing is, I find multipurpose troopers really handy as there is 100 possibilities to slow you down and having a trooper able to make both the heavy lifting and the scenario at the same time is, in my opinion, pretty good. There are better specialised troopers, either costing less and being only specialists or being better gunfighters by metrics with less weaknesses but they will request you that your plan works like you planed. It's always the never ending debate between optimisation and all-rounding. I rate all-rounding pretty high compared to a lot of people here who prefer optimised profiles to the teeth. If you plan to play LI lists though, you should really look at Santiagos in Vanilla.
Yeah, I know. I've been bitching about outdated MO sculpts a little bit too much. CB made some questionable decisions regarding MO, so them being squatted (or frenched) won't be a surprise at all. I'll be super pissed if they do it, but not surprised. What is pretty obvious is that if CB is trying to free SKU slots for a new sectorial, MO is a much better choice as it has way more "exclusive" SKUs (non shared with any other sectorial apart from vanilla) than NCA.
it would be an interesting take to have a second force with Order Sergeants as the line troop. Given the Hospitaller Monastery is on Svallarheima it would also make some sense (especially given its one of the more "european" sectorials in PanO)
