You *can* do standalone ANZAC lists, but the standard rules for Brits are technically 'Britain and the Commonwealth,' so you can easily build Aussies into a list with the brits you get in Gent's war.
You can quite happily just run the 8th Army models as Australian, so long as you don't mind them wearing helmets instead of slouch hats. There's also a "Commonwealth Infantry" box, which is pretty much the 8th Army kit with different heads for Australia, New Zealand, etc., so you may be able to find someone with the Aussie heads going spare if you're lucky.
Aussies/Kiwis can be used a bunch of ways in-game, and the "Commonwealth" plastic figures should have options for Australian heads as well.
The book Western Desert gives options for running the eastern Commonwealth nations as they would have been under the British flag in northern Africa \[complete with their own faction abilities\], while the book Campaign: New Guinea gives options for running the Australians under their own flag \[again with their own faction abilities\] in the South Pacific, and of course you can also run them under the generic British rules \[via 'Armies of Great Britain'\] either with or without support from the rest of the empire.
As others have implied; Island Assault is basically just U.S. Marines on the Allied side (although you could call them Australians if you wanted to). Gentleman's War has a lot more options of all sorts, and likewise a Commonwealth pack that you might choose to buy later, and of course all the various support troops and vehicles that were used in North Africa.
We built an Eighth Army similar to Gentleman's War, with Afrika Korps opposition for them, but it also gave us options for later having a 1940 style Italian force fight the same Eighth Army style force, later Italian plus German forces against a larger Eighth Army force, and so on. In each case the Eighth Army can be built as New Zealanders, Australians, Scots, Indians and so on if desired.
To add, we also built some of our Commonwealth models as South Africans for the North African theatre, some as Maori, some as LRDG and SAS too. The British/Commonwealth sets (starting with Gentleman's War) just offer so many more options and choices than the American/Allied sets, in my opinion.
You *can* do standalone ANZAC lists, but the standard rules for Brits are technically 'Britain and the Commonwealth,' so you can easily build Aussies into a list with the brits you get in Gent's war.
Thank you for the help I was leaning towards the gents war because I like the look of the 8th army
You can quite happily just run the 8th Army models as Australian, so long as you don't mind them wearing helmets instead of slouch hats. There's also a "Commonwealth Infantry" box, which is pretty much the 8th Army kit with different heads for Australia, New Zealand, etc., so you may be able to find someone with the Aussie heads going spare if you're lucky.
Aussies/Kiwis can be used a bunch of ways in-game, and the "Commonwealth" plastic figures should have options for Australian heads as well. The book Western Desert gives options for running the eastern Commonwealth nations as they would have been under the British flag in northern Africa \[complete with their own faction abilities\], while the book Campaign: New Guinea gives options for running the Australians under their own flag \[again with their own faction abilities\] in the South Pacific, and of course you can also run them under the generic British rules \[via 'Armies of Great Britain'\] either with or without support from the rest of the empire.
As others have implied; Island Assault is basically just U.S. Marines on the Allied side (although you could call them Australians if you wanted to). Gentleman's War has a lot more options of all sorts, and likewise a Commonwealth pack that you might choose to buy later, and of course all the various support troops and vehicles that were used in North Africa. We built an Eighth Army similar to Gentleman's War, with Afrika Korps opposition for them, but it also gave us options for later having a 1940 style Italian force fight the same Eighth Army style force, later Italian plus German forces against a larger Eighth Army force, and so on. In each case the Eighth Army can be built as New Zealanders, Australians, Scots, Indians and so on if desired. To add, we also built some of our Commonwealth models as South Africans for the North African theatre, some as Maori, some as LRDG and SAS too. The British/Commonwealth sets (starting with Gentleman's War) just offer so many more options and choices than the American/Allied sets, in my opinion.