Bolt Action

By Kreighton Long

As the pandemic continues to dominate our news feeds and our minds I’ve been trying to focus on the future and how exciting it will be to attend club days and tournaments.

Warlord Games is doing its part to ramp up my excitement with the planned publication of their second D-Day Campaign Book with nearly two hundred pages focusing on the Anglo-Canadian Sectors from Gold, Sword, and Juno Beaches to the capture of Caen and the German defeat at the Falaise Pocket.

As you can expect from Warlord, this book contains new historical scenarios, units, and theater selectors.

Look for Bolt Action: Campaign: D-Day: British and Canadian Sectors to be released this coming Autumn. With the disruptions from the pandemic, Warlord has not put an official release date on it yet but indicate they hope to have it out potentially in October.

We are live at Captain Chuck’s Comics in Essex Maryland for a great Bolt Action event. We talk to the TO Matt Karpus, the event winner Steve Murga and the Carroll’s!

By Troy A. Hill

Southern California (SoCal) isn’t a location that often sees representatives of table-to gaming companies unless they’re homegrown. With major conventions like KublaCon in San Francisco and the Las Vegas Open (LVO) seven and five-hour drives away from the Los Angeles basin, SoCal often misses out on major hobby events.

That changed this week when the co-author of , and Warlord Games North American Demo Team grand-poobah Jon Russell paid SoCal a visit to launch the new Korean supplement and line of miniatures for Bolt Action.

Hosted by the (Pacific South West chapter), Russell visited three stores in the greater Los Angeles area Friday and Saturday, followed by a visit to San Diego in the extreme southern end of California.

With the way many remember the Korean War today or have learned about it in school or through hearing about it from others, America was nearly single-handedly holding the line against the Communist North. In truth, Great Britain and it’s Commonwealth had a massive presence, with three full brigades exhibiting tactical brilliance and heroism that is still studied today. This article will examine the British and Commonwealth forces present in the Bolt Action – Korea book, and examine what has evolved in their units, rules, and Selectors since the end of World War II.

For anyone who has played British or Commonwealth forces in Bolt Action, the special rules available will be familiar. The same, in fact; you have the two core special rules of Bombardment (rolling two dice per unit for preliminary bombardment and picking the best result) and Artillery Support (free Artillery Forward Observer). You also have the option between five National Characteristics, choosing one. This is the point where you should start constructing the framework for your army, as these can define the way your force fights, and even the way your units are filled out.

by Tom Burgess

Warlord Games has released and within it, forces from the United States and United Nations figure prominently.  Warlord has managed to pack a tremendous variety of platoon options all using the United States generic reinforced platoon list as the baseline.

This is appropriate as so many of the United Nations countries that committed troops to the Korean effort were from armies that had largely been rebuilt and reequipped following World War II by the United States. Accordingly, many of these nations’ armies looked a lot like the US Army’s formations.

In addition to the generic reinforce platoon list, the United States and United Nations player can utilize period selectors that more accurately represent these forces at various stages of the war.  This is important because these forces elevated heavily from the initial unprepared, poorly equipped, and undermanned type units that the US rushed to Korean Peninsula to try to stem the initial North Korean push south.

By Jacob Shober

In a war which echoes even to this day, nearly the whole world had turned their eyes to the Korean Peninsula, and the overt and covert politics playing out.

It was a war which turned allies less than a decade after the end of the Second World War against each other. None was more jarring than the Chinese joining the fight on the side of their communist brethren in the north.

If one observed closely, however, one could see the waves and ripples of the political turmoil and war in China itself that stretched to before the start of WW II, with the two Sino Japanese wars, the Warlord Era, and the Chinese Civil War.

This resulted in the Chinese Communist Party taking control of the country, and presenting the unified force of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA). This article will examine the differences between the fractured Chinese forces found in “Empire in Flames”, and the unified forces found in the book, as well as the new units and theatre selectors available to them.

By Mitch Reed

Find the with Bolt Action Korea authors Steve Smith and Jon Russel, from the NOVA Open 2018 .

Long known as the “Forgotten War” the Korean conflict holds a unique place in history. It was never officially a war and to this day it has not officially ended. Due to these circumstances, it does not hold a place in our memory and we often forget the sacrifices of those who fought in the first major hot conflict in a very long Cold War.

The new Korean War book from Warlord Games not only pays homage to the combatants who fought in 1950-1953, but it also expands the game and brings a new wave of excitement for all Bolt Action players.

By Troy A. Hill

“Suddenly a low flying aircraft buzzes them and a flare is fired beyond the trees. As they walk the men look up, first at the plane and then at the flare as it hung in the air slowly moving toward the ground. As their eyes lower to the horizon, they widen. Across the road behind another stone wall are figures with the distinctive silhouette of German soldiers. Alarmed the five American stragglers realise they are facing the enemy, feeling a rush of adrenaline they raise their weapons.” – excerpt from Campaign D-Day: Overlord by Warlord Games and Osprey Publishing

That snippet is from the opening text for mission #5 in the new D-Day: Overlord book for Bolt Action. Our gaming group at Brookhurst Hobbies in Garden Grove California is gaming in the Normandy theatre, and we decided to give this scenario a try this past weekend.

By Jacob Shober

Converting is one of my favorite parts of assembling miniatures; customizing them by changing (whether simply or drastically) from the original model, to create your own flavor of character or pose.

This is sometimes daunting to a beginner, as you see tutorial after tutorial on using green stuff, plasticard, brass rods, and various other extra parts. Sometimes, you end up spending as much as if not more on extra materials to convert your model as you did on the model itself.

This does not need to be the case, however, as this article will show. Sometimes, it is as simple as shaving off a tiny bit of plastic, “cutting and pasting” from other parts on the same sprue, or even using parts of the sprue itself. Below are several examples of tricks I have used to customize my own miniatures, so you too can bring your models to life in your own special way.

By Jacob Shober

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you…

—Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, 6 June 1944

The Allied forces faced one of the most difficult tasks ever undertaken by military forces in the assault on Fortress Europa.

D-Day became one of the events which through its incredible bravery, sacrifice, and test of the human spirit, will never be forgotten for generations to come. Among the other Allied forces, the American landings and paratroopers overcame immense odds to secure the beaches and important inland targets. This allowed the Allies to plant one solid foot that could not be shaken off on the European mainland; the first step towards Berlin and ending the war. The American forces, selectors, and special characters in the D-Day rulebook are a great addition, to both thematic-based forces, as well as providing new tools at your disposal.