This! It's quite easy to impose -9 or -12 on that FK and take him out in 2-3 orders, since almost everyone has access to smoke combo, and those who don't, well, they still have camouflaged long-range shooters.
How is Nimbus grenade useful in any way? -3 BS and -1B to anyone. Pseudo smoke? The only use I heard of is with Sakiel Nimbus plus and Makaul double HFT. Then opponent has -6 to dodge (and if you can split the Burst, you can still put down both templates), but that's it.
When you are facing enemy fireteam if you both get -1 to burst (assuming you are using high burst weapon on your own) you get better odds (infinity calculator). Its better (mathematicly) to shoot 4 dices of linked HMG (B5 -> B4) against 1 dice of enemy ML/HMG/Combi (B2->B1). It's better to have 4 times more dice than enemy then "only" 2.5 times more dice. With Makaul HFT its always better because thats the only way to impose minus mods while using HFT and you can bypass burst lowering by splitting the templates.
Technically all of this is true. In practice an enemy only ever managed to pull off a smoke kill in one Order on my FK once and had to sacrifice an Atalanta to a nearby Black Friar for it. He was out of Snipers, I still had a Bounty Hunter. I mean, what's the point of playing PanO if you're not shutting down Smoke combo with excess MSV? And what I said about his stats forgiving mistakes: he dodges on 14 and has 5 ARM. Killing him in one Order is unlikely. A linked ML will do him in, but that's a risk for both parties to take. And also tends to depend on deployment. Sure, he's not Swiss level, but nothing is Swiss level.
My problem with MSV is that it's situational, expensive, you won't bring more than two, and usually it's just one, tops. It still doesn't counter surprise shot (you need MSV3 for that, and that comes at 60pts a piece). On the other hand smoke is dirt cheap, you can bring lots of it, also camo is cheap, is lot more useful than MSV, and even against MSV2, it still has surprise shot, so still has an edge against it's hard counter, which seems stupid. So we are on the pointy end of asymmetrical warfare, which isn't nice.
Situational for a situation you will see almost every game. Can you point me to an army that doesn't use Smoke, Camo or ODD/Mimetism at all? Not to mention the platform used by vanilla PanO usually also has Mimetism, which counterpoints Surprise Shot. There's precious few units that can pull Surprise Shot and counter Mimetism at the same time... And those are shut down by Albedo. Nisse + Friar best friends foreva. But back on topic even though ML Father Knight is "bad" I am still surprised he gets no mention while Frenzy knights do. Only one I ever used myself was Hospitaller Doctor.
ML on a non-linked, non-HD platform is just not consistent enough is the problem, the B1 hurts too much without the ability to dictate the when and the where of the engagement. Swiss ML, Noctifer ML, Hac Tao ML etc. can all mitigate their B1 through stacking -6 (TO) with a pair of -3s (SS+cover) and can decide their initial engagement by simply denying their opponent knowledge of where they're set up (and unless you're hitting a TAG/character on it's second move skill, or pie-plating an entire fireteam, you never reveal in ARO). FK ML is a poorly costed, known variable, with a gun that has no way of reducing the spread of its shooting results, hence no love. I've heard people claim come success coordinating a pair, with Joan to supply a free coordinated order each turn, against single targets, but that is a very (very) expensive B2 ML.
You coordinate it with some Panzerfaust (Teuton/Magister) or even (to everone's horror) second FK ML.
I find when people talk about how bad MO is they are oddly not talking about mos ability to win. It tends to be more about "health" of the faction as defined by supported playstyles and such. I personally think this makes MO a great starter faction. The ability to hand someone a proven strong list and let them focus on getting better at play is nice. However you better like that list because it's all you got.
Which is now hilariously supported by CB as only "good" knights (gameplay wise) got resculped (Montesa was because of ASA). Its really interesting to see if we will wver see resculp of Teutons/KotHS or Santiagos (this one is not thay needed).
That sounds nice, but it's really easy to handle a single AROing trooper in the active turn, even if it's a Nisse. First you try to deploy your impetuous troops, so they don't walk in front of the MSV2 ARO piece (or just try and dodge on PH13, because every 5pts smoke piece is as strong as someone in full heavy armor servos), then apply full HMG burst on the B1 MSV2 piece. You can still lose a few 5pts pieces in the process because they are, surprise!, disposable. The Black friar that comes with Albedo isn't exactly an ARO piece, unless you managed to put it in suppressive fire on your own turn. Either way your MSV troops will be top prio for your opponent if they rely on smoke and camo, and neither Nisse nor Black Friar are too hard to hunt down. You can't put too many points on ARO duty, and if you lose your MSV to ARO, you won't have any available to hunt on active turn, so your opponent decides when and how those firefights will take place. Mimetism is annoying, but not crippling, so it's not necessary to hunt it with MSV, Albedo is there to hunt MSV troops (with MOV 4-2 and 0"-16" range...). Smoking warbands are high AVA, cheap cost, CH troops are more expensive and have lower AVAs, but still lot more abundant than MSV troops (there are Camo spam armies out there, but no MSV2 spam armies for some reason), to counter smoke you have to leave out MSV2 ARO pieces, or they are free to get in your face. If you leave out ARO pieces, it's relatively easy to handle them, even if they are elite fighters, because obviously B4 HMG trumps B1 (we don't have linkable MSV2 for some reason), obviously. Then you still need to have some MSV around, because you have to handle remaining smoke and camo. So it's a very asymmetrical fight (my favorite word for the week), and putting a Nisse and a MULTI rifle Friar in your list just doesn't solve it, there's a lot more to it than that.
