Bolt Action Mini Battle Report

This past Sunday I played my first ever game of Bolt Action, Warlord Game's WWII 28mm skirmish wargame. Boutique FDB is home to a slow-grow league open to new players. Having painted a rifle platoon of Canadians many years ago for a different set of rules, miniatures which had never fired a shot in anger, I was looking forward to having a go.

Consequentially I picked up a copy of the rules on Thursday, read them at top speed and prepared my forces. This week we were fielding 500 points which was just about a perfect fit for my three rifle sections. I hoped that my lonely PIAT team would be enough to keep any tanks from savaging my infantry.

The league is a casual affair with players showing up and building their lists to account for their opponent's capabilities. We actually played to a range of points, from 500-650, depending on each player's collection. Since I brought a 500 point list my opponent rebuilt his to match.

I wasn't the only inexperienced player there which made me feel better about my shaky grasp on the rules. My opponent used to play Bolt Action years ago but this was his first game in the new edition. He had read about what had changed but hadn't had a chance to go through the new rulebook which meant the first few activations were halting as we looked up to-hit charts and the effects of difficult terrain. Fortunately there aren't many modifiers to remember and by the second turn we were flying. I'm glad I'm fresh to this edition; it's always hard trying to remember rules changes between editions.

The Battle

The battle was fought between a rifle platoon of Royal Highland Regiment of Canada and some nameless Waffen SS. I had three regular sections with an LMG, my HQ, a free artillery observer and the aforementioned PIAT team. My opponent had a veteran rifle section with two LMGs, a veteran section armed with SMGs mounted in a Hanomag and his HQ mounted in a Kubelwagon.

At this range and with the sandbags counting as heavy cover his Hanomag needed to roll a 6 on a D6, followed by a second roll of a 6 on a D6 and then you can roll to wound.

Weathering Miniatures with Glazes

Reading Matt Varnish's recent post on running a Black Power Napoleonics game reminded my how much I missed painting my Napoleonic, actually War of 1812 because I'm a proud Canadian, miniatures. Since I had recently volunteered to write for this blog I was eager for something to talk about and with my mind on Napoleonics I remembered a technique I had used the last time I painted my British Line Infantry.

 

Glazing for Easy Detail

I came up with the technique of using glazes to weather my miniatures because I wanted to show my infantry with dusty pants from a long march but with a planned 300 miniatures in the British forces alone I didn't want to take too much time painting each miniature.

Here you can see the finished product with what is meant to look like a light tan dusting. I wanted the dust to fade seamlessly into the rest of the pants and like I said, I wanted it to be quick.

Glazing allowed me to apply transparent colour in a controllable fashion to slowly build up the effect I was after.