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Well ... you are both missing basic line troops, only fielding medium to super high quality troops
I guess it can work to "give it a try", but you're already including lots of advanced rules with those troops
I would really recommend each of you to grab a handful of basic line troops to start with and complement your heavy hitters

So when I started this thread I had no idea what was going on. I still have no idea what's going on but I've decided to dedicate this thread to my friends Ariadna and deciding what to do next (and possibly in response to what I'm buying and using and vice versa)

So I took the advice above and we bought some line soldiers
the Line Kazak 3 soldier box and the Irmandhino 2 soldier box. It helps that they were on sale.

So now we have
Mirage-5
Scots Guard unit box
Line Kazak Box
Irmandhinos

Is it possible to build a reasonable starting list with this? Obviously we'll play a couple games with just a couple models, but I was hoping we could be done buying for a hot second while I catch up and we paint and play some bigger games against each other.

Heres what I came up with, if there's something glaringly obviously wrong, please say so.

Scots Guard AP rifle, LT
2x Scots Guard, SMG, DEP, Camo
Scots Guard, Molotok
Mirage-5
2x Line Kazaks
Kazak Doctor
Irmandhino

That's 201 and 3.5 SWC. We aren't setting super strict limits, I just need a points level to aim for for the time being where we'll both have workable lists.

That seems pretty good and that should work better indeed.
200 points is a good level to play with for the early games
If you don't want to use paratroopers right away, you could run Mirage-5 as a Vet Kazak + Cameronian