Late War Alpini and Corrivalry Report

Heya all,

Jersey James here with some more Italians... I'm not meant to be doing Italians this year as for me it's going to be about branching out into new armies through all periods and company types but at this early stage none of my other late war projects were anywhere near ready for Corrivalry so I took 1800 points of RSI and was the only player out of 96 to choose an Italian list from the new book, Fortress Italy!

Here's what I took, 12 platoons of Italian Infantry and guns laid out after I finished painting at work. No aircraft as I didn't have the option and no tracked or armoured vehicles except the recce AB41 cars. There is a platoon of Confident Veteran Germans lurking in there though, more on those models later.

I painted up quite a few models for Corrivalry as i'd not really played many late war games and needed to upgrade the army from mid to late war. It's a bit like Adams Finland project with a core of infantry and guns which can have tanks and support added to play in all three WWII time periods.

Ive been wanting to add these PAK40s to my Italians for a while as they'll fit into mid war once I've abandoned principles in return for good AT guns (i only took Italians models previously!) These are good workhorse guns in late war and did well for me as I expected at the event. The only negative point I have is that the plastic guns from Battlefront, one of their early plastic kits break very easily... but this has been discussed alot so I'll leave that there.

Whilst I'm still working on all the many panzerfaust teams I need, I did get this team done. Unfortunately the one time he was in a position to do something useful, Fez' shermans machine gunned him down... As with all the new models for the army, feathers and bosses have been greenstuff converted onto them.

PAK43 Guns are good... opponents picking on a small platoon isn't and they died in almost every game. Still they accounted for quite a few tanks and made my opponents shoot at them every time so they're worth having around. Especially for that occasional triple six shooting at veteran shermans through smoke...

I don't know how this photo got so blurry but now the light has gone away and I won't get another chance to photo these for weeks... These are 105mm German guns with Italian crew and all the support vehicles they could need. More feathers, more bombardments... If only they could do what Ben's 2ID American artillery did to me in game one! 

These mobile AB41 cars did me proud at the event causing havoc and contesting objectives well. I might have to base them so that I can use them along with the rest of my mid war armour but these were painted in exactly the same way.

See here they are in game four making life difficult for Matt Sully in Dust Up... Matt was very unlucky in this mission as everything from the dice off for quarters to the end of the game went against him... however, it did let me show off the cars killing Panzer Iv/70s... ok so the artillery finished them off, but the AB41's bailed them!

So how did I do at the event with the italians...

Well best Italian army was a fairly sure thing from the start, but I finished joint 30th out of 96 in the end. It could have been a lot worse as my only win on the first day was a 4-3 but as i had chipped away at my opponents platoons I hadn't lost 6-1 either. On day two things got better though with a 6-1 and 4-3 I pushed myself back up the table.

I made a few mistakes against Ben and would much rather have been attacking him but am generally happy with the way things went a the event. I couldn't really stop Fez killing three platoons and by all rights he should have won by breaking me in the end and in game three I was hampered by failed unpinning rolls but that's the way it goes!

BAIII and other projects...

I'm probably going to have to use these guys again at Breakthrough Assault III as neither my Indian Recce Squadron or SS will be ready unless I suddenly get a lot of free time or £100 from somewhere but at least I'm familiar with the list and will be able to go up against the better, more experianced players with a chance.

But to prove I'm actually getting on with my SS for the Remagan and Grey Wolf lists...

Here's some SS grenadiers that made their way to Corrivalry as a fourth infantry platoon. All armed with fausts and in German summer cammo these guys sure up the line and mean armour can't just jump onto objectives really easily.

Here they are from the back. At work the HQ with all the Westfallen trap teams and such is painted and platoon two and the heavy machine guns are well under way... as are King Tigers. Hopefully these will be ready for Ben's birthday one day event and tournaments later in the year so I can use them in a fortified list.

Corrivalry was lots of fun and I enjoyed having a very different list to everyone else. At least this one doesn't have variable moral like early and mid war Italians but the competitive side to me is starting to think I need to collect competitive armies and play more games so I can push on from top third to top end of the tables... so... there will be lots of projects over the next year and any suggestions of what you think might be good for me to collect and learn to use are of course welcome in the comments!

Until next time, happy war games everyone!

Jersey James