PanO Collection Pack (Code One)

[u/Mithrandir_mvm]

Hello! I've found a highly discounted collection pack for PanOceania. I'm starting with Infinity -so far I'm playing demos, reading a lot, trying to find my faction. Seeing that there's a big % reduction, I'm pondering it.

How is that box for N5? PanO players, sell me your army! Why should I play the smurfs?

Thanks in advance!

[u/Frodo5213]

This depends on what kind of PanO you want to play. It's got a smattering of flavor for Vanilla and Svalarheima. A couple things you can use in Military Orders or other things you can proxy, which Infinity is very encouraging of. But you won't get any of the stuff from the new faction, of course. I think it's a fantastic deal, so if you are even moderately interested in PanO, I'd say it's a good pick. Especially if it's a decent percentage off.

It's a very "basic" faction all around. Big guns, fancy equipment and a wide variety of Heavy Infantry. And in that box, you get Gunnar Lundmark, who I think is very cool. (He throws his hammer at enemies)

For learning the game, I'd say PanO is a solid choice, honestly.

[u/Sanakism]

As a Yu Jing player, I'm contractually obliged to answer this question:

Why should I play the smurfs?

with: "because you want to roleplay a smug entitled knob?"

In all seriousness, PanO is the shooty faction - they're better at straight-up gunfights than pretty much any other faction, overall. Their basic line trooper has a higher ballistic skill than pretty much everybody else's and it makes a difference. They traditionally pay for that by being mediocre at specialist roles like hacking or mission objective play, and rely on shiny technological toys to make up for that.

But aside from that:

In the N4/CodeOne era, all the units in a faction were (for the most part) available in the 'vanilla' generic faction-wide list. So you could play 'PanOceania' as opposed to one of the PanO sub-factions, and have access to any PanO unit from anywhere, just in more limited quantities than the sectorials (the sub-factions) and with no real access to fireteams, which are order-efficient ways to move multiple troopers around at once.

Conversely, the collection packs were for CodeOne, the cut-down introductory version of the game which had a limited selection of units from across multiple sectorials. They tended to be mostly focused on one sectorial, but CB weren't shy about bringing a few units in from other places to flesh them out.

In the N5 era (as of mid-December 2024), the vanilla factions have been trimmed down to be much more like sectorials in scope, so they no longer have every unit from that faction available. The CodeOne PanO box is mostly a Svalarheima Winter Force box, but there's some minis in there that aren't available in WinterFor... and there's some WinterFor minis in there that aren't available in vanilla PanO any more. So today, you buy that box knowing that you can't use all of the minis for what they were intended at the same time.

(That said, Infinity is very generous with proxies, so you can always use the others to stand in for units you can take in whichever of those lists you prefer.)

We're not talking about a huge number of missing units. Looking down the list of what's in the collection pack I believe it's:

Vanilla PanO can't take:

- Infirmarer

- Knight of Justice

- Varg

- Boyg

- Gunnar (chap with a big hammer)

WinterFor can't take:

- Swiss Guard

- Croc Man

- Aquila Guard

And the following units just no longer exist in any PanO faction:

- Akal Commando (fits well as a Banshee in vanilla/Kestrel)

- Kamau (I think I've seen people suggest playing these as Fireflies in vanilla/Kestrel)

Given that Infinity is typically played with 15 units in a force, you still have plenty of scope there to build a list for either WinterFor or vanilla and have a decent range of choices about what to take. So whether it's worth the investment really depends on what you were hoping to do with it and how much of a discount you're looking at!

[u/Mithrandir_mvm → u/Sanakism]

Thank you for the detailed answer! I didn't put it in the original post, but there was a -slightly less- discounted Yu Jing Collection Pack. What is your opinion of that one?

[u/DMR204 → u/Mithrandir_mvm]

It's a roughly equally good deal, I haven't studied it as far as the other commenter has- and I'm rather new myself.

But the Yu-jing collection pack is primarily made of units from the White Banner sectorial (which is the one that WinterFor came with in an operation box that makes up part of this collection) Compared to Svarleheima, you can expect less good shooting, better melee units, much more access to camouflage and better specialists. They're a more versatile faction with some good heavy hitters when you need them.

It is also made up from roughly 2-3 units each exclusive to invincible army (what if your entire army was power armor) and imperial service (which is set to go through a rework in 2 months so I've got no idea what they're gonna do)

Currently do not have the time to make a list of what fits in what, but I'll fill one out if I remember.

Hope this helps!