A couple of decades ago I dived back into Warhammer 40K, choosing to go that route because I still had some old armies from the 80s and saying that I felt better playing in a sci-fi world instead of the real world when it came to table top wargaming.

I tried to get into Flames of War, a 15mm World War II miniatures game, but that never got past the painting stage.

Eventually I grew tired of Games Workshop’s business model of new rules every 2-3 years with enough changes that you had to pick up some new toys to replace the now invalid ones.  So I sold off almost my entire GW Warhammer 40K collection, saving a few units for possible Kill Team play.

And now even Kill Team has lost my interest, with Blood Bowl very close to the same level of general disinterest.

Some months back I decided to pick up one of the new starter sets for Bolt Action, a 28mm scale World War II game.  For some reason the idea of US soldiers fighting Nazis appealed to me in a big way.

I put together the 2 dozen miniatures and painted them up, but of course my sense of… duty?  (Patriotism?  Attraction to the Pacific Theater?) led me to picking up a set of both Imperial Japanese and US Marines for Bolt Action.  And they sat around untouched for about 3 months.

Two weeks ago I felt a surge of interest in World War II again, so I opened up the Marines and began assembling them.  At the same time I caught a few videos on how to play Bolt Action, along with videos on it’s sister game, Blood Red Skies, which is a World War II air combat game.

Once again I picked up starter set, based on the Battle of Midway, so it contained a squadron of Japanese A6M Zeros, along with a squadron of my beloved F4F Wildcat, the first plane model I ever built, when I was maybe 10.

These games from Warlord are very easy to pick up, with fantastic miniatures to build and paint.  So I’ve been jumping between assembling 28mm soldiers and painting 1:200 scale fighter planes.

And this past weekend I finally set up and played 4 of the scenarios in the Bolt Action Starter Set.  The Americans won the first and fourth scenarios, the Germans won the second and third.

My interest in this game has increased so much that I’m planning to start a British Army, which would technically be my largest compared to the smaller US, German, and Japanese forces that I’ve already collected.

Soon the Germans will be dealing with the British Airborne and the SAS.

I know, it’s kind of shocking that I didn’t start with SAS in the first place, but they weren’t in the starter set.

And I suppose I can send in a small British commando force to steal some valuable intel from the Japanese?

I’ll have to look that last one up.

Oh, and I also picked up 3 additional squadrons for Blood Red Skies, Messerschmitt BF109Es, Supermarine Spitfire MkIIs, and F4U Corsairs, along with an Ace set for Pappy Boyington.  Battle of Britain and Black Sheep Squadron on deck for tabletop play.

Stand By!