Expanding Your Late War Americans with Late War Leviathans

Expanding Your Late War Americans with Late War Leviathans By John Lee With the launch of Late War Leviathans, I thought I would look at how I could upgrade one of my favourite American Formations from the Bulge book – Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Company with new support options as well as the natural Formation upgrade. One of the key reasons I like this Formation is the variety of options you can take to build it, depending on your playstyle and what points you will be playing. Looking at the book, we can see that there is a M26 Pershing Tank Company Formation that looks similar, so we will focus on that.

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Overview One of the key reasons I like this Formation is the variety of options you can take to build it, depending on your playstyle and what points you will be playing. Looking at the book, we can see that there is a M26 Pershing Tank Company Formation that looks similar, so we will focus on that. Let’s compare the two Formations:

Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Company: 1 Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Company HQ 1 Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Platoon or M26 Pershing Tank Platoon 1 Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Platoon or M5 Stuart Tank Platoon or M24 Chaffee Tank Platoon 0-1 Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Platoon 0-1 T-26 Super Pershing Tank Platoon 0-1 Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Assault Gun Platoon or M4 Sherman (Calliope) Tank Platoon 0-1 Veteran Armoured M4 81mm Mortar Platoon

Leviathan M26 Pershing Tank Company: 1 M26 Pershing Tank Company HQ 1-2 M26 Pershing Tank Platoon 1 M26 Pershing Tank Platoon or M26 Assault Pershing Tank Platoon or T-26 Super Pershing Tank Platoon or M29 & M30 Heavy Tank Platoon 0-1 M45 Pershing Assault Gun Platoon 0-1 Veteran Armoured M4 81mm Mortar Platoon

Looking very similar indeed in terms of slots! Other than the core tanks now being M26 Pershings instead of M4 Shermans, there is one less tank slot in the new Formation. As the core unit is the M26 Pershing Tank Platoon, lets dive into that first before looking at any lists. As with the Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Platoon, the M26 Pershing Tank Platoon is also configurable in terms of what variants of tanks you can have in your platoon. This is what I love about this Formation, and particularly this unit – the versatility of what you can take depending on your playstyle, points and coolness factor.

Starting off with the base stock standard M26 Pershing, you can take between two and five in the platoon which are the same points as in the Bulge Formation. The coolness factor comes from the upgrades. You can upgrade any tank to a T-26 Super Pershing for +2pts each. You can also replace one tank with a M26 Assault Pershing for +2pts – yes that’s right – this is the Pershing version of the Jumbo with FA16! We are going to look at an option of taking a Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Formation and adding a Leviathan T26 Super Pershing Tank Platoon to it at 100pts and then look at taking the new M26 Pershing Formation and how it could look at 100pts and 200pts – that’s right 200pts (More on why and how later in the article)!

Looking at our standard Sherman list, to get in some of the big guns, its going to be a tight squeeze, so going with the Leviathan T-26 Super Pershing Tank Platoon as Formation support to provide that long range AT18. Well, hold on now – we already have a platoon in the Formation for that! Yes, it allows you to bring one tank with AT18. Taking the leviathan option instead, gets us THREE tanks into the list! This is what it could look like:

Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Tank Company

Only four units for the Formation break to ensure we get in the T-26 Super Pershings and add some infantry and more artillery to round out force. Could replace the M7 Priests and Rifle platoon to get Armoured Rifles instead depending on your preferences. If we fully replace the Formation now with the M26 Pershing Tank Company, this is how it could look:

M26 Pershing Tank Company 1

Again, four units for the Formation break. We now have two core tank platoons with an Assault Pershing each to deflect shots. Still two units for indirect fire and now some recon and a very decent OP tank with AT12! If you really want some AT18 in the list, we could either upgrade one or two tanks each in each platoon or replace the second platoon with a T-26 Super Pershing Platoon by downgrading the recon to three vehicles instead of four and removing the Lucky card.

M26 Pershing Tank Company 2

The third and final list is at 200pts and the reason we want to look at this is because Leviathan units are very expensive to deploy to the tabletop (as they should be!). With this release, there is now a new option for building and playing games with more points – welcome to Leviathan Big Point Games. The premise is that 75% of your force is comprised of Formations and units with the Leviathan symbol and the remaining 25% is comprised of anything else. This makes it easier to play Leviathan based forces. This is what a 200pt force could look like:

Maxed out Formation now with six units for the Formation break. Two artillery templates that are part of the Formation. Two core tank platoons with 3 standard and one up armoured M26 Pershing. The third platoon is the T29 Heavy Tank Platoon which provides AT19 out to 48”! Two units of small recon for spearhead as well as Stuarts to provide some light tank support to screen the big tanks. A full Armoured Rifle Platoon with the upgraded Bazookas giving you AT14 and 4+ FP to help with defensive fire and assaults against more heavily armoured tanks. There we have it – some food for thought on the evolution of the Veteran M4 Sherman (Late) Formation and units and different ways to take them. Enjoy!

~ John