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Im struggling to find people who want to collect early war armies. I have 1 early war opponent and thats because his army uses mostly infantry. So i was wondering if anyone has had much luck with early war armies? I want to collect another early war army so i can offer someone a force to fight me with. I love extremes and flavour in my force so i was gonna buy a cavalry army but i know it wont be popular with many people so has anyone got any advice on a pretty decent non german force thats fun for mid/late war players to get into?

Theres a few early war players up here in Auckland but I'm trying to figure out just *how* few before I buy into it.

I ran American Armour, whatever army it was that was lead by patton, in late war. Cheapo Open Fire shermans + a free pre-game move with one unit of tanks is pretty easy and cheap. I did quite well with it despite not knowing what the hell I was doing

The problem with early war is two fold. One, you typically can't get dual usage out of the army. With many nationalities, its a fairly quick and easy jump from late to mid or vice versa.

Second, you are much more limited in terms of producers of early war minis. No cheep and easy PSC to get ahold of. If you are wanting something like French or Poles, its pretty much BF for the majority of it.

My advice, if you are looking for a second early war german opponent would be to go Russians. Zeveda does some decent plastic T-26s and KV-1s, and as long as you go easy on the smgs, the PSC infantry wouldn't look too far out of place, especially if you are just looking for a secondary army to mess with.

Im not concerned with money saving so BF is fine for me. But yes the dual purpose thing is a pain. I only have an early war force and i got heaps of people into it using the open fire set now there are a bunch of open fire set forces and one mid war anzac force. So i try to at least fight a mid war force in my battles.

Hmmm i might just let the japs gather dust and get a mid war army. Seems like the best solution.

You can use Finns throughout the war, most of their early war equipment is still in use in 1944.....

Yes but i run into the same problem with my japanese haha. I tried them against late war and my support was horribly outclassed.

Well any suggestions on mid and late war forces? i love smaller nations and underdogs so i was thinking of italy or something. Or if mid or late war russia can use cavalry forces id love that too.

Weird, been looking at the same stuff as you have - early war, weird armies, all cav or random stats, armoured trains and other weird stuff

Been looking at Romanians in particular myself though because as far as I know Italians don't have random stat vehicles (could be wrong). Random skill/leadership like the Italians, but with their tank platoons they end up with on average pretty good stats for their price. Plus they defected in late war, so I can end up avoiding blue on blue engagements which I really dislike.

They can't get armoured trains though... which is a big put off because by god thats the most awesome thing in the game short of the land battleship

Yea land battle ships are so interesting haha. Ok thats odd, random leadership. If i where to do Italians id do a big light transport army with motorcycles and armored cars etc. But cavalry is the dream army.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Yea land battle ships are so interesting haha. Ok thats odd, random leadership. If i where to do Italians id do a big light transport army with motorcycles and armored cars etc. But cavalry is the dream army.

Italians are only early war/mid war - and they are an easy transition. Infantry only changes in the proportion and location of support weapons and Artillery doesn't change at all. There arent many armoured vehicles of any type and some (AB141 ac and M13/40) are common to both. Even air support doesnt change much. Oh, and they have cavalry as well - in the standard lists for early war and as a pdf in mid war.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Yes but i run into the same problem with my japanese haha. I tried them against late war and my support was horribly outclassed.

What I mean is that the same models can be used throughout the periods (well from the early continuation war onwards). The lists are obviously different.

The only models that I need to change are my command teams and my close defense teams as they all have panzerfausts in late war and I need to swap my Lahtis for panzershreks.