For a minor nation war, there’s only really 4 nations of any consideration: China, France, Italy, and Romania. The others lack the variety of units to make a decent force. Of the four, France has the most obviously powerful units; the 5/5 defence Char is capable of taking out two units a turn, and the Renault is tied for least expensive tank, but has the second highest defence and good (enough) anti-tank stats. The MAS Rifle is good enough to play in standard games, and definately shines when compared to the other minor nation’s infantry. The Bold Captain is very good for his cost; he has a solid command ability and is one of the two commanders with initiative +2. Never underestimate the importance of initiative, especially against the Italians (Immediately destroyed Carro can demoralize the Fuciles before they fire a shot) and Romanians (Their ATG’s camoflauge can be a problem).
While France may seem the strongest, China generally seems the weakest. Their tank is expensive and fragile, while their troops are just fragile. Their commander is nearly useless, and the MG has a serious drawback. So why play China? Well firstly their MG might have a drawback, but no other nation has one and, for only 6 points, you can afford a few. The T-26 still has good enough AT dice, it just needs to (unfortunately) be used in larger numbers. Even their basic troops aren’t bad. They may only take one hit to kill, but (a) you’ll have a few of them and (b) they still need to get that hit; 4/4 defence is pretty good in this type of game. Also terrain can be used to keep them out of LOS. The biggest drawback is the dependancy on the rare T-26; you need several of them for the army to work as all the other units are ineffective against armour.
The Italians have the same number of units as the France, but like the T-26 their armour has a serious drawback. Against lighter tanks (T-26, R-2 LT-35, and eve the Renault) the Carro should keep to range and fire at them, as the Carro’s 6 dice will still be enough to threaten them; while 5 or 6 dice firing back will be fairly ineffective. However this doesn’t work against the Char, where the roles are reversed. In this instance you need to swarm the Char at closer ranges where you have the number of dice needed to overcome it’s high defence. The Stalwart Lieutenant and Fucile Modello shouldn’t be used if you can help it; a Fucile or two doesn’t hurt as filler, but your force should mainly be comprised of Carros and Blackshirts, with some Mortars as support. In this limited format, the Blackshirts are perhaps the best infantry with their Ruthless ability.
Lastly there’s the Romanias. Between their grenadiers and ATGs they should have the least difficulty with the French tanks; not quite the Char’s silver bullet, but the closest thing to it. Their Grenadiers aren’t so good against infantry, and are very expensive, so must be used carefully; supporting them with R-2 LT-35s is always good. The Vigilant Lt’s high initiative of +2 means you can hopefully grab initiative a few times to get your Grenadiers on top of those enemiy AFVs. The Bohler ATGs camoflauge is interesting; try and position a battery with a wide LOS, but more importantly so it can cover the objective. The Vigilant Lt should be safely behind them. In this game nothing goes faster than speed 3 so you don’t have to worry about them being taken out as quickly.
I think the tournament would be fun, and the Char would be the ‘King Tiger’ of the field. The probem is, unlike the King Tiger, you can field multiples of them in a standard game, and it wouldn’t be as hard as getting 4-5 of the tanks from other minor nations. You might want to ban/restrict them depending on what people have, or simply reduce the number of points and size of the map (eg 40 points on a 1x2 map). Otherwise you could get some very nasty armies: Char x3, Bold Captain, MAS x10.
Rolling 2 6-sided dice: