I have covered the new unit cards and army book for the British and Commonwealth forces in an earlier post. That means it is time to go over the Command Cards. As with all the CC sets, this set allows you to give your units upgrades (and down grades), to make things a little more interesting.
Like the Unit Cards, this set is really two sets in one. You get a full range of cards for the British and Indians and a separate set for the Australians. On the plus side, you do not have to buy two sets of cards. For all the online hate on Battlefront about maximizing profits, they do often forgo this with some of their offerings and this is the case here.
Like the unit cards, these are color coded (green for Aussie and blue for the rest), so they are easy to keep straight. Each set gives a full line of options or each force.
Both sets come with the normal generic unit upgrades the you can buy for your units. While almost all the cards overlap, there is a little variation. The Aussies get They don’t like it, local porters and coast watcher. The Brits get tank escorts and bagpipes.
The British formation upgrades are interesting. There is a special force formation and a veteran rifle upgrade. I personally think these could have been in the main unit cards and rulebook (like they did for the Aussies), but at least we get them. The Aussies only have a couple of upgrades. I think this is mostly that the army is more complete in the base rules. The engineer company is a common formation you see in other sets. The Papau infantry is a neat option. Not quite sure why the cupola MGs was not in the main book though…
We get a few weapon modifications that add a little flavor. The normal soft skin transport is here for both forces and they both get a Piat option for those 43 scenarios I guess. The Captured 47mm guns is interesting, as I was not aware that they took these guns with them to India…. I have a set of the short 25lbers for my Aussies, so I am happy to see this option in the set! I may even get around to adding some 4.5mm to my British now, since there is a card for it!
The set ends with three characters for each force, for those that like to include them. Overall, these are nice sets. Each on their own is a bit small, but each has a few gems. As I said, I like that the sets have been combined (they did the same with the US), which is probably whey they both are manageable. Overall, a nice set and must buy, if you collect either (or both) of these forces.
- Manteuffel