Bolt Action

By Kreighton Long

With the recent release of Bolt Action Third Edition and the last round of Second Edition tournaments I set my sights on the future.  Warlord’s timing of their Third Edition release complimented by natural project schedule perfectly.  Over the last several years I’ve fallen into a routine build around Kalissa Skibicki’s Bolt Action tournament at the October Call to Arms convention in Williamsburg, VA.  Once that tournament concludes I begin planning, building, painting, and training with a new army with the goal of being battle ready in time for the next Call to Arms tournament.  In this manner I’ve built, competed with, and placed using Romanians, Italians, and Soviets in my last three appearances.  With the release of Third Edition I have the added challenge of adapting the new force structure and implementing the new ruleset.

Warlord has truly done a phenomenal job of tempting me with their recently released kits.  I snagged a box of Winter Americans with the Third Edition rulebook and was hard pressed to not do the same with their Winter Fallschirmjager.  My bank account was disappointed when they also released their German Veterans kit and I couldn’t help but snag the army box with my pre-order of the Armies of Germany Third Edition book.  Despite these temptations, I’m going to take my first dedicated Third Edition army in a different direction — somewhere notably warmer.

In 2023 I captured first at Kalissa’s Call to Arms tournament and as I won it with my Italians I decided to claim a box of Bersaglieri for my prize.  It seemed appropriate enough as I was riding a high after surprising wins with a force I did not anticipate to be as competitive as it ended up being.  That kit sat in my box of shame for the last year and once Third Edition was announced my mind kept wandering to that simple box of plastic.  For my first dedicated Third Edition army I am going to create an Africa Campaign themed Italian army using the Bersaglieri as the core of infantry.

With this project I have three goals in mind.  The first is that I want to challenge myself to leave my comfort zone by painting and basing an army outside of my typical temperate Europe theme.  By painting my army for the North African theater I will accomplish that.  The second goal is to make it thematic.  I will accomplish this by ensuring that whatever I put in this army makes sense within the scope of the Italian contribution to the North African campaign.  Considering that this is the theater that the Italians featured heavily I imagine this one will be fairly simple to pull off.  The third goal is to balance it between competitive and fun.  This is the area I am the most nervous about pulling off.  I want to avoid any units that break the game (looking at you Second Edition Dakka Stuarts/Panzers) while simultaneously keeping my list interesting and fun for me to take to games.  As I do like to win I hope that I can temper my competitive edge to keep my list enjoyable for me to play, and more importantly here, fun for my opponent to play against.

After committing to building my first Bolt Action Third Edition army around the Italian army in North Africa I started to map out how the company would be structured.  Some quick poking around online revealed that six Bersaglieri regiments served in North Africa so I can rest easy that we’re checking the box for historical accuracy (National Army Museum, New Zealand).  Since I already had a box of Bersaglieri in my box of shame the infantry component was decided.  Light Machine Guns will feature heavily in my squads due to the decreased point cost and that the Bersaglieri will play as Veterans which will give them more survivability to keep that LMG firing.  So that’s the infantry platoon worked out.

For the second platoon I envisioned some tankettes or light tanks to support my infantry.  Daydreaming in the twilight of Second Edition I wanted a platoon of tankettes to harass my opponents with.  The L3/33s looked like fun little mobile, armored, MMG teams that were cost effective and could be a real pain for my opponent to deal with if I used them correctly.  With the Third Edition change to vehicle mounted machine guns halving their rate of fire I was reluctantly turned away from the idea of a tankette swarm.  Instead I began looking at other light tanks of the Italian army — and in drove the L6/40.  In Third Edition, I can field a number of Regular L6/40s with a turret light auto-cannon in an 8+ hull with two negative rules (Vulnerable and One-Man Turret) offset by one positive (Recce).  For 100 points, that doesn’t sound like a terrible deal and the fact that this light tank will find itself outgunned and outmaneuvered by most other tanks fits my idea of the Italian armored forces frequently finding itself behind the curve in North Africa.

The L6/40s first arrived in North Africa in December, 1941 for testing and soon after began arriving for combat duty.  The 133rd Armored Division featured three squadrons of the light tank and served in the successful Axis siege of Tobruk in 1942 and continued to serve through the Third Battle of El Alamein (Tank Encyclopedia).  This one example of L6/40s in North Africa, alongside the presence of Bersaglieri, checks the second historical accuracy box in my planned list. Considering the affordable cost of this cute little guy I will start with three in the tank platoon and will likely alternate between two and three in my company depending on the point maximum of the game.

With LMGs and autocannons in my arsenal I decided my third platoon would need some heavy hitting power.  To accomplish this I turned to the Armored Platoon.  Fielding a number of artillery pieces will give my army some penetrating power to stall enemy armor and to knock out infantry squads.  Medium howitzers in Third Edition hit with a 3″ template and +3 penetration.  This level of howitzer can make quick work of Veteran infantry and can even destroy buildings with a lucky shot and the +3 penetration allows you to threaten medium armored vehicles and their 9+ armor.  Against the front armor of a medium tank (9+ armor), the +3 penetration is a poor substitute for a dedicated anti-tank gun requiring a roll of 6 to penetrate.  However, it is enough to force pins on Veteran 9+ vehicles and Inexperienced and Regular armored vehicles regardless of armor value.  And in my experience, pouring pins onto an armored vehicle with howitzers, while not likely to destroy it, can force it to take increasingly difficult order tests and possibly invest a turn rallying.  The indirect fire option is always a handy option when conducting counter-battery operations or trying to force dug in enemy units to displace.  At 90 points apiece for a medium howitzer with a gun shield I plan on picking up three for a healthy battery presence and again will likely fluctuate between two and three depending on point maximums.

I dug around online and struggled to find organic Bersaglieri artillery batteries.  Instead, I often found references to Bersaglieri working alongside divisional artillery assets in the form of the 100/17 Modello 14s which are treated as Medium Howitzers in Bolt Action (Comando Supremo Italy in WWII).  At the time of writing this I have not stumbled onto evidence of Bersaglieri manning 100/17 Modello 14s as these guns were typically Divisional assets manned by regular Army gunners.  Therefore, in keeping with my goal of making my list as historically accurate as I can I decided to purchase Warlord Games Italian Army 100/17 Modello 14 medium artillery kits rather than the Bersaglieri variants.  If anyone can find a source verifying that Beraglieri troops served as gunners of these medium howitzers I would love to be proven wrong before adding these guns to my holiday wish-list.

For a first draft I feel confident that my Bersaglieri Company, made up of an infantry, armored, and artillery platoon, will be able to respond to most threats.  The combination of mobility and firepower this list provides will hopefully end up being as fun to play in reality as it is in my head.  Keeping my list realistic to what was available to Italian forces in North Africa will hopefully create a thematic and cohesive looking army that will look good on the table and be grounded enough to be fun for my opponent to play against.  The next step is to start picking up the kits I need to make this happen and to add them to my painting queue.  More to follow.

Happy gaming!

By Kreighton Long

On Saturday, 12 October 2024, Kalissa Skibicki organized a Bolt Action tournament at the Call to Arms convention in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Sixteen players brought their armies and positive attitudes for one last Bolt Action Second Edition tournament. Due to the travel involved for me to get down to Williamsburg, this tournament feels like a Bolt Action geek reunion where I have the pleasure of catching up with like minded people on an annual basis. I caught up with familiar faces and made some new friends throughout the weekend. Overall, the tournament appeared to have been a success with plenty of laughs and jokes to compliment the friendly competition of the day.

Kalissa’s highlight from the tournament was the influx of new players.  She commented that around six of the sixteen players had recently started playing Bolt Action and that this was their first tournament.  Moving forward, Kalissa, as well as her players, will need to become familiar with the revised rules of Third Edition which will require a not-too-small investment in revamping the tournament packs for Kalissa’s future tournaments.

After three rounds of games including Double Envelopment, Demolition, and No Man’s Land, the players gathered around Kalissa to hear the final results of their efforts.  Due to all sixteen players tying in the second round, the final push to secure a place on the podium came down to secondary points.  In this tournament, the secondary points resulted from order dice claimed minus order dice lost. After all the scores were tabulated, the winners were announced with one order dice separating first place from second.

By Kreighton Long

On 21 September, twenty-six players gathered at Titan Games and Hobbies in Timonium, Maryland for another Bolt Action tournament (2nd Edition) organized by Michael Kehs.  Mike was pleased to see his tournament crowd grow since the last tournament back in April to include recurring players from as far away as Ohio and a new player who ventured down from Connecticut.  Mike credits a level of his growing popularity to his success in reaching out to vendors for prize support.  In addition to healthy rewards for the top finishers, Best Painted Army, and FUBAR, players also can look forward to raffle drawings between rounds.  Well-earned credit needs to go to the Assistant TOs, Rob and Chris, for providing invaluable support with setup, break-down, raffles, and pictures.

The three scenarios chosen for this tournament were Meeting Engagement, Key Positions, and Sectors.  This tournament included a new gimmick from the previous one.  While last time players could find their turn ending prematurely if two odd colored Order Dice were pulled from the bag, this time players needed to keep an eye on Secret Objectives distributed prior to each game.  The Secret Objectives forced players to adjust strategies and to think more tactically to score up to an extra ten points, five per objective, each round.  From what I was able to overhear, the feedback from the Secret Objectives was mostly positive, and Mike confirmed that he will look into incorporating them at future events.  One improvement he plans on making is to specifically assign certain objectives to pair with certain scenarios and to balance them with each player receiving one hard and one easy objective.  In my three games, the Secret Objectives did present opportunities for me to play the game differently than I normally would, and added an extra level of intrigue to the game.  For example, in my final game, I had an opportunity to finish off one of my opponents units but instead moved my unit into my opponents half of the table to accomplish my Secret Objective of finishing the game with all my surviving units on my opponents half of the table.  While that choice had no true impact on the outcome of the game, the choice I faced did make it a little more interesting for me and bagged me an additional five points to my overall score.

By Morten

For a couple of years now, I have been eyeing Bolt Action from the sidelines, never really taking the steps to get into the game. I already play Team Yankee, Star Wars Legion and have had a few games of Star Wars Shatterpoint, so I was a bit on the fence about getting into yet another game system.

Then came the news, that Bolt Action was getting a Third Edition in September and I couldn’t help myself, as this seemed like the perfect time to start.

Now, I don’t really know anything about how Bolt Action Second Edition plays or how army building works. I have watched a single game some years ago and all I know about Third Edition, is what Warlord has spoiled in their Intelligence Reports. So far, I like what I’m seeing.

You can check out the Intelligence Reports here:
https://warlord-community.warlordgames.com/category/world-war-two/bolt-action/

By Tom Gall

Just a few more days until Bolt Action v3 is out and time to dig into the system of missions for playing the game. As you might recall from second edition, there were 12 missions to choose from. Late in the life of v2 there was additionally a tournament package or two that were circulating for playing from.

With the dawn of v3 and the core book, missions are divided into two types, Battle Scenarios, aimed more for a pick up game where both side have similar deployment zones and victory conditions, and Story Scenarios, when you’d like something with a bit more flair. These scenarios are meant to be less even and more situationally designed with one side trying to drive to a particular goal and the other trying to prevent.

by Matt Varnish 

A new edition of Bolt Action by Warlord Games is upon us, we were blessed with an advanced copy, and rather than spill the beans for all the competitive players like everyone else, we figured why not actually play a regular old fun game with fellow No Dice No Glory alum, Scott Roach.   We decided upon a desert game, so that he could dust off his Aussies and his Afrika Korps.   We tried to incorporate as many new things from the new edition, and as luck would have it we came across a fair amount of questions and sneaky changes.

First big change, the way army lists are built is different.   No longer can you take a lone ’88 or Pzr III, now these support units need to be in their own platoons.  My own Blitzkrieg army only has 1 HQ painted up so I’ll need to paint up more, since a Heavy Weapons platoon and Artillery platoon need their own Lieutenant or Hauptmann.  Speaking of lists, here is what we ran:

By Kreighton Long

Following up last weeks article covering how the Germans may end up looking in Third Edition, I set my sniper scope sights on the Soviet Union.

Most of the Army Special Rules remain the same from Second Edition.  Veteran players will see the return of The Great Patriotic War, Not One Step Back!, and Massed Batteries.

By Kreighton Long

Within the next few weeks the 3rd Edition rulebook of Warlord Games’ WWII platoon skirmish game will hit store shelves and mailboxes around the world.  We here at No Dice No Glory were given the opportunity to peruse the upcoming rulebook and I personally scrolled straight to the Armies of Germany section to see what notable changes Warlord Games has in store for the Wehrmacht.

By Kreighton Long

At this past April’s Operation Roundup Tournament I eagerly competed in the Best Painted Force finishing towards the top but not high enough to place.  The category that hurt my score the most was my lack of a display board.  Historically, I’ve avoided building a display board as I would rather invest the time, energy, and resources into painting miniatures and terrain.

Humbled, I decided that I can’t win unless I play the game and this game requires a display board.  Driven by spite I committed myself to investing some of my summer break into building my first display board. As this is my first attempt at a display board the unofficial motto from the start was “good enough”.

By Kreighton Long

My summer of terrain projects continues with a set of homemade rivers.  I set out to echo the method by which I created a set of ponds several years ago.  The materials I used were chipboard for the base, plastic table covers for the river, Vallejo’s Silver Grey paint, Apple Barrel’s Black and Melted Chocolate paint, Delta Creative’s Trail Tan paint, Craft Smart’s Olive Green and Espresso paints, PVA glue, sand, and various basing flock and tufts.

For the plastic table covers I used LovePads 1.5mm thick clear desk pads.  I prepped the table covers by cutting them to size, ironing them under a t-shirt to smooth out the material, and cleaning them with glass cleaner.