2/25/2026 - Border Wars: Planning and Scheming

This week Andrew of Chicago Dice announced the details for Border Wars 2026, a team Illinois vs team Wisconsin Bolt Action tournament taking place on May 23rd. I’ve been doing the hobby for about a yeah at this point, and I have been really trying to improve the quality of my painting. I’ve been taking my time working on my Americans, and I think Border Wars is a good excuse to take a shot at creating a “best painted” force. At the time of writing, Border Wars is just shy of 60 days away. I have two months to flesh out my list, build it, paint it, and build my first tournament display board.

And in an event that emphasizes lists and armies being “hobby first” as opposed to ‘win at all costs” min/maxed, that means I’m gonna have to turn my sampler platter of a US force into something more coherently thematic.

I already have the start of an American force built and in varying stages of painted: a couple squads of Ranger infantry, some Ranger support teams, a single squad of US Airborne, a halftrack, a Sherman, an M8 Greyhound, and an M24 Chafefe Chaffee. I’ve played all of these in a single force a handful of time, and I gotta say Rangers Lead The Way plus Recce on my armor is a fun as hell combination. Fast and Sneaky all the way. However in an event that emphasizes lists and armies being “hobby first” and thematic as opposed to ‘win at all costs” and very min/maxed, that means I’m gonna have to turn my sampler platter of a US force into something more coherent and historically grounded.

Most of the infantry I have built and partially painted are Rangers, so that’s gonna be the base of the theme. And as much as I love having the half-track of Airborne come out of reserves in the later turns, the Rangers and the Airborne didn’t fight in the same engagements and this isn’t Saving Private Ryan. The Airborne are out. I’ll likely be building at least one more big squad of rangers.

I don't have enough ranger sprues to run an all infantry force like I enjoy doing when I run my Germans, and honestly I really fuckin love running Armour with recce. Like you haven’t lived until you’ve played chicken with a Tiger tank and kept it busy playing ring-around-the-god-damn-rosey around a church the whole game. It is absolutely fantastic.



But if I want my army to be thematic this is gonna be limiting. The Chaffee is extremely late war, and the Greyhound’s use in the European theater was largely limited to Italy...and the newest Armies Of book coming out is the Armies of Italy… so fuck it, Rangers + Greyhound = Invasion of Italy, we have a theme. I’m sure this will go over great with my community teeming with spaghetti-pilled Italy-enjoyers.

I’ll probably do some more tweaking down the line, but I have a rough plan in place. I’m going to take the Sherman as the second vehicle to the Greyhound in the armored platoon, and I’m likely gonna add an artillery platoon to utilized the light howitzer I have coming in the mail and capitalize on having my Forward Air Observer act as spotter. On that note I also wanna procure a light mortar team, though looking through Warlord’s offerings leads me to believe I may have to go the 3D printed route to get something more resembling GIs than the Airborne light mortars Warlord sells.

And speaking of 3D printing, a friend of mine (the same one who's Tiger I bullied lol) is willing to print fdm terrain pieces for my display board. I could probably scratch build a bunker from foam. Not sure I wanna have to though. I sketched out a rough vision for the board last night.

The background, featuring American artillery firing on an axis bunker, maybe a ranger lobbing a grenade into said bunker. The mid ground, a Mediterranean stucco style wall with a large gate in the center, battle worn. And the foreground, infantry and armour charging the gate.

And that’s enough brainstorming for the moment. I have a lot of infantry to get painting and the next home depot trip is gonna have to wait till after Adepticon this weekend.

58 days till Border Wars and I’m hyped as hell.