As I was looking for third party miniatures for Bolt Action for commanders, I came across these:
That first one will command my British Airborne unit.
If anything I’ll use the last three in the War Stories WWII RPG.
Stand By!
Tag Archives: World War II
Observations
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.
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Friday Rumblings
Bolt Action: so I did end up getting the starter set and a couple of other army boxes:
The main US Army list book has an entry for Philippine Scouts, so guess what I found and ordered online?
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Meanwhile, I got a notification that a Kickstarter reward was shipping, and this one is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
Back in the glory days of FASA Corporation, there was the Renegade Legion series of games, which I never got into because I was already into their Battletech series, and we were still doing RPGs more than tabletop wargaming.
Flashforward to around 2020 or so, when FASA Games (a new company working with the original FASA Corporation) came out with a new iteration of FASA Corp’s Interceptor game, which didn’t catch my eye until a few years later when they had a Kickstarter for their Aetherstream: Leviathan game.
Both Interceptor and Leviathan can find their roots in the old Renegade Legion universe, but this new incarnation of FASA Games doesn’t appear to have full rights to that world, so these are under a sub brand called Aetherstream, which appears to be a continuation/offshoot of the original Renegade Legion source material.
Older fans of these games appeared to dislike the fact that it’s not in the same universe as before, but since I never got into it back then, this new version appears to be fine with me.
So next week I should be getting both the Interceptor core set and the Leviathan Academy starter set. The Kickstarter itself was for the launch of Leviathan into FASA Games product line, but I decided to finally pick up Interceptor as well, as an add on.
The main difference between the two games (both then and now) is that Interceptor is about fighter combat while Leviathan is about capital ship combat.
So of course I dragged out some other space games to fiddle with and play until the Aetherstream stuff comes in.
Stand by!
Saturday Morning Musings
I was browsing YouTube and came across videos about Bolt Action v3, a World War II tabletop miniatures wargame, which I’ve seen before, and went into a deep dive on how to play, what you need, and what’s in the starter box.
I eventually found myself searching for the starter set, along with US Marines and Imperial Japanese Army sets, since my interest lies more in the Pacific than the European front.
As I was searching for those, other products appeared, specifically Firelock Games’ Blood & Plunder.
Which made me stop looking for Bolt Action stuff, since I still hadn’t finished building/painting my various factions for that game.
I then remembered that if I really need to scratch that World War II itch, I do have Firelock Games’ War Stories, which is a WWII RPG, and the Pacific expansion that I pledged on Kickstarter will be coming out at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, I may create a small squad/warband based in post D-Day France, or use the pregenerated characters and try playing solo at some point soon.
I’ll probably spend some time with Blood & Plunder as well, as they’re starting their ‘Summer of Plunder 2025’ event this weekend.
Don’t touch that dial!
Catching Up
Ha. Never will.
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Basically I come up with great ideas but fail to execute. Just ask my gaming group(s) who are still waiting on me to start up a D&D campaign here or a sci-fi campaign there, or all of the various unplayed/unread RPG systems or solo boardgames that are sitting around in various boxes and shelves.
And don’t even mention the multitude of sports game projects/replays that I’ve had lined up for the last decade or so.
But I digress.
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My latest idea was for the War Stories RPG from Firelock games. It’s based on post-D-Day World War II, European Theatre, and I was thinking about playing a soldier from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American army unit based in Europe. Through research I found that they mostly operated on the Italian/French border, so perhaps one soldier got separated from the main unit and ended up in the small group that I was planning to create.
I went back and forth with this idea, because the main archetypes for the game primarily come from British, US or Canadian nationalities but using the lifepath method for character creation has ‘Commonwealth (Anzac, African, Indian, etc)’ as an option, so maybe my Japanese-American could start from there.
I thought about how this character would interact with the rest of the squad, and whether his race would be an issue (of course it would) or would I just ignore that aspect, which wouldn’t feel right either. Or I can create a small group all from the 442nd but once again I would end up addressing/not addressing their place in the game, and finally realized that I would just be doing it as a gimmick or novelty and it would take away too much from just playing the game.
In the end I’ve decided to shelve this concept and move on to trying to figure out how to play yet another soccer game that I haven’t tried to play yet.
The Latest from the Trenches
Tabletop game wise, my scattered focus appears to be on:
- Port Royal
- Kill Team 2024
- 02 Hundred Hours
- Gaslands Refulled
- Battletech
- Steel Rift
To-Do List
A bunch of games came in recently, and I really want to play all of them as soon as possible.
But that’s not happening.
Links for the current bunch of games that came in:
Right now I’m focusing my time and energy on Core Space, reading the rule book, priming and painting the miniatures, and watching YouTube tutorials on how to play.
We’ll see if I can get a scenario in this weekend.
Stand by!
Mighty 8th
At my signal, unleash hell.
I wish there was a better solo system for this game.
I’ve had this game in my collection for a while, probably over a decade, but I can count the number of times I’ve played on one hand.
I’ve played more games of Memoir ’44, also by the same designer (Richard Borg), than I have this game, and the only time I played against a human opponent was at Dice Tower 2019.
I decided to revisit C&CA because I had preordered a Samurai version of the game sometime last year. As I was browsing Amazon for expansions (I got the 1st and 6th expansions over the years, Greece and Eastern Kingdoms, and Spartan Army, respectively) I saw a damaged copy of C&C Napoleonics on sale for almost 50% off retail price. I’d never played any Napoleonic wargame, but it’s been something I’d wanted to try, so I ordered it.
Cool, I thought, I’m going to play this one as soon as it comes in. I was planning to develop a bad French accent to use while playing.
The next day I got an email that the game I had preordered had shipped.
Welp.
So in the span of a week I’ve gone from 1 of these games to 3 variants, or 2 to 4 if you include Memoir ’44.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still possible to play these games solitaire, with one of my plushies or action figures on the opposite side of the board to represent my opponent, but they’re more fun and challenging when playing against a live person.
For now, it’s time to assemble the playing pieces for the Samurai Battles game.
Stand by!
