Bolt Action: Light Your Fire!

Light Your Fire! Finding Inspiration for your Bolt Action Hobby.
By Kieran

“I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.” - George Burns

See now that may seem like a rather lofty quotation to start an article about Bolt Action, or even an article about wargaming in general, but while I was looking for a title for this article I put the foundation word about what I am going to write about and it popped up on the old google and I said to myself yes that maybe captures it.

What am I writing about for this article? Well following from the feedback I have received from my first article (Burnout, found HERE) I thought I would expand on it a little and maybe bring something forward that I didn’t really address, the topic of inspiration.

Now no matter what you do in any tier of your life the things that really make us happy and fill the time spent doing them with the most enjoyment are the things that we are truly engrossed in, that have the ability to speak to us on a different level, these are fundamentally things that inspire us.

How do we involve inspiration within the game of bolt action? Well it is maybe something that we have already done. It is having that underlying interest with the armies we put on the table that we put hours into listing, collecting, modelling, and painting. Because I feel, as I know many others do as well, that having that story gives us a hook that will keep us indebted towards any army over a longer period of time no matter how competitive or otherwise it is.

This is maybe why there is that imaginary line between those who produce forces that have a bigger influence from some source or another and those who build for a competitive listing. Now maybe your inspiration comes from that competitive standpoint but I am sure that the turnover of forces that player would play is a lot higher than the other.

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Bolt Action: The Clear Choice for Basing

By Seamus,

When it comes to wargaming, it can be argued that you need some decent basing to really bring the whole thing together, to really make the model stand out. A superbly painted miniature inevitably loses something if the basing isn't also as skillfully done as the model itself. One thing I'm sure we can agree on is that basing is a skill that is rarely easy to come by, and indeed it is through practice that we see people achieving truly stunning results over time. Many of us like to have a theme for our armies, whether it be a specific unit or perhaps a particular theater or battle. I myself have a Gebirgsjager force with snowy bases, an Australian force with jungle bases, and an Italian force with Tunisian desert bases, as examples. These bases really help set the tone for the models and the army and, while my basing skills are not anything to brag about, they do help emote the them of the army. In preparation for this article, I've asked the lads to share with me some of the basing they're most proud of. Here are some tremendous examples of what you can achieve with basing, especially in concert with superbly painted models.

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