Product Description
All American - FW248
The All American supplement contains background on the US Airborne and Rangers in North Africa and Italy during 1942-43. Includes instructions on how to build a Parachute Rifle Company and a Ranger company, 8 unit cards & 7 command cards.
Not one to miss an opportunity to take my beloved US Airborne to war, when the MW Airborne books landed on my desk, I was chomping at the bit to get together a Fallschirmjager army and a US Airborne. However, life and work invariably get in the way of my best laid plans. Until I realised that actually I could be greedy and have both.
When the US D-Day Late War book launched I got all excited about that (can you see a theme of getting excited whenever a new book arrives and is thrown my way) and launched whole-heartedly into painting Paratroopers from the 101st Airborne. After reading through the All American book, I realised that my previously painted force would be sufficient (albeit with a few changes to the army list) to be used for MW battles as the UK office return to the Mediterranean theatre.
Of course, I would have to hope that my opponent didn’t notice that they were sporting the Screaming Eagle shoulder patches, but at 15mm I figured I would be ok.
Further, there was the slight issue of my painstaking research into Paratrooper uniform, meant I had painted them in 1941 pattern jumpsuits. But since the new MW book covered 1941-1943, I was already there!
I’ve retained my Late War core formation of full strength Paratrooper platoons and I have included a mortar platoon to lay down some suppressive fire and the option of a smoke bombardment to mask their counterparts in the rifle platoons movements.
At this point I became a little stuck. I have enough troops painted for my Late War Paratrooper army to field two full formations, but that is A LOT of infantry and I would be seriously vulnerable to tank. Although I have the option of taking bazookas to help fend off pesky incursions from armour, I’ve always found them a little cumbersome to use as the platoon has to be fairly close to the armour to use the 8”/20cm range effectively. Therefore I prefer to invest my points into something a little beefier on the battlefield.
Now 2pts a bazooka means I would only save 12pts if I were to take full strength upgrades, and the 40pts for the M4 Shermans is more than double. However, that’s not to say that in mid war the Shermans are brilliant, with not a lot of axis infantry weapons able to hurt it. And my theory has always been to tie up the enemy high AT weapons and hope that my tanks can make a subtle difference whilst my meat and gravy troops flank around to seize objectives. As such I always try to take Stuart’s where possible. My US Armored List has a full company with HQ to ensure that I have the option of ripping into other lightly armoured targets or exposed infantry. So long as I keep them out of range of higher AT weapons of course.
The Command Card James Gavin is a sound investment as I am able to reposition one of my units after deployment. This can be crucial as the enemy have already played their hand and so I can grab a chance to seize the flow of the battle. Further Colonel Gavin allows my commanders to pass their Blitz movement orders on a 2+. Granted they have to be within 6”/15cm and in line of sight, but any good officer will be leading his men from the front. Combined with the repositioning of one unit early on, could grant me an early success whilst the Axis commander is trying to manoeuvre his troops to counter me.
~Chris
