Bolt Action

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Friends in my gaming group have been at me to get into Bolt Action and I finally took the plunge a few months ago.  I stupidly decided to start with Canadians.  I have not been able to find a single paint range that has Canadian army uniforms as a colour.  It's similar for Canadian and British armour.  Man, people on forums like TMP go at each other like rabid dogs over what blend of paints is best to use.  At any rate, I've had to blend paints to do both uniforms and armor.  Kinda sucks because I've agreed to take part in a tournament in a few weeks and so I've been batch painting and rushing things.  I'm reasonably happy with how the infantry came out but I don't really like how the Churchill looks.  Tried to paint is as mostly new and clean for D-Day but with a but of dust and dirt on the lower bits.  I think I need to add more dust effects.


Got enough done to field a few different builds for a 1000 point reinforced platoon and I was able to try one out today.  It was a meeting engagement between 1944-Normandy Canucks and German regulars.  It was a fun game, but very bloody.  I got very lucky with my rolls on turns one and two and off-board arty absolutely wrecked the Germans.  I also managed 2 lucky hits with my medium mortar and one very deadly blow with a petard round from a Churchill AVRE that wiped out an entire German squad and a sniper team.  I thought I had things in the bag at that point but a German pioneer team roasted one of my squads with a flamethrower and fire from a Wespe, a German 8cm mortar, and some MG42s took out another squad.  Panzerfausts blew the track off the Churchill and immobilized it.

The game ended in a tie with both sides taking about 75% losses.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I think I need a few more squads.  The 5 man tank hunter team with PIATs and AT grenades managed to knockout an armoured car but got shot up pretty badly in doing so.  I think I'll convert them into an engineering squad with a flamethrower.  I also think I'll remove the AVRE and replace it with 2 Wasp IIC flamethrower Bren carriers.

[Undercovergeek]

Great stuff

I haven’t bolt actioned for ages

Engineers are always the most geared - fire is a great thing to take to the field - and tanks, in game, are surprisingly easy to kill with one

Or convert the avre to a crocodile

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

The points cost for a Crocodile is nuts.  485 for a regular or 582 for a vet.  The thing moves slow and the flamethrower only has a 12" range.  You're likely not going to get more than 2-3 shots out of it in a game.  Can't see it as being worth the points, especially when Canadians are allowed to take 2 Wasp IIC (Canadian variant) flamethrower carriers.  They're only 140 points for a regular.  You get a flamethrower with a 12" range, an MMG and a light mortar all in one unit.  You can also swap out the Bren MMG for a Vickers HMG for 10 more points and you can add plastic applique armor that gives in an armor value of 8+ for 20 points. 

Two flamer units that move faster than the Churchill for less than 1/2 the cost?  Yes please!

[Undercovergeek]

Indeed

I used to play against a guy who would pile the engineers into a truck - head straight to his target, all pile out and flame me to toast and then get back in again - dice permitting - but it was a thing of beauty when it worked

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

The German player was trying to do that in our game.  He managed to roast one of my squads and inflicted 7 kills and a rout but then he tried for my anti tank team.
 He somehow managed to miss a shot from point blank and then rolled a 1 for flamer fuel, ran out of gas and routed off the board.

[Undercovergeek]

The German player was trying to do that in our game.  He managed to roast one of my squads and inflicted 7 kills and a rout but then he tried for my anti tank team.
 He somehow managed to miss a shot from point blank and then rolled a 1 for flamer fuel, ran out of gas and routed off the board.

also a thing of beauty 

i used to roll with a truck mounted quad flak - totally useless at taking out armour but it was a squad wiper with every shot

[bayonetbrant]

got a bunch of Bolt Action pics from Origins we'll be posting soon

[Tolstoi]

SDR - your Canadians look great! 

I didn't realize there it was difficult to get the correct colors for Canadian uniforms and vehicles. Mixing your own blends is a challenge. I hope each batch is as consistent as possible with all the others. It certainly looks like it from your photos. Good luck at the tournament you mentioned!

[besilarius]

SDR, this is really nice.
If your interests swell out to include Canada at sea, there is a nice, thumbnail account in Ronald Spector's At War At Sea".
They specialized in ASW and convoy escort, so no big ships.  Great to combat U boats and coastal work like Cruel Seas.

[JudgeDredd]

Oddly, it was minis that got me back into wargaming - but not a genre I feel drawn too any more.

It was Memoir '44...nothing like Bolt Action tbf.

Nice looking minis though 

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

i used to roll with a truck mounted quad flak - totally useless at taking out armour but it was a squad wiper with every shot

Yeah, 20mm automatons seem far more effective than main calibre guns in BA.

Canadians can take a Skink AA tank which was basically a Grizzly tank hull with 4 20mm AA guns in a turret.  Looks very deadly.  I might have to field one if I can find someone yo print me an STL file.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

SDR, this is really nice.
If your interests swell out to include Canada at sea, there is a nice, thumbnail account in Ronald Spector's At War At Sea".
They specialized in ASW and convoy escort, so no big ships.  Great to combat U boats and coastal work like Cruel Seas.

I do have Cruel Seas and a lot of minis for it.  I just painted my RN stuff as generics with whatever paint scheme I found interesting at the time.  I used RN decals depicted Channel boats mostly with some from the Med as well.  The company I purchased the decals from didn't have any Canuck decals at the time but did later release a sheet with Canadian, Polish, Free French, and Norwegian markings.  Sadly, they stopped all decal production for Cruel Seas when Warlord announced they were handing off production to Skytrex.

[Bison]

Great work on the figures!

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Tournament is coming in in two weeks so a friend and I decided to try out our lists. 

I win, but more due to my friend's bad luck than anything clever on my part.  He called in an airstrike but got a rookie Luftwaffe pilot who misidentified targets and strafed his own side.  Still, it did more than my forward air controller did.  He took a minor pin from a nearby arty barrage and spent the rest of the game cowering in the bushes.

The Germans brought out an old captured French Char tank with a flamethrower attachment and that bloody thing dominated the field.  Fried my scoutcar and wiped out an entire infantry section before it ran out of fuel for the flamer.  I was able to knock it's track off with some rounds from my Sherman but that was it.

The HE rounds for the Sherman's 75mm gun were astoundingly effective against infantry though.  I managed to put one into a stone wall that some panzerfaunt-equipped grenadiers  were using for cover and routed them off the map.  A second squad was sent packing when I brought down the building they were sheltering in.

The unsung heroes were my little 2" mortar team.  Effective smoke screen neutralized the threat from an MG42 team and a sniper and forced their armored car to reposition where my engineers were able to blow it up.



Canuck victory, but by less of a margin than I'd hoped.