By: Old Man Morin
The last 24 hour hours have been
interesting in the boltaction.net bunker. In case you missed it, Commodore
Judson posted his thoughts about the direction of Bolt Action in his explaining
why boltaction.net was merging with WWPD. Since then, let’s just say… The
internet has been hot with feedback, questions and criticism.
I am here to set the record straight and
clarify some serious misconceptions that some people have had regarding the
post and… well…. Us.
To begin with, it is important to acknowledge
that the staff at boltaction.net are unpaid fans of the game and there are a
lot of us. Each us of have our own thoughts and opinions regarding life, love
and Bolt Action. While I may not entirely agree with all of Jud’s points, I can
definitely see where he is coming from.
One of the main crux’s of Jud’s article is
Warlord’s lack of support. Time to clarify, as quite a few people have misread
his comments. A majority of us here have
played the game since literally day 1 (or before in some cases). In the early
days of BA, it was easy to get excited about a balanced (by comparison to lots
of other wargames) game system written by two veteran rules developers that was
being sold at a reasonable price point set in WW2. The “Armies Of” came out in
quick succession without the codex creep that we had come to expect from other
known game systems, we came together as a crew and lots of fun was had by all. It
has now been well over a year and a half since the last “Armies of” book and
many veteran players are starting to get frustrated.
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| One of Warlord's fantastic Soviet Trucks |
Now, let me be clear, Warlord has never
slowed down in its production of fantastic WW2 models. The quality of these
models and the quality of Warlord’s customer service has only improved over
time, which given the growth of the game, is saying something. Warlord has also been fantastic about
supporting events, clubs and conventions with staff and prize support from day
dot. This is a BIG deal in the climate of today’s gaming industry. Warlord
staff and game writers have also come onto podcasts, written articles and
appeared on Youtube video’s interacting with us, the general public. Again a
huge deal in today’s gaming world. Warlord has also released a successful line
of follow up campaign books to support Bolt Action. These are great for a great
number of historically minded gamers (who are an important part of our
wonderful community). But here in lies
some of the trouble.
Many of us have been playing the same game
with the same army lists for years.
Frustrations about this situation led to a group of gamers within
Boltaction.net group to seek out feedback from the community on a whole about
what they would like to see changed in the game and unsurprisingly the few
suggestions that came in were minor tweaks to encourage players to use more
historically accurate equipment like LMG’s and halftracks. We created the .Net
rules pack using these changes. Using feedback from tournaments on 4 continents
over 6 months we revised this set of rules and it now stands in Season 2. This
was done not to be critical of the game that we pour countless hours and
dollars into. It was done to freshen up the way that people approached the
game. To make army list building fun and interesting again. We believe that it
has succeeded in this goal and if you have not looked seriously at these rules,
we encourage you to examine them.
Even so, some of you have noticed that Bolt
Action Radio has gone on hiatus. The BAR guys are amongst a group of us within
the ranks that are not “over” Bolt Action per se, but are taking a break until
something else happens game wise. Remember there has not even been a rules FAQ
in quite a while. This is not all of us at Boltaction.net as a whole however,
The Ghost Army Podcast has had two episodes of late and plan to record again
soon. You might have also noticed that a great many of us still regularly post
articles, youtube movies, and articles on our website and on our Facebook page.
This will not stop.
Now, to those of you on the Warlord forums
(I am not talking about Warlord staff here) who are spouting rubbish about the
merge with WWPD, let me be clear. We have always been under the WWPD umbrella.
We are merging with WWPD prime because we (all the sub branches) as a network
are doing so. Boltaction.net has always had strong listener and reader numbers
(which still continue to grow). We are merging to alleviate the stresses of
running a pile of feeds of articles at once.
The network has its highest numbers of followers ever in recent months
with the popularity of Bolt Action, Star Wars Armada, Saga and countless other
games. That said we also stay true to our roots and continue to support Flames
Of War. We are not going anywhere. We love gaming and we hope to grow the
gaming community as a whole. Not just individual subcultures.
One interesting thing that has come from
this mess is that Andy (A Warlord Admin) has stated on the
In a gaming environment where some games
are outright cancelled or outright destroyed, leaving countless angry and
resentful gamers (Warhammer Fantasy Battle) we should remember several
important factors. We play a great game, it is supported in a number of awesome
ways by Warlord games, annnnnd most importantly the future is bright in the
Bolt Action universe.
Til Next Time…
