Stepping Away from the Grid for a Moment

No, not the power grid, the gridded wargame's table.

If you haven't heard, Warlord released a free "unofficial" squad vs squad modification for Bolt Action . This provided a bit of a kick in the paints (get it? ha!) to get started on my early war French force as some people at the "local" (I always put it in quotes because it's about an hour drive) game store will be playing it and my whole reason for even giving Bolt Action a go is to play some games with other people.

The figures (from Warlord) are quite nice with little flash - these are white metal, not plastic, which can't be said of all of the Warlord figures. The integral bases varied from barely adding any height to adding several millimeters. To avoid the "standing on a mound in the middle of a lawn" look, I decided to break out some green stuff I had laying around (several years old now) to smooth the transition.

This was my first attempt at using green stuff - it's the two strips kind (one yellow, one blue, knead together). It was harder to mix than I imagined but a few minutes searching the internet, followed by a few seconds in the microwave (the green stuff, not me) and a little water helped (again the green stuff, although I could always do with more water, too).

Here they are, still on mounds, but more uniformly so.

Soviet SMG troops look on as the green stuff dries on the French figures.

After the green stuff had fully cured (I let it go overnight), I put some texture on the bases (I don't normally do this, but I'm following a guide). I'm using Vallejo Ground Texture - a white-ish paste with pumice in it from what I understand. It's spreadable, and with a damp brush it can be almost painted where needed. Don't use too much water though or whatever the pumice is in just sort of flows away.

I let that  dry a few hours and then primed the figures with Delta Ceramcoat Hippo Grey.

A dark shadowy mass.

While priming, I found there was some flash between the helmet rim and backpack on a few of the figures, so I'll clear that out with a file and spot prime as needed, before I start in on the great coats.

I still haven't decided if I'll attempt any shading, highlighting, and all that on these figures, or go with the simpler painting style that I tend to prefer.

Bonjour mes amies!*

After much waiting due to supplier back log (my order was placed in January), the store I ordered my 28mm early war French WWII force from was able to ship them out.

Here they are in their packaged glory:

This amounts to a 500 point force in Bolt Action but of course the figures are usable with other rules (and will most definitely be used with other rules).

I chose the French (and soon the Italians) as my forces for this endeavor for a few reasons:

The primary motivation was a general dread of painting another American paratrooper or a German infantry figure in yet another scale. I wanted something that I didn't already have in another scale (I am saving British 8th army and Afrika Corps. for 6mm).  The French and the Italians can fight each other as well, with the failed Italian invasion of France, without need to paint a single German.

 Another was that I assumed (and rightly from what I can gather from the pictures on the Facebook groups) that almost everyone in the local area has troops for the big four while the rest are underrepresented, if at all. I look forward to eventually fielding one of those wonderful early war French tanks or armored cars (or both!). That both the French and Italians perform pretty poorly in Bolt Action is of little concern to me.

That I don't know a ton about the French or Italian armies in WWII just means I have an excuse to expand my reading and research.

And finally, and this is a huge bonus - the figures are metal and require minimal assembly. Compare that to the plastic sprues of arms, heads, weapons, gear, etc. that have to b clipped free and then glued together. My anxiety rises just thinking about that!


* That phrase almost uses up the entirety of what I remember from my high school French classes.

Bolt Action: Learning Game #2 - Key Positions

For my second game of Bolt Action, I opted to play the Key Positions scenario from the rule book which involves trying to capture and hold more objectives than your opponent.

As a basis for the terrain, I used the Pitched Battle(2) setup from One Hour Wargames. The remainder of the terrain was generated via Platoon Forward's random generation tables.

Since I am only playing two squads per side, I kept the total available objectives to 3, and to make it more challenging for me, as I play solo, I decided to put the third objective on the German table edge (hill, crossroads, church).

Turn 1

The Germans quickly moved a squad into the church and an MG to cover the crossroads, supported by the platoon HQ. The German 2nd squad was held in reserve.

The Americans opted to concentrate on capturing the cross-roads (determined by die roll), with the intent to nominally hold the hill with their mortar, which could also cover their retreat if necessary.

2nd squad was tasked with supporting 1st squad's advance on the crossroads, using the village for cover, with the order to fall back and cover the hill in the event of a German counter-attack.

Turn 2

The American 2nd squad raced for the red-roofed farm house but unfortunately there was just enough gap for the squad to be in the machine gun's sights. One rifleman goes down (the squad takes a pin marker) but the rest made it into the farmhouse. As soon as they got inside, bullets erupted from the church and the NCO was killed by the German LMG.

The American first squad moved up by clinging to the right edge of the woods to prevent fire from the church and the MG team, as the mortar setup behind the hill.

Turn 3

The German reserve squad advanced into the woods to the left of the machine gun to allow them to support both the squad in the church and the gun team.

Turn 4

US mortar fire hit the roof of the church and exploded on impact with little to show for the effort.

Meanwhile, the US first squad advanced and the MG42 opened fire - killing the NCO and a rifleman. The squad's return fire was ineffectual.

German platoon HQ advanced to assist the MG42. The platoon leader opened fire and killed another US rifleman.

With things looking grim the US platoon HQ moved up to support first squad.

The German reserve squad charged the church (they fell short by a few inches).

Turn 5

US first squad was in chaos and instead of firing at the enemy, they hit the dirt.

The MG42 continued to chew them up (another casualty).

The US second squad opted to charge the oncoming Germans (Captain Danjou anyone?) to close assault the German 2nd squad and it was the one bright spot for the Americans as they destroyed their opponents.

A lot of good it did them - the German squad in the church promptly mowed them down.

A US mortar blast struck the roof of the church, yet again, and did nothing but explode on impact.

Turn 6

The US was pretty much decimated by this point and continuing seemed kind of silly.

*****
It was another good time. Took about two hours, start to finish, not counting setup and cleanup. For me, that's a long game - which relegates it to weekend nights only for me, generally speaking.

I think I corrected most of the mistakes I made last time, while making new ones this time. I also raised some questions that I need to look into. That's why these are learning games after all.

Random Thoughts About Bolt Action That Will Surprise Few People

While tossing and turning on Sunday night, trying to fall asleep despite the ridiculous one-hour time change (spring ahead and all that), and being fairly certain I would never sleep again, my thoughts turned to gaming.

My old school setup - at least, this is how I picture old school tables.

Here then are some random thoughts on Bolt Action (I'm really late to this party, so I doubt any of this is all that revealing to most people):

Although by design, everything is based individually, in effect, because each squad stays together, moves together, shoots together at the same target (with few exceptions), and is targeted together, it is not much different, mentally speaking, than a game where 1 base = 1 squad. You could probably use bases and a roster system just as well (but if you're doing that, why not field a company and play Company Command, Crossfire, Morschauser, etc.?)

The randomization of unit activation works well for solo gaming. Horses for courses of course, but as I noted previously, it feels more fun to draw the order die from the hat than roll a die for initiative; still not as fun as turning cards over though.

The fact that the rules as written require just 5 figures to field a squad means you don't need a lot of figures painted to start playing. You also don't have to worry about adjustments or breaking the game because of the lower-than-normal figure counts (originally I typed "having a small unit" and then laughed until I could't see, so I changed it. But here I have obviously just re-added it.).

I bought the rules on PDF - this may have been a mistake as it's not a small book by any means. There's a multi-page rules summary  (calling it a QRS would imply a much shorter document) that I'll have to print out for next time, but even then, I'll still have to lookup a lot of the details for the rules during play and I much prefer flipping physical pages - so much faster to get to the section you need.

BA gets a bad rap for being gamey and not enough of a simulation, but I don't fault oranges for not being apples - I like both for what they are.

Undersized Squads: A Tale of Two Games

This week was stressful and hectic in a myriad of ways and I had virtually no time or energy for much of anything most days, but I did play around with the idea of fielding undersized squads for 1:1 platoon-sized WWII games - particularly so I could begin learning Bolt Action.

In 54mm, I find 5-7 figures gives the impression of a squad, has a 'playing with toy soldiers' appearance to my eye, takes up less space than a true full strength squad does, and works with my existing figure collection so I don't have to wait to play while I paint up the figures in the queue.

Two US squads (BAR team of 2 figures, and rifle team of 3, with NCO) and Platoon HQ. Wall prototypes in background.

Friday night, I gave it a try with an old and arguably familiar set of rules, Disposable Heroes / Coffin for Seven Brothers (1st ed.) using Scenario J from Platoon Forward, 'Patrol'.

US squads arrived on the table on turn 5. By that point the blinds for the German patrol had nearly crossed the entire table. 

BAR team peeks around corner. Rifle team in the background would enter the building. And be pinned there until eliminated eventually by ...

The German MG., once set up it didn't move - it just pelted the US team in the farmhouse repeatedly. 

Mechanically the undersized squads worked pretty well. Unfortunately, two-figure BAR fireteams go to man alone rather quickly. I think if I do this again, I'd use 7 figures (which my current painted collection supports, at least for two squads), split into 4 and 3 . It could have been the late hour (I started playing at midnight!), my table setup (randomly generated from Platoon Forward), my rusty-ness with the rules, or maybe the scenario, but I was more drained than enthused by the end of the game.

Frankly though, I think it was because I was in the mood for something more beer & pretzels and less serious.

Enter my first attempt at Bolt Action.

I acquired these rules for the sake of playing with others at a (relatively) nearby game store. That my 28mm French starter force has been delayed two months now with no sign of being shipped any time soon has put a damper on that, but I had time Saturday afternoon unexpectedly and I thought I'd give the rules a go.

The scenario is Meeting Engagement. Terrain by Platoon Forward. Putting the squads in line, combined with my peculiar wargame table aesthetic looks something like an 18th C battle at this point.

Squad 'Matchbox' runs from building to building. They would be intractable

Squad 'Airfix' makes life hell for the US squad in the woods opposite.

US squad 'Winter' sweeps behind a hill to try to take out the HMG, but the Germans move to stop them. In a contrived test of close combat, the US squad was destroyed.

The US mortar went to work to rout the Germans from the farm house, but it was not to be. Instead, the opposite happened: they were taken down by squad 'Matchbox' at the end of turn 6. A die roll decreed the game over, but the US had little left anyway.

This had a much more game-like, beer & pretzels feel to it and I rather enjoyed it. The rules are mostly well laid out and drawing order dice is fun (not as fun as turning over a card but more fun than rolling a die).

Admittedly, the inability to split your squad into fire teams felt odd. I'm not a snob about historical tactics, but I like the idea of being able to duplicate the things I've seen in manuals and Ospreys - like  have my LMG laying down suppressing fire while my rifle team advances to lob in some grenades and destroy the target. However, keeping the entire squad together prevents the problem of the BAR fireteam being decimated in a single exchange when using these undersized units.

As for the learning the rules, I spent a lot of time flipping virtual pages (I have the PDF), and I got quite a few things wrong I'm sure, not the least of which was how terrain works with LOS, and not having enough terrain, but it was definitely closer to what I want when I'm not feeling like a 'serious' game. And, rather conveniently, Bolt Action builds squads from just 4 infantry and an NCO so I don't feel the need to rush painting the necessary additional figures to fill out my squads - 6 figures worked fine.

That said, I'm not really sure how I feel about games of this scale (platoon-ish + support).

Even though I have played platoon-sized games and enjoyed them, I very much prefer games like Company Command and Morschauser  w/figures on stands and fielding a company or fielding a squad in a cinematic fashion, a la One Hour Skirmish Wargames. This middle ground often doesn't feel quite right to me but I'll be damned if I can figure out why.

On the other hand, I like a challenge and I think I might be able to come up with something that takes what I like from Bolt Action and DHC7B and adds greatly simplified artillery and armor rules - maybe using a heavily modified G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. as a starting point (in G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., you activate by squad, but figures can do different things).

Meanwhile, I'll probably stick with Bolt Action so I can learn the rules in case my French force ever arrives.