I have a hardback copy of Bolt Action’s 3rd edition rules, and I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a couple of small forces for some time.
Has anyone played it?
The dice bag order system seems really fun and interesting.
I listened to a podcast lately which talked about the fact that any WW2 game has an instant leg-up in terms of intelligibility, as we are all taught about the war, to some degree, through popular culture and school. Something like KOW is a lot more impenetrable at first, in lore and background terms.
I think a commonality with KOW is that proxying models is an option, you’re not limited to Warlord models (which, if I’m honest, are ‘fine’, but look quite dated… The model’s faces are truly potato-like). I think the new Victrix WW2 line looks a lot better. Although I think if you’re going to play in the WW2 sandbox then maybe ultra-realistic is not the way to go, and things are better played as semi-cartoony and fun.
I wrote five of the campaign books for Bolt Action v1 and v2, and did a lot of the re-writes for Armies of the UK and US in v3. Feel free to send me a message if I can help in any way.
Thanks! Honestly it’s just a matter of actually getting the finger out and buying one of the new starter sets. I’m thinking maybe the Band of Brothers 3rd edition set.
I would buy the big Battle of the Bulge starter set, with the US winter troops and winter German paratroops, but I just don’t like modelling winter scenery.
I have the paints, gaming table, relevant terrain, so it would be straightforward enough to get into.
Just listened to a YouTube video on the history of Bolt Action, as a game, that was quite entertaining.
I played a demo of it at San Diego Comic Con in 2023 and had a great time with it.
I picked up the starter set they recently put out with maybe 6-10 models per side and a cardboard vehicle (a nod to the cardboard ork dreadnought in Warhammer 40,000 second edition starter which is now lost to time/moving around the world) — the models are very nice, easy to assemble. The bases are terrible, but I replaced those with Citadel bases.
The game itself is fun, feels like Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition which makes sense as that was originally a World War 2 game that was adapted to accommodate the increase in the number of models in the game.
I recently picked up a set of Victrix 12mm models to actually try and get two playable armies together to play the game as I can paint them up quickly.
What worries me about playing any historical game is that some of the players have a reputation for being too focused on historical accuracy. I cannot imagine a game of Warhammer 40,000 where someone tells me I’ve painted my Space Marines in the wrong shade of blue, but I have seen historical players complain about the wrong shade of green for uniforms.
I’ve not seen this with Bolt Action players but as it increasingly becomes the biggest historical game out there it seems inevitable that this may happen.
I had a military surplus rain coat about 20 years ago, and I met a man once who stopped me to ask if I knew about its origin. I said “no”, and he tried to give me a lecture on “not even knowing the significance of the camo pattern I was wearing”.
I think I would find it even harder to take someone seriously if they were complaining about how I’d painted my toy soldiers.
Wonder how prevalent it is within Bolt Action? I lurk on the reddit group a fair bit, and it seems arlight.
But as I’ll only be playing with my two sons, most likely, it is not really much of a concern for me if we get the pain jobs wrong.
It seems the way Bolt Action is set up, where any army of any theatre could end up fighting each other (US Pacific Marines versus Late War Germans etc), historical accuracy is never front and centre.
Played a couple of times some years ago with borrowed models and gameplay was quite fun.
I do get the full on historical accuracy thing for the purposes of wanting to build a specific unit etc in a given theatre, but criticising someone else’s army because the straps and cuffs are the wrong colour (napoleonic players are well into this! ) isn’t my take.
Since German military grey/green has a huge number of different options for example, even among specialist paint ranges, I’m always pretty sanguine about things.
The order dice are just a gimmick and simply about that both players have the same dice so you cannot “cheat” while picking one.
You can use regular dice and chose place a marker with the order down, or even replace the dice bag with a deck of regular cards and go with red vs black.
I played BA in the past, also Flames of War, (Africa Corps in both) and as we grew older it fall out of favour for different reasons.
Some of the painters dropped out because showing off (and being proud of) their “little Nazis” felt wired to them, while one of the clubs stopped promoting all modern wargames after attack on Kyjiw (people could still play but no advertising for new stuff or events).
WW2 is still living memory so I suppose it is more edgy than other wargames, if you think about it.
Although the brand is that Bolt Action is fun, comforting, and almost wholesome… The talk about it being like childhood WW2 comics, and the old movies etc.
I suppose someone playing the Red Army and Imperial Japanese should be aware of the past in the same way as someone playing one of the armies of Germany. But, intuitively, I suppose the ‘fascination for nazis’ is just on a different level… For whatever reason.
Concerning the Red Army, and Soviet history in general, there is still a bit of a blind spot or denialism,where I am.
Although why the Soviets behaved as they did, in occupied territories, is itself fodder for complex evaluation. Revenge, their own horrific living conditions, the mixed messages of Soviet command… Not sure this makes the excesses more defensible than atrocities committed for ideological reasons.
) isn’t my take.