Even though the industrial advantage is enormous the United States still needs to field infantry units as these are the backbone and core of any army.
The American Rifle Company is probably among the most versatile infantry forces that you can field in Flames of War. Support options are numerous and cheap and all this spells versatility. This force is Confident Trained. It can be found in the Flames of War V3 rulebook and is available for free on www.EasyArmy.com.
The Company HQ is classic and this time we won’t upgrade anything to it. Not that the options are not worth mentioning but we need the points elsewhere. What you will notice right away is the fact that there is a special rule called “Automatic Rifles”. Now, what this does exactly is that teams with this special rules ignore the +1 penalty for moving or being pinned down and also they re-roll misses in Defensive Fire unless Pinned down. Awesome time! So basically all Infantry squads are better at shooting while moving and better at defending when they are not Pinned down. Fire and maneuver, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the name of the game!
Core troops will be 2 trusty Rifle Platoons. You can get either 2 Squads or 3 Squads for a measly 155 points so 2 full strength platoons it is for us. Note that all the squads have the “Automatic Rifles” rules and each platoon comes with a built in Bazooka team which really ads to the value of these troops.
Support options will of course include the obligatory high ROF machine-gun platoon. We can either take 2 or 4 M1917 HMG teams but we will go with the latter bulkier option and also give them jeeps to be able to redeploy faster. ROF6 (or 3 when moving) is nothing to joke about.
And now we get to the part i really love about this list. In a 1000 point company you can actually include 2 Anti-tank platoons, each with 3 M1 57mm guns. ROF 3 and Anti-tank 10 is a very good punch for something cheap (70 points for 3 guns).
But were would you be without your artillery support? Lucky for you this Rifle Company allows you to buy 2 4 guns batteries. The M2A1 howitzer can also double as smoke launcher since it can fire smoke or smoke bombardments.
And honestly if you’re not convinced yet there are points to buy even a small 3 M5A1 Stuart’s light tank platoon.
Let’s just recap what we have so far:
Rifle Company HQ – 10 points
Rifle Platoon – 155 points
3 Rifle Squads.
Rifle Platoon – 155 points
3 Rifle Squads.
Machine-gun Platoon – 100 points
2 Machine-gun Sections.
Add Jeeps.
Anti-Tank Platoon – 70 points
3 M1 57mm guns.
Anti-Tank Platoon – 70 points
3 M1 57mm guns.
Field Artillery Battery – 140 points
4 M2A1 105mm guns.
Field Artillery Battery – 140 points
4 M2A1 105mm guns.
Light Tank Platoon – 145 points
3 M5A1 Stuart.
Total – 995 points
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