We’re now halfway through our look at the National Special Rules found in Armies of the British Commonwealth, and continuing in alphabetical order we come to… East Africa Command! It’s gonna take a lot to drag Bolt Action players away from Australia and Canada – but this might just do it.

East Africa Command is unique among the nations found in this book, as it doesn’t represent a single country or contiguous region. Instead, it covers the troops drawn from the many British colonial possessions across the African continent, and as such has to account for a lot of different formations and fighting styles. Let’s see how it does that!

We can see right away that this is going to produce some scary forces. Pangas ensures that the vast majority of your force will be Tough Fighters, instantly opening the door for some hand-to-hand nastiness. Local Area Control and Scouts then combine to give you incredible Outflanking ability combined with a lot of Infiltrators, allowing for all sorts of board control shenanigans – or just getting up close and personal as quickly as possible.

We then have the two rules designed to cover iconic units from different parts of Africa. Desert Mounted Infantry gives you the ability to make your forces even more mobile, courtesy of camels, while Nigerian Chindits allows you to field a truly fearsome force of ultra-elite light infantry, perfect for carving their way through deep jungle, or the enemy! Packed with special rules, they’re pricey but very, very dangerous.

All this makes East Africa Command forces both powerful and completely unlike any other on the tabletop – perfect for commanders looking for something a little off the beaten track. When you add in the new units and Standard Commonwealth Units options, it gets even better. We think this is going to be a very popular army indeed… so it’s a good job we’ve got some new plastic Chindits in the works that we’ll be looking to release next year!

So, Armies of the British Commonwealth is now on pre-order, and you’ve seen the very broad overview of what it contains. Now it’s time to start our deeper dive on the nations making up the book. We’ll begin at the beginning, with Australia – let’s go Down Under!

Each of the nations in Armies of the British Commonwealth comes with a full set of national special rules. As a reminder, these replace those found in Armies of Great Britain – no double-dipping allowed! – and provide each nation with its unique ‘flavour’. They’ve also got their own sets of unique units, but we won’t be looking at those just yet. This is just a quick overview of Australia’s ‘character’ on the Bolt Action tabletop, to give you a taste of what’s to come.

Well, how about that for a set of rules?! Australia is shaping up to be a serious force in Bolt Action, and it’s only the first nation featured in Armies of the British Commonwealth. Never Give Up makes assaulting Australian troops an even riskier proposition for the enemy, while Aggressive Patrolling gives you great board control.

As you’ll see later on, Australian forces are well supplied with Infiltrators to make use of this rule, unlocking some very powerful combinations if you want to theme your force after the legendary Jungle Divisions. Finally, Ambush Drills gives Australian units a unique ability to resist the powerful effects of an Ambush order, opening up new lines of advance across the tabletop.

These rules immediately make an Australian force feel completely different to a British one, or indeed any other Commonwealth one – which is the entire point of Armies of the British Commonwealth, of course! This is before we get into the unique Australian units, and the units from the Standard Commonwealth Units portion of the book available to Australian forces, which further ensure that your Aussies are unmistakable in battle!