Monday 1 May 2017

A journey into Bolt Action

Back in the late '90s / early '00s I moved from 20mm WW2 into the murky waters of 28mm.  My main point of call for miniatures at the time was Wargames Foundry.  While several other manufacturers had extensive ranges of minis, Foundry always caught my eye, especially the German Sentries (WW2025) & Sentry Box (WW2G009) sets ( which were perfect for a series of games I wanted to play - loosely based on my experience of playing Medal of Honour (and sequels) on the original Playstation, or PS1 as it became to be known (a wonderful gaming console that I still have in the original box - although sadly I no longer have any games for it...).  This computer game just oozed class and I felt it was translatable to the tabletop being a FPS dungeon-crawler.  However, as often happens, I never quite got the lightbulb moment through to fruition.



The minis got painted and the collection expanded over the following years, with additions of a Westwind Tiger 1, Black Tree Design P.A.K 40 & Kubelwagen (no longer listed in their catalogue it seems), pre-Warlords Bolt Action Sdkfz 222 (appears to be a revamped model now on the Warlords site) & two British Commando canoes (available again via Warlord Games), plus some Foundry French Resistance fighters.  A few pieces of resin and metal terrain also joined the slowly growing collection...

After painting most of the figures, vehicles, artillery and some of the terrain, they found their way into storage and I moved on to other pursuits (incl. starting a family...).







Several years followed with very little hobby action, until a PC game was purchased - Soldiers: Heroes of World War II.  This was a truly tactical, real time video game with excellent graphics (for 2004), an atmospheric soundtrack and excellent game-play.  To this day, it remains in my top ten of video games.



I spent many hours huddled over my gaming laptop playing this, to the extent that it exacerbated some lower back problems (caused by poor posture habits both at home and work - let that be a warning to you) and ended up having to get some chiropractic treatment!  Health issues aside, the game, re-inspired me to re-visit the potential of tabletop gaming, especially the lighthouse scenario, with the British Commando squad needing to ambush the Germans, taking an e-boat and then take out a series of Atlantik Wall artillery guns.  Took me a few (read lots of ) attempts, but I finally took out the big guns and got my squad off the 'table' to safety (or the next mission at least...)



So, getting this onto a table is still the plan - I did though create a game with some house rules where the allies needed to take out a German command bunker.  The game was played on my home made 8'x4' terrain, with the Germans in 'patrol' mode and randomly controlled until an alarm was set-off.  This was controlled by how the British Commando player acted - for example, any sustained gunfire would set the alarms off.  At this point, the German forces would become player controlled, with potential for reinforcement to arrive from a nearby barracks in 'x' turns...

In play pictures...








IIRC, the Allies lost right at the end, but it was a close call...

So, where is this ramble going?  Well, following the release of Bolt Action 2.0, it was time to get back to WWII gaming - the Band of Brothers starter set was promptly purchased, as was a Sherman M4 (I also bought a 'not' Oddball from Studio Miniatures, just because...).  I remembered I had two Italeri 1/48 scale 88s purchased a few years ago and a box of Waffen-SS Grenadiers that I got for a birthday present in 2015.





These will be added to the existing minis, with some additional purchases along the way (such as another box of Warlord American Airborne and potentially some anti-tank artillery and/or bazookas.  Following this, some new terrain boards, possibly with a coastal theme and bunkers as per the S:HOWW2 game...


I'm also VERY tempted to scratchbuild a 1/56(ish) scale Schnellboote S-100 for this as well!  Let's see how we go with that one...