List-building with ‘Liberation of Italy’: Gebirgsjäger
By Richard Steer
Once upon a time, back in the days of Flames of War 3rd Edition, I started the process of collecting a Late-War Italian campaign German force. My starting point was Battlefront’s range of ‘HG’ metal figures, and eventually I had built and painted up couple of infantry platoons and a few support weapons. I am, however, terrible at completing projects, and before I had finished the collection, the FOW world had left Italy behind and moved on to V4.
My units did end up seeing some action over the years, playing as “Generic German” infantry, but I have always wanted to eventually finish the project. The re-release of Battlefront’s Italian Campaign range with Liberation of Italy has made the miniatures available again for me to finally do this.
So, given all of the options in the new book, what am I going to build as a list? Let’s work through the process.
Choosing a Theme
Unless a particular unit has caught my attention through reading historical accounts, my favorite way to choose a theme for a force is to flick through the old Version 3 army books. They’re no longer valid for the game, but remain a useful resource of historical information and organisation charts.
As I am wanting to build this list for the Italian Campaign, my source of inspiration is “Fortress Italy”, a 2014 publication covering the Axis forces fighting in Italy from January 1944 to May 1945.
When searching through these old lists, I’m looking for any interesting units that I might want to paint, models that might not see the table very much, or any restrictions on the units available to it that might pose an interesting challenge on the table. And the one that caught my attention this time around was the Gebirgsjägerkompanie. Its support options are quite limited, which should make it a good challenge to play with, and it has an interesting support option in captured Semoventes.
The Gebirgsjäger option in Liberation of Italy is a Command Card that modifies the basic Grenadier Company. It’s a free card that adds the Mountaineer ability (which I’ve never seen used), and adds the “5. Gebirgsdivision” Title to the formation. This is important to note for list-building, as it means I can’t use Command Cards with any other Titles, and if I take a unit that a 5. Gebirgsdivision card exists for, I’m required to take that card.
Having settled on my theme, I can start building my list, restricting myself to only those units that were valid options in the V3 Gebirgsjäger list. To do this, I am going to work through the three things that I try to answer whenever I am building a list:
- What will my Reserves be?
- How will I cross the table and capture an objective?
- How am I going to stop tanks?
Picking up the Grenadier Company list from Liberation of Italy, I am now going to work through those steps for a 100-point list.
Reserves
Getting the right units to hold in Reserve is critical when building an infantry list in FOW. I need to be able to hold two objectives with 60% of my force, and have a 40% Reserve that is mobile enough to be able to move and fight their way from the table edge to wherever I need them to be. Holding those two objectives will be the role of my compulsory infantry platoons, so my reserves need to be additional to those. I also want to have as few platoons in Reserve as possible, so that it doesn’t take too many turns to bring them all onto the table.
Looking at my self-imposed restrictions, there aren’t a huge number of mobile units. There are two tank slots that could give me Tigers, StuGs, or the captured Semoventes, or I could add a third infantry platoon.
Captured Semoventes will be super-thematic for this list, so I definitely want to include a unit of the long-barreled StuG M42s in my list, however at 13-points for four they’re not really expensive enough to minimize my number of reserve units. Regular StuG IIIs are a solid option and a bit more expensive at 23-points for four, however, stylistically they’ll be doubling up with the M42s, so I am going to start with Tigers at 24-points for two.
With 16-points of reserves still needed, I’m going to take a third infantry platoon. Thinking beyond a defensive stance, having three infantry platoons is handy when attacking, and will help tick off my second requirement of being able to capture objectives.
There are lots of valid infantry units to choose from, each with their own strengths, and my choice a platoon of Pioneers. They are built using a command card that modifies a Grenadier Platoon so are in-formation and help with force morale. They dig in on a 2+, so moving across the table into position doesn’t worry them. They can take a couple of Flamethrowers, which again helps with attacking. And a full unit, with two Flamethrowers and two Panzerschrecks is a well-rounded and capable unit for 16-points: exactly what I need to complete my 40-point Reserve.
I can now focus on what I need to have on the table to hold ground until the reserve units arrives.
Rounding out the List
After adding the compulsory Company HQ and two Grenadier Platoons, plus my unit of StuG M42s, I have 25 points left to spend. To finish off the list, I still need some more anti-tank units, at least one artillery template, and ideally a Spearhead unit.
For anti-tank, and to bulk out the formation, I will add a Tank-hunter platoon. There are three options here to choose from: the 3.7cm, 5cm, and 7.5cm. I’ll probably regret this come game-time, but I’m going to go with the 5cm PaK38 for this initial build. Anti-tank 9 is still reasonably handy in Late-War, especially given the popularity of light armor, and if they’re being used as an Ambush unit it’s often easier to find space for their medium bases than the large-based 7.5cm PaK40s.
The list has plenty of artillery options to choose from. I’m going to immediately rule out the rocket artillery as they are a lot of points for something that doesn’t have a direct fire capability. Mortars are usually the most cost-effective artillery templates, but I’m going to go with the 10.5cm artillery battery. As I am a now required to take any relevant Gebirgsjäger Title command cards, I have to take “Mountain Artillery”, fitting nicely with my theme, plus saving a point and making the unit 13pts.
With four points to go, I could take a pair of mortars for another template, add some Panzerschrecks or HMGs to strengthen my infantry platoons, or include a small Scout Platoon to give me a Spearhead unit. Those are all good options, and I don’t think any of them would be wrong. ‘
For now, I’m going with a Scout Platoon with SMGs. It’s a tiny unit with very little combat power, but Spearhead can sometimes be very useful. They could also be handy for limiting enemy Dash moves or as a bit of extra security for my gun teams. I’d love to find two extra points to give them Panzerfausts and use them as a mini tank hunting platoon, but for now I’ll save that idea for a later iteration of the list.
Variations on a Theme
I’m pretty happy with where the list has ended up, but there are plenty of options for changing it up. For example, the Pioneers could be swapped out for a large Fallschirmjäger Platoon, and the mountain howitzers could be replaced with a combination of mortars, machine-guns, or 88s.
This won’t be a top-tier competitive list – the historical constraints lead to too many compromises for that to be the case – but that was never the purpose. I now have a target to build towards, with a list that is thematic, with some interesting new models to paint, and it should be a nice new challenge to learn to use it effectively on the tabletop.
