Heer, there and everywhere : Adventures in Bolt Action

4th April a friend of my mentions he was thinking of getting a Japanese army, I told him I had nothing to fight against it. Although I had been considering either an Australian force or Finnish, his decision swung it for me.

I started to have a look round to see what was available. I wanted to be able to cobble together around 1500 points. I got a set of commonwealth troops, the Jungle fighters box and the usual support stuff, arty, mortar, MMG, sniper, AT etc. I then got enough to make an infantry squad from Eureka games. Vehicles wise, I got a matilda, an M3 from warlord and a couple of trucks from Rubicon. Had I been playing a desert army I would have picked up an M13 as well. I still grabbed a set of the decals for those for the kangaroos.

This is where my spring challenge was born…

I have been slowly accumulating the odd blister pack here and there over the last few months. Arty, mortars, support stuff. Also picked up some non-Warlord metals for NCOs for my Fallschirmjagers, Russians and Yanks.

Could be a possible spring clean challenge, although ,given the amount of these containers I have i am considering a series of ‘box challenges’ where
I take a box and just paint everything in it.

I finally got to road test my table, a friend brought 1000 points of Polish Paratroops , beautiful paint jobs. With hindsight, 1500 points may have been better as we had a lot of table to go at.

Proved to be quite a swingy game, but his tough as nails troops were more than a match for my limited foot soldiers. Although my veteran MMG holed up in a building and proved a major pain. My not handing my Puma to him on a plate might have caused a different outcome, my good luck with an artillery barrage was also a help.

The British Airborne starter set seems a popular choice, iconic regiment and it’s the cheapest one . I followed the recommended colours from Vallejo as I did with the Germans for the main. I also threw in a box of Wargames Atlantic Bulldogs and swapped a few heads around to get some slightly futuristic troops for possible Xenos Rampant or Konflickt 47 shenanigans in the future.

These guys took longer than the Germans and I really had to force myself to get these finished.

I even built a whole gaming table for Test of Honour part way through. I am easily distracted

These are the Warlord recommended colours:

• Khaki Grey (Vallejo 880): Denison Smock basecoat
• Dark Green (Vallejo 893): Denison Smock camouflage, helmet and neckscarf
• German Camo Medium Brown (Vallejo 826): Denison Smock camouflage
• English Uniform Brown (Vallejo 921): Trousers and canteen
• Russian Uniform Green (Vallejo 924): Helmet camo strips, PIAT, mortars, guns, Respirator Bag
• Scarlett Red (Vallejo 72.012): Beret
• Khaki (Vallejo 988): Helmet camo strips, gaiters, webbing and backpack
• Iraqui Sand (Vallejo 819): Rope

I was pretty happy with the results, I have more buildings to make, so I can switch up the ratio of urban:rural

I want to add more regular hedges and bushes, fences and some barbed wire barricades. I want to have some terrain I can use in multiple settings (Silver Bayonet, 5 Leagues etc)