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Inside Armies of Imperial Japan! Bolt Action 3rd Edition Book & New Plastic Kit Breakdown
January 29, 2026 by avernos
Gerry and John dive into the latest Bolt Action: Third Edition release, Armies of Imperial Japan, exploring everything you need to collect, build, and command Japanese forces on the tabletop.
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From the fanatical loyalty and aggressive tactics of the Imperial Japanese Army to the flexibility of Special Naval Landing Forces, paratroopers, and veteran jungle fighters, this book delivers deep army rules, rich historical background, and stunning full-colour artwork from Osprey.
The discussion also covers the brand-new plastic Imperial Japanese Infantry box, featuring 30 highly customisable miniatures with iconic weapons like Type 99 Arisaka rifles, knee mortars, lunge mines, and a Type 92 machine gun.
Whether you’re looking to use the Yamato Damashii special rule, build suicide anti-tank teams, or field a full platoon straight out of the box, this release is packed with options for both collectors and competitive Bolt Action players.
Will you be getting the new Bolt Action Japanese?
These look good . I wonder how they compare with the original plastics ? I’m thinking they are a little lager just like the new Veteran Germans & Soviets ( Same sculptor ? ) This would mean the weapons / arm sets will be a little wider than the OGs shoulders , some of the Soviets worked with a little putty . Regarding the smaller sprue , both the Vet Jerries & Soviets platoon boxes came with 5 large , 5 small . Looking forward to these from my LHS
They are of the new “chunky” proportions like most of the modern BA releases. So you might be struggling to kitbash the old models in with the new ones (although there were some WIERD poses in the old box). The models should be ok side by side however 🙂
It’ll be interesting to see the actual rules. In the previous two editions most Japanese players played the Banzai rules. It wasn’t that good a rule in that if you couldn’t make contact with the enemy, it was a failed charge and you just went down. This new version does sound very interesting being basically an enhanced snap to.
I’ll disagree with John; the Type 95 Ha Go is a great anti infantry weapon having both a light howitzer and machine guns. The model is also small enough that it can actually hide behind terrain. But you’re right, it shouldn’t be hunting down tanks.
Warlord REALLY need to look at doing the Chinese forces to battle the Japanese early on. There’s a weird mix of uniforms (some look like they were equipped with “Blitzkreig” German uniforms just with putties instead of jackboots. I saw someone doing a kitbash using Warlord Italian infantry and carving off the rifle pouches to replace with German ones). Then some look more like a peasant/militia with VERY barebone equipment. It’s such a shame as these forces (along with an eclectic mix of armour from just about all nations (other than Japanese)) are ignored by most manufactures in just about all scales. Warlord would probably have to do a couple of boxes to cover most of the uniforms.
BUT most of the support weapons/artillery was all imported, so all they would need to do there would be to sculpt the crew members for the equipment. There was a recent Chinese movie knocking around on Netflix recently (rather gung ho, and a bit silly at times, but apparently was based on a real battle next to a “foreign” quarter who were just like spectators during the siege). Alas the name of the movie escapes me.
But it would be interesting to see BOTH sides starting out in BA games with raw recruits (well the Japanese are going to be trained raw recruits, and the Chinese forces….well could be anything (as long as you see recruit somewhere in the description 😀 ), we don’t see enough games featuring both sides with recruits (rather than the usual vets on both sides as a default choice when building the army list).