Bolt Action German armoured platoon for Tunisia 1943

By Bryan,

I've been working away for a while now on a German tank platoon for Bolt Action, based on the 10th Panzer Division in the 1943 campaign in Tunisia. I thought I would share it as I think it's a rather interesting force, being a bit different to the 'classic' Afrika Korp that most people choose to collect. I'll take you on a tour of the force and how I collected and painted an army based on the fall of the Axis in North Africa.

Here is an overview of the platoon, a 'Tank Wars' format of armoured vehicles making up the compulsory choices and the infantry in support. You'll notice it's not really much of a tank platoon as there are only two Panzers! This ad-hoc Kampfgruppe has a Marder tank hunter but most interestingly...many of Uncle Sam's halftracks!

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Bolt Action Road to Victory!

C-Bax's Road to Victory campaign set is an excellent way to change up your Bolt Action games, check them out here if you haven't already! Recently, we took a stroll through the campaign from a newcomer's point of view and if you didn't read Community Member Rob's write up, you can find it here. This week, we're going to look at the other side of the coin and take a look at the campaign from a veteran player's point of view. This Community article comes to us from our good friend in Texas, Tyler Wallace. Tyler recently had a chat with us about Americans, and North Africa in particular, on the Ghost Army Podcast (Episode 26, here). In this write up, we get to hear about his experience with the campaign, and get to see some pictures of his snazzy Americans. I must apologize to Tyler for taking so long to get this posted. Thanks for your patience, brother.

Without further ado, or further links, here's Tyler's article!

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A Veteran's Perspective

I recently began a campaign with my cousin using the Road to Victory campaign rules from the Bolt Action Alliance. Joel is more of a casual player. But we both love history so, it’s fun to have an opportunity to play a historical game together.

Road to Victory, I discovered, is an excellent way for more experienced gamers to play fun games with casual players like my cousin (granted one of you owns multiple armies with a variety of units.) Not only are the units easier to digest for the newer players but they can also try their hand at list building in a way that won’t seem as overwhelming. Usually, when I play against a new/inexperienced player I end up having to make two generic lists in order to teach them the basics. However with Road to Victory, Joel and I had almost as much fun building the lists, and rolling for random units as we did playing the game itself.

Since the PDF is free to download, I won’t talk much about the actual mechanics. You can check that out for yourself. Below is a report of our lists, and how the battle progressed.

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Bolt Action - Hermann Göring Division Project

Gaz is a great mate of the BAA and recently approached me to see if he could write an article on the Herman Göring Division. The BAA is all about community content and I gladly accepted the offer and not long after he delivered this fine article. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did and if so please let Gaz know by commenting on the post to show your support for his first effort and cracking miniatures! Patch

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June 5th - DDay AAR - 1500pts British Airlanding vs. GrenadierKompanie

The Normandy Battles book has seen a lot of play around our neck of the woods this time of year.  For several years, we would put together our 30 feet of table, and launch a landing for the ages. Getting all that lead on a table is an awful lot of fun, but the smaller games are too.  And the Coup de Main glider assault is one of those missions.  Eager to try out some V4 with the D-day lists, My buddy Shane and I met over at his place for a pre-dawn face off. Shane played his Brits, and I brought my Germans with some Tigers in support.  1500 pts per side.

The Board

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How to Collect and Paint Early War Fallschirmjäger, Part 1

By Seamus,

With the release of Warlord's new Campaign Book, Unternehmen Seelöwe, I thought this would be a good time to share with you my formula for collecting and painting Early War Fallschirmjäger!

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Bolt Action AAR: Tunisia 1943

By Bryan,

Welcome to a battle report from a huge game of Bolt Action my clubmates and I had recently, set in Tunisia 1943. The armies were 4000pts a side, with green US troops vs the veteran Germans. The mission was Key Positions and the dice bag was indeed heavy, with close to 60 order dice in it!

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Bolt Action - Camouflage without an Airbrush

By Dennis,
It's been quite some time since I've been able to get some solid hobby time in, even longer for writing articles or giving DIY advice. I've got to say, I'm pleased to finally get back into the swing of it.

Airbrushes can be quite daunting and expensive for anyone starting in the hobby, so today I will walk you through a simple way to get a great result on you armored vehicles without one.

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FOW - Stalingrad 2000 Point Multi-Player

With the impending arrival of Ver 4 to our gaming tables, the regular players at the Brookhurst Club in Orange County California decided to hold a multi-player Stalingrad FOW game. I had run the Able Kompanie Stalingrad intro game at GenCon several times, so we decided to run a modified version of it. We changed the table arrangement so it wasn't a duplicate and created different army lists up to 2,000 points per side.

Our rules for the game included the following:
Movement and Cover: All of the table was (at best) Slow Going - Except for roads (regular cross country on roads).
Rubble (any building or rubble bases, as well as blast craters) gave bullet proof cover to infantry if their base was at least half on the rubble base.
Bunker Busters: Building with four walls, and a second story floor or roof were considered "buildings" for bunker buster guns.
Other terrain such as railroad embankments, etc followed the rule book for Ver 3.
Buildings and rubble bases required skill checks for vehicles to avoid bogging.

Scoring: Based on the Able Kompanie GenCon version, we ran a total of eight objectives. Three in each deployment area, and two in the center of the table. The center objectives were slightly offset from the center line, so each side could attempt to get close enough to contest in turn one. At the beginning of each side's turn, they received points for any objectives they held (or had held, and were not contested by the enemy). Objective in your own deployment zone were one point each. Center objectives were two points each, and if you got lucky enough to take one in the enemy deployment zone, those were worth four points each.

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Bolt Action AAR - Colonial Free French V DAK

By Patch,I recently got the chance to play James who I shall refer to as JL, a wily opponent and Bolt Action Veteran here in Canberra Australia at our local games store - Jolt Games. The match was set at 1000 points and was to be my Vichy French, who had recently changed sides to be Free French under De Gaulle for the match, against JL's seasoned German Africa Korps (DAK).

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Bolt Action - Tactics for German halftrack mounted platoons

The Panzer scouts have finally hit the table and even played through their first two day Bolt Action event, taking the 'Best Axis General' award of the weekend and 2nd place overall. In this instalment I'll give you the theory on the army list construction as well as the tactics I employed on the table. These tactics will be useful for anyone running an army with a few armoured transports for their infantry.

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The Portal's World at War Tournament - December 10th 2016

So I begin by apologizing to Chris Kadish and My friend Karl, as well as the folks over at CT Valley Gamers for not getting this typed up sooner.  My laptop died a horrible death right after this tournament and then I waited for its replacement to arrive well into the new year.  After that, I had to chaperone 20 kids into NYC for a 4 day field trip....bottom line, this AAR dropped down on my list of priorities.  Moving forward however, I expect I will be a lot faster with these reports.  Since my new computer doesn't randomly shut down and erase all I was working on.

Without Further ado....

The Portal in Manchester CT, has played host to a few FOW tournaments over the course of the past year.  and I've been lucky enough to attend two of them.  Chris Kadish, TO organizer and man about town, helped put this one together.  A doubles tournament with 2000 pts per team, and some restrictions on combinations. (no fortified companies for example) drew in quite a few teams.  Due to some friction over criteria for lists, a few teams from up North had to drop (when their ride decided against going.)  But we still wound up with 6 teams, and 12 players, which was more than enough to have fun moving our toys around the table.

Below, Chris, wondering why I am taking this picture.

Below: Some photos of the tournament area and some of the folks setting up.

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Watch on the Rhine - Blackmoon Games, Lebanon, NH 1700LW

Hosted by Joey Laderoute and Jeff Mayo and taking place in Lebanon NH at  Black Moon Games, this would wind up being one of my last V3 tournaments before V4 comes out in March.

I brought up some of my terrain (I can proudly say I have two tables worth.) that's not Eric "Tarzan"  Lauterbach levels of terrain...but everyone needs to start somewhere.  Some shots of the setup before things get going.

This 1700 pt tournament was so well attended we wound up with an impressive wait list.  20 players from all over attended.  I decided to come up the night before, and stay in a hotel, then left from the store and headed back down to my Home in Danbury that night.  The whole thing was well run, the store was a fun place and the owner was a very generous and friendly guy.  If there are people looking for some gaming space and product, I highly recommend it.

Some shots of the store...

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Bolt Action - German 'Aufklärungs' Army Project (Part 3)

Well it's been a busy month on this army project with the Panzer scouts very close to having the initial 1000pt army all painted up, just in time for Australia's largest ever Bolt Action event. In this installment I add the platoons HQ, the last Panzergrenadier squad, some support elements and even get started on the vehicles. For those who don't know this is part 3 in a series on my late war German platoon for Bolt Action. You can read Part 2 here.

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Bolt Action - Bringing Garbage Back To Life: Resurrecting A Mauled Panther

Many of us have a cupboard or two of old half finished projects that we hope will someday see the light of day and finish. We may have even taken some of those unloved models and used them to test wild colour schemes or experiment with new weathering or painting techniques. I recently ran into one of these models. 

Last year, a friend of mine had to leave Melbourne to return to his beautiful French homeland. When he went, he had to leave a good chunk of his hobby collection behind. This included a beaten, broken plastic Panther. I saw this unloved little beast and decided that I would see if I could bring it back from the dead. Here is the tale of its resurrection.

This is what it looked like when I started.

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Bolt Action - Review: Rubicon Model's Sdkfz 250/1 Alte kit

Sometime ago I got my hands on one of Rubicon Models new Sdkfz 250/1 kit but due to starting a new job and other commitments, I'd been too bogged down to get the time to throw it together. Well no more excuses! Over the weekend I finally managed to put together this great little kit and decided to share with you my experience and boy, what an experience it was!

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Bolt Action - German 'Aufklärungs' army project (Part 2)

Welcome to part two of this army building project as I put together a German recon force for 1944-45. In part one I began the project by modelling up some motorbike scouts and a Schwimmwagen. This month I have begun work on the core of this platoon, the Panzergrenadiers of the Aufklkärungstruppen. 

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Mid War at Fallin - Kurt Reese's Midwar Extravaganza - Nov 5th 2016

I finally made it down to Fall In! in Lancaster PA for the first time in my mini-gaming career.  I've made it to Historicon before, but never Fall in.  It was a well run really laid back convention, and I got a chance to meet a lot of people the WWPD crew has spoken so much about in podcast or article form.

I decided not to play in the Doubles on Friday, which in retrospect was a mistake, since I had my winter germans with me , and it looked like a blast. But I did jump into the Mid War tournament the following day.  I took a lot of pictures (with my good camera) and can honestly say that after a lot of travel and a lot of tournaments, I lucked out with the best 3 man panel of opponents I've ever had.  All were funny, gracious, and solid players.  I had a really hard time voting for favorite opponent.

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Bolt Action - Late War German Panzer Lehr Tabletop Quality Painting Guide

Welcome to another tutorial from the team at the Bolt Action Alliance, this time I, Patchimus, will cover how to paint a Panzer Lehr squad to a good tabletop quality. I have been heavily influenced by 'The Painting War - WW2' so if you want a more definitive and diverse guide  do yourself a favour a pick this book up. This guide will concentrate on the uniform and equipment only to keep it a reasonable size, that being said I have skipped over the flesh part however you can locate another guide from Master Bryan here that can assist you. All the paints I have used are Vallejo (Running joke among the crew is that I pronounce it Valley-Joe, which is apparently very wrong but I cant help it!) unless otherwise stated.

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Bolt Action - German 'Stummel' Hetzer conversion

By Jakob Lotz

So a little while back I got my hands on a Rubicon Models Hetzer kit with the plan of doing a review. However since Bryan has already done a fantastic review on the kit (if you haven’t done so already I highly encourage you to have a look at it here) I felt like I wanted to do something different with this one. A wee search of the old internets later I had come across the seemingly extremely rare Aufklarungspanzer 38(t), Vollkettenaufklarer 38(t) or Jagdpanzer 38(t) mit 7,5 cm KwK-37 L/23.

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Bolt Action - AAR: Campaign Road to Victory, Game 3

Finally got game three of our Bolt Action campaign in. Play testing continues to go well with very few changes to the core rules. Last time, Colby added a Tiger and a Flak 88 to his list, which is a bit scary to be honest. Both of us have really enjoyed the random unit generator and the unique tactical changes they present. Right now the Soviets have a edge on mobility and infantry, while the Germans are flush with anti-tank and big guns. Games have been really bloody with the body count on both sides nearing 100% in our first games.

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