Recon Report: Bolt Action Third Edition Armies of the Commonwealth Unit Highlights (Part 1)

By Aaron Kamakawiwoole

Hey Reader!

Kreighton gave an excellent overview of the new Third Edition supplement for the Armies of the Commonwealth, and today we’re continuing in our review of the book by looking at some of the highlights for new units in the book.

The Commonwealth includes a whopping six army lists, so we’ll be breaking this into two posts. Today we’ll be looking at the Australian, Canadian, and East Africa Command forces, representing a lot of different theaters across the globe – a real cross-section of the war!

When looking at Australian forces, they excel at three things: infiltrating infantry, denying value from Ambush units, and resilience in close combat. The Papuan Infantry Battalion is a great example of this: these are cheap infantry that are able to not only infiltrate onto the board for an aggressive form of play, but they also have the ability to start the game Hidden (which generally in 3rd Edition is reserved for narrative play, but from what it seems they can do this in competitive play as well).

This makes them an excellent choice for people who want to start the game putting pressure on the enemy without really worrying about being winnowed down by machine guns early on. So if you like that, check out the Papuans!

Next we have the Matilda Frog: a specialized Matilda tank (so a medium tank with a Damage Value: 9+) with a flamethrower attached. This gives the Aussies access to a real threat to armor and infantry alike that requires dedicated work to remove, and while it may be Slow, if you have to defend an objective, there’s only so far you can run before she gets what she wants.

Finally we have an Italian vehicle (as the Aussies get a few captured Italian vehicles as well): the M11/30! This is an earlier Italian tank that sports double hull machine guns in addition to a light anti-tank gun, coaxial machine gun, and the opportunity to take a pintle-mounted machine gun, so plenty of options for handling enemy infantry.

It is captured, so it’s less reliable than other options, but if you’re playing with aggressive infiltrating infantry (and possibly a flamethrower tank escort in the Matilda), how many enemy units are going to be shooting deep into your lines to hit this tank? Less than you’d think, making its penalties far less of an issue (and the tank comes in plastic, so it’s cheaper!).

For the Canadians, everything is about flamethrowers, vehicle machine guns, and the dogged determination to make the mother country proud. The result is the ability for Canadian rifle sections to field flamethrowers in an infantry section, thereby skipping the need to take a dedicated engineering platoon to get access to flamethrowers. So if you like driving enemies out of defensive positions, check out Canada!

The Canadians also got pretty creative with the Shermans they were given, resulting in the Skink: a Sherman chassis with the typical turret converted into an anti-air platform sporting four (count them: four) light autocannons. It’s expensive, sure, but a durable, fully enclosed, very powerful anti-air platform that can pin armor, remove infantry, and drive off aircraft reliably is a real asset.

But the Canadians didn’t stop there: to keep the boys safe while maneuvering toward the enemy, they commonly took Stuarts, Shermans, and Priest Self-Propelled Guns, and gutted the interior to create carrying capacity for infantry. The result is the Kangaroo line of transports, offering cheap, durable transport capacity to get your men (possibly a flamethrower?) up and into the enemy safely.

And if the tough, high-end, late war play style of the Canadians is not your cup of tea, the East Africa Command offers basically the exact opposite end of the spectrum: light infantry with minimal armored support, mostly early war technology, but a lot of heart to keep them on the field.

The EAC infantry all get Tough Fighters, making them dangerous in close combat already, but in addition they gain the ability to outflank from behind the enemy, making them exceedingly dangerous and tricky to deal with in the mid/late turns of the game. In addition to this, though, they can also infiltrate infantry units cheaply, meaning that their camel riders can jump onto objectives very, very quickly.

They don’t get access to a lot of vehicles, but they do get access to a really cheap machine gun truck: 25-35pts for a mobile machine gun (possibly with Recce), and it makes for a very cheap way to put pins down range against infantry and open-topped enemy vehicles. And who knows: you might even sneak in some wounds.

And while most of their list is pretty light, they do sport one really big armored vehicle: the M3 Grant! A personal favorite of mine, the M3 Grant is one of the few armored vehicles in the game that can help to lock down multiple vehicles at a time, while also sporting reasonable infantry suppression abilities as well. So whatever your needs are, there’s an answer here!

There’s more, so be sure to check out the book! It’s an interesting book filled with lots of options for different styles of play, all feeling a bit like the British (mostly thanks to weapon and vehicle options), and yet they all feel a bit different from each other. And we still haven’t gotten to the Gurkhas or Maoris yet, so stay tuned!

Aaron Kamakawiwoole

YT: @ZurnCentral (Bolt Action)