A Game, More Assembly and Painting!

 The Fates alligned and I ended up getting in that game I mentioned from my last post! Turned out that the host, Stephen asked for 1250 point Bolt Action lists and sadly only me and another local chap, Luigi were able to make it. Stephen elected to umpire and so Luigi brought out his Japanese against the Canadians I had prepared. 

My list had prerequisite officer and pal, 3 small 6-man Vet Commando squads and one 10-man Regular infantry squad, a PIAT team, Light Mortar team, Medic, Sniper team and both a Churchill Mk iv and Churchill Mk i in support. 

Luigi's list was something like, officer plus pal, 4 Gernadier squads full of knee mortars, a couple of Suicide AT Lunge Mine troops, FOO, two armoured transports, a trio of light tanks with howitzers and a third light tank with a medium anti tank gun.

The mission was predetermined from a planned event coming up this weekend (3rd Annual Operation Sweetheart in Sacramento, CA) and was an objective grab meeting engagement. As the game was last Thursday, details are a little spotty, but the following photos should describe the action appropriately. All I do know is that the table layout favoured me greatly and forced Luigi to have to come at me as I had 3 objectives on my side and he only 2. Unfortunately my tanks held down both roadways and did awfully well with ambush fire and Luigi's own conservative play didn't really give him much chance at getting across the table by the end of the game's turn 6 resulting in a win for me.

Really fun game, gorgeous set up and great to play against the Japanese which was only my second time doing so since I started playing Bolt Action.

Stephen had laid out the table prior to our arrival. Those pre-painted mdf buildings are so good. 

both armies declared to start deploying everything in their lists, no reserves. I made sure to take advantage of the firing lines down those roads early with my Churchills.

Commandos moving up with Japanese infantry in transports trying to come down the road but scared to get into the gunsights of that tank at the bottom of this photo.

Light Mortar drops a lucky round first try on that Japanese transport causing all the troops to bail out. They did not survive the return fire.

Commando squad hugs the cover of the building whilst the Churchill provides long range fire support against Japanese armour WAY back down that road. My dice rolling was garbage though and that tiny tank somehow managed to survive.

Churchill Mki with wading gear helping stall the Japanese advance whilst my PIAT team skulks along the wall line.

After a furious trading of fire, my tank finally takes out the Japanese Command tank. 

Host Stephen officiating and probably questioning our generalship. 

Commandos take advantage of their armoured support and move up to claim the objective aheaed (A rock. Very important rock at that,  apparently)

The Sniper team in the woods to the right had taken out the FOO early on in game, so the regulars and Medic that had been in the woods to the lower left head up to support the Comando advance.

Commando squad uses the Churchill's support to move up unmolested.

End game and the Japanese make a mad dash toward one of the objectives, only to come face to face with Commandos armed with two Bren guns. It didn't end well for the brave men of Nippon.

Also late game shot of the second Japanese armoured transport making a mad dash down the road in an effort to get it's sole occupant, a suicide AT nutter, up close and personal with my brave Churchill Mki. The inevitable happend though and that silly suicide fellow perished along with the transport.

My PIAT team crept up to the treeline here to attempt to take out the pictured arnoured transport with a point blank side-shot and missed. Of course. The Japanese Officer in turn charged the PIAT team and cut down both unfortunate PBI's with his katana. Nasty.

It's end game and the Japanese just can't get across the map in time to claim objectives. As the pictures squad rounds the shed here, my regulars mow them down mercilessly.

I included this final shot of my Churchill Mkiv which inspired the next part of this post.

 Playing a whole game with this unpainted beast was just rubbish!

I've had this model tank for a few years now. It's by Warlord Games and is in Plastic. Nice enough detail and simple to build. The included plastic Commander figure was a bit... meh, so I substituted him for a metal Commander sculpt I'd had in my bits box for a long time now. The stowage are mostly metal pieces and the "trophy-MG42" is a spare from an old long-abandoned German Grenadiers project. Simple paint job and marked up as one of the 34th Tank Brigade that I believe would have been present supporting the Canadian push to take the Schedlt Estuary in 1944 during Operation Vitality. There'll be more vehicles to be added to my collection to represent forces used during Operation Vitality at a later date.

Pics were taken hastily so please excuse the quality and lack of effort. 

I'm also hoping to get a little more painting done before my vacation is over, so hoping to have something else to post up on before the end of the month.

I also managed to get the remainder of the German Grenadier squad assembled and yes, crumbled and added their gear cos they just didn't look right without. Yay... complicated painting ahoy. :)

These nine plus their planned metal sergeant fig conclude the infantry I need for my Winter German list. Just need to get the pair of Flak 37 8.8 guns and crew (7-men each!) put together and they'll be ready for paint. 

Next week also allows me another chance at gaming with my good friend, Densmol dropping by so hopefully we'll have a good game to post up about here early March. (Imagine that, two games in one month!) I'm also hoping to attend a mini-gaming-con in Oakdale on the 7th March, so if plans work out for that, I'll have perhaps 3 more games to post up on. Crazy start to 2026 after quite the gaming drought this handful of years.

As always, hope all are safe and healthy out there. 

- Dai

Assembling an Assortment of projects

 Another quick post to show off some more minis getting assembled this past weekend. Had hoped to get a little painting done too, but getting this lot off their sprues, connecting areas and mold lines trimmed & filed, resin parts washed in dishsoap and warm water and then painstakingly glued together was a lot more work than I had anticipated!

3D printed vehicles and the resin bits either about to be scrubbed or drying. Damned fiddly business

Starting off there are four WW2 Winter German Grenadiers for the final infantry squad in my planned German Bolt Action army. Kept the builds simple and left off all the gear (Water bottles, pouches, bayonets, etc) to keep painting simple and hopefully a swift effort, but I may come back to this and add them afterall as they don't look "right" I think. Another five to build and basing material applied before I'll prime and then add them to the painting queue.

Couple of riflemen, a bloke aiming a Panzerfaust and an ammo-carrying assistant to the yet to be built squad LMG support trooper. 

Next up are the contents of the Relic Knights starter set by Ignition Core Games - teams from the Radiant (Good guys) & Void (Bad guys) factions. Lovely sculpts produced in a decent resin material (Thankfully not that awful Restic used in the game's 1st edition sculpts.). Details are very crisp and cleanup was very minimal. These are now primed grey and ready for paint.

Radiant faction figs. The tiny guy at front right is missing a rear leg so I contacted Ignition Core Games who are sending out a replacement this week. Great customer service!

Void faction figs. The small 3-man squad was super fiddly to assemble and I spent more time ungluing my fingers from bits than anything else!

And lastly, another Relic Knights sculpt, this time from their 1st Edition range. This model is a large lad, standing at almost six inches tall. (More on him in a later post, I want to get the above starter set figs painted up first before I move on to stuff from other factions in the game.)

If you were a huge Space Oni sporting a massive Tetsubo (Japanese war club), you'd surf on the back of a giant robo-lion too!

I'm soon to have the next couple weeks off from work so I'm hoping to get some opportunities to paint some of the above if my real life responsibilities allow. Watch this space.

Also I have a game of Bolt Action calendared for this Thursday so expect a post on that too thereafter!

Hope all are safe and well,

- Dai

Clever Hans - Part 12 (An Army Re-Org for 3rd Edition Bolt Action)

During the holidays I was able to meet up with a Bolt Action gaming pal, Stephen, gift him my NIB WW2 French minis (Cos I will never have time to work on a 5th army) as I knew he needed an Early War army option and it turned out he'd just gained a new Char-B tank kit - so job done. In turn, he handed over a few sprues of Warlord Games Winter Germans that I have decided to fill out my Bolt Action German force so that they'll be usable for 3rd edition events and tournaments. 

For those uninitiated or ignorant to the changes in this current edition, the accepted "standard points value for a game of Bolt Action is now 1250. My previous German collection could meet that, but would not be very much fun or all that competitive to play, so changes had to be made. Below is a Draxian Paint Chart like the one I have maintained for my WW2 Greeks (See previous posts on that project). 

To that end, I've added and put primer to the Sd.kfz 10/4's (Etsy 3D prints) and glued some of the new Winter plastic Germans together to represent the Rifle Officer's 4x Adjutants. 

3x Platoons - Mandatory Rifle platoon: Officer with 4x Adjutants armed with SMG's, 2x Squads of Veteran Heer Grenadiers, 1x Squad of Volks Grenadiers and a small 7-man Squad of Waffen SS with their Sd.kfz 251/1 Half-Track transport; Artillery Platoon of lone Officer and a pair of Flak 88's; Armoured Platoon containing a pair of Sd.kfz 10/4's sporting 2cm Light Autocannons each. I call this force my late war Holding Kompany and it's supposed to represent the type of ad-hoc Kampfgruppe the Germans might have thrown together on the Eastern Front to try to push back the Soviets during the Winter of 1944.

These four will represent the adjutants for the Officer's squad. Gritty looking blokes with SMG's and no helmets like the standard Grenadiers.

Lots of random gear added to their rear sides so they'll stand out more-so from the Grenadier squad that'll be made from the same set. 

This pair were the last two body-sculpts from the sprue (6-to-a-sprue). The fellow on the left will be an extra crewman for one of the Flak 88 guns and the yelling chap on the right will end up as a spare adjutant should I need one for bigger points games.

Again, with more gear on his rear, including some mittens! 

Per usual, these will see basing and paint as time allows, but I'm glad to have had a little time this weekend to get any hobby done at all, so score!

Be well and safe out there,

- Dai

Bolt Action East Front Winter 1944

 This weekend saw the wife and I make our way to Vacaville where I met up with my friend Densmol at Forgotten Path Games for a rare face-to-face game of Bolt Action whilst our wives went off and did "wife stuff". 

I brought my Winter mat and terrain (Though stupidly forgot half of it so the table looked a little bare!) and both fully painted forces for the game, Densmol playing the desperate Germans and I the invading Soviets. 

We played "The Ivans are coming" scenario from the Road to Berlin campaign book which was fun - my Soviets defending a road crossing and Densmol's Germans trying to wrest control from the commies. All went well with some rules look-ups due to neither of us having played for almost 2 years (!!!) aside from completely forgetting to apply the effects of "Snow" the whole game through. (Insert eyeroll here)

Whilst I won't be attempting to put in a turn-by-turn account, here are some photo's of the game. The mdf fencing terrain is brand new and got it's first run out that day; it looked great and I already have a second set ready to assemble and paint/weather on the hobby setup.

The German Officer and a Squad of Grenadiers approach the crossing cautiously out of the village outskirts.

Hetzer tank killer in the distance, killed a tank...

... which in this instance happens to be my Soviet T34/85.

Then it went on to kill my poor wee BA64 Armoured car. 

First casualty of the game was Densmol's officer and Adjutant. The T34/85 gunned them down mercilessly.

Here's a late game image showing the Soviets swarming the objective. At this point, the Germans only had a handful of fanatical SS troops alive and the Hetzer. Not enough to hold back the Commie tide.

Earlier in the game. I have bases to prep for the tree's and about 20 coniferous trees to go in them too. That table was very bare.

Soviet reinforcements to come on in the foreground. Germans toward the back of the table.

A Guards squad hunkers down behind these woods, waiting for the optimal moment to dash up and add their fire support.

On the left a second Guards squad patiently wait behind a copse of trees whilst a small SMG-toting squad of inexperienced troops are forced to leap from their burning transport after a very unliekly shot from the German Panzerschreck team blows it up!

The late game mad-dash.

That GAZ jeep (on fire) had the Soviet Flamethrower team mounted up inside. Flambe'd flamethrower! Is what they get for missing twice in a row earlier ingame. 

The Hetzer was Densmol's MVP. It blew up 3 out of my 4 vehicles and put pins on my ZIS-3 artillery gun. 

The GAZ jeep right after the Hetzer shot it with yet another amazing dice roll by Densmol. Guards squad looks on horrified.

Hard to make out, but in the top left corner of this pic is an anti-tank-rifle team that took a rather improbable shot at the above German Half-track and blew it up, killing the German Flame Thrower team inside and causing a Volksgrenadier squad that was also the passenger to hop out!

Earlier in the game, German Panzerschreck team, SS Vet's and a Medic team carefully make their way to the objective.

And that's it. Was great to play my first game in a long time and against Densmol too who I hadn't seen for a game in yonks. Playing again has gotten me motivated to get a second set of fences put together and also paint minis! 

Thanks for getting to the end of this post!

- Dai

A Frosty Goose-Step (WW2 Late War Germans on parade)

 As promised in a previous post, here is a small parade post of my fully painted WW2 Winter Germans force. I do have more to add to them, but I think I'll leave those pieces for when the mood takes. I think all of these sculpts are by Warlord Games from their Bolt Action range (Including the plastic half-track and resin Hetzer tank). Lots of fun details and dynamism to them which made them fun to paint.

To start off a full shot of the whole force. The organisation of this collection is per the basic German Reinforced Platoon Bolt Action army list on Easy Army dot com. (Shame about the background, but they are stored in a barn so "barn-background" is what you get.)

When I took this and checked the pic on my phone it looked fine! O well. Daylights gone now and all these guys are packed away now.

Lieutenant and Adjutant. 

Waffen-SS Squad and their Half-track ride.

Heer Grenadier Squad.

Volks Grenadier Squad.

Heer Medic.

Flame Thrower Team.

Panzerschreck Team.

Hetzer tank hunter.

Those observant enough may well notice the absence of this tank from the initial group shot. We’ll the blighter was hiding deeper in one of my storage boxes than I had anticipated and I had thought it had gotten lost somehow! But it turned up so I had to get a pic in for completions sake. 

And a bonus Forward Artillery Observer.

And that's it! As mentioned above, there are more pieces in my unpainted mountain to add to these: 

Panzer iv H tank

Sniper Team

Heer Grenadiers in Winter Greatcoats

The remainder of the Waffen-SS squad

Hope you enjoyed seeing these as much as I found enjoyment knowing that this project could be called "done" AND that I can now host a fully painted Winter themed game of Bolt Action at home once time allows - something to post on in a later publication.

Now back to finishing that last section of Canadians before I can get in with this year’s new army.

Cheers - Dai