The Regina Rifles street-fighting in Caen, by Peter Dennis © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 143: Caen 1944.
It was common for units of different Allied nationalities to be deployed to separate sectors to avoid communication problems. However, in the heat of battle it often happened that troops would find themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the forces of Allied nations. These rules offer an optional way to mix nationalities within your force. In this book, for example, in any scenario that states you can use either an American or a British force, feel free to mix them in a single force as described below.
First of all, we encourage mixing forces only with both sides’ agreement, as mixed forces may occasionally trigger rules conflicts, which will need to be resolved on the fly by the players. As a guideline, special rules that affect a force or units of one nationality do not affect their Allies. For example, the Morale bonus of a British officer would not affect US units, and the Modern Communications army special rule of the Americans does not affect British units that are in Reserve alongside their US counterparts.
When assembling a mixed force, select at least one platoon from one army list (e.g. the Armies of the United States) and then at least one platoon from another army list (e.g. the Armies of Great Britain). The points cost total of all of these platoons added together must be equal to the agreed point total, in other words equal to the opponent’s total. For example, if you are about to face 1000pts of Germans, you may want to select one or more US platoons to a value of 500pts and one or more British platoons to a value of 500pts. Of course the split does not have to be 50-50, we leave that to the players (e.g. a larger Italian force may include a smaller German contingent in a scenario set in North Africa.).
The same player can control these different nationalities’ platoons if you wish. However, we definitely think it’s more entertaining if each nationality’s forces are controlled by a separate player.
If you are using theatre selectors to pick those platoons, it is best if you pick forces that make sense together – for example an American platoon from the 1944 – Normandy selector in the Armies of the United States would go well together with a British platoon from the 1944 – Normandy selector in the Armies of Great Britain.
During the game, you may use the same colour dice for the entire mixed force, in which case you’ll have to decide which unit gets the dice – or debate it with your Allied player!
Alternatively, you may assign different coloured dice to each nationality, which will speed up things considerably. This is by far our favourite solution.
At the end of a game, each nationality scores Victory points individually (which gives you bragging rights), but the forces fighting as Allies will of course add their points together to calculate which side has won the game, as normal.
The workhorse of the US forces in Europe, a M3A1 halftrack ferries GIs to the front