Once again we have Jon Russell from Warlord Games on the show. We talk about what is coming out for all of our favorites games in 2019. You do not want to miss this one!
Some of the topics we covered
Cruel Seas
Blood Red Skies
Bolt Action
Bolt Action Korea (due out in August)
New Tournament System for Warlord’s games in 2019
… And so much more.
By Troy A. Hill
I confess. I’ve wanted to play a naval wargame for the past 30+ odd years and never have.
Back in the halcyone days of university, I remember the HMGS chapter renting out the “old” gymnasium on campus once a year and playing with their 1:350 (or was it 1:700?) waterline models. That event took all weekend, and they had binders full of charts and ship information. It was glorious to watch, but seemed an impractical way to game with your mates. Not everyone has access to a gymnasium floor, nor room to store all of those models.
Since that time, I’ve had my eye out for a tabletop naval game that had a player base of regulars that met in a game store. A game that I would not mind investing my gaming dollars in, nor storing the minis in the limited space available to me in my tiny Los Angeles apartment. Negotiating berthing rights with my spouse in such cramped quarters for large ships, even in 1:700 scale would be daunting.
Fortunately John Stallard at Warlord Games decided to build and release .
By Tom Gall
Now that our local group has a few games of under our belts, we wanted to get in a larger game that was scenario and point driven. Each side built a 650 point list and cast away their lines. Set off the coast of France, British airmen are in the water and our little flotilla needs to go and pick them up. We played this one at D6 Games in Rochester Minnesota, USA.
The Allies were sporting three type II Vospers, with two having regular crews and 1 having an inexperienced crew. Last we have a Fairmile with a regular crew.
By Tom Gall
Warlord Games released their much-anticipated ruleset covering small ship skirmish actions, which they’ve entitled
The core box offers the rules, and a starter set of British Vospers as well as German S-Boats. Perfect to get a game going with a friend. In addition, there are already nine expansion boxes offering more ships from four different nations.
The rules themselves are divided into basic and advanced sections with a set of eight scenarios to get you going. Interspersed are some histories, many a pretty picture, ship/plane stats, instructions to make your own stats and last some rules for campaign settings.
by Troy A. Hill (Photos by the author, graphics courtesy of Warlord Games)
I’ve managed to get my US Bolt Action army into a playable state that I’m not embarrassed by. I do still need to finish my various vehicles for it (a few are still in boxes).
My sell-off of models from my previous games garnered me enough hobby dollars to hit up my Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) for a new box from Warlord. Combine this with the new Western Desert book for Bolt Action, with some additional forces, and I’ll be good for the upcoming Duel in the that No Dice No Glory is sponsoring this February at Orccon in Los Angeles.
Folks, sometimes we get lucky. Jon Russell wanted to get out the word about all the great news coming from Warlord games, so we quickly put together a podcast to get it to you. Tom and Mitch talk about Cruel Seas, Blood Red Skies, Fall of France, and the upcoming Korea book.
By Troy Hill
Photos by the Author
If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that Mitch Reed has begun playing from Warlord Games. He’s mentioned on a few podcasts that I’ve begun the game as well.
Rather than re-walk the newbie road that Mitch has already traversed with three stories and a podcast here on No Dice No Glory, I’d like to take a look at one of the offshoots from Bolt Action: Tank War.
(You can find Mitch’s previous posts on BA here: , , and ).
Bolt Action typically uses the infantry platoon as its core force and limits armoured options for the player to only a few vehicles at most. Tank Wars changes that equation and uses the main Bolt Action rules (with some alterations) to allow armoured vehicles as well as fully mechanized infantry units to play a larger role in the game.
For those who have read my previous on my (BA) journey, I have just completed my first few BA games in a tourney at the NOVA open. This article will focus on my overall experience in learning Bolt Action and my impressions of the game in general.
With typical beginner luck, I lost my first game 0-4, tied the next game 4-4 and got wiped out in my last game. After a long day of thinking on my feet, playing an unfamiliar ruleset, I walked away from my last game tired. But I loved every minute of play.
Bolt Action has been out since the early Twenty-teens (German 1st Edition Book published in 2012). I have no clue as to how I missed it for so long.
The game uses dice to activate your units. Each unit provides one order die. Each player throws a set of uniquely colored order dice into a bag. One per unit in your force. A die is blindly drawn, and the player to whom the die belongs gets to activate a unit. This mechanic is at the heart of the game, and the random simulation of the “vagaries of the battlefield” effect it provides is one reason, I believe, why the game is so good.
I hope many of you checked out my first article about learning how to play . It covered the initial steps I took to collect, paint, and read the rules which culminated in signing up for a major Bolt Action event. This article will detail the list I plan to use for the event and will cover about how list making plays a part in Bolt Action and other games we play.
Make a List and Check it Twice
It has always been my opinion that list building is the game behind the game. It keeps us thinking about the game when we are not painting or actually playing it. The vendors probably see list building as the unseen hand that forces us to purchase more models and to keep the buzz going 24/7.
Why does list building take up so much of our time? I think the answer is simple, it is an extension of the game we can “play” at any time. It also represents the analytical side of the game where we try to find the perfect combination. I am guilty of spending a lot of time list building, I really enjoy it and I am attracted to games that have list building in it.
While this may not be popular with some, I think other than assuring you have a rules legal list there is no “Perfect” list or any list that will assure you success. A lot of factors in games are not covered by lists, terrain, your opponent’s forces, and missions. Nor can you predict how your dice rolls will come out. On top of this, during a game, we run into so many possible unique situations and we analyze these quickly in order to make decisions on what moves to make, as this is happening your list makes little difference, however knowing what the units can do makes a lot of difference.
Hi my name is Mitch and I am a gamer.
Our podcasts seem to have one drug reference in each episode, so it’s a well-worn joke to many of us here at NDNG. We’re always jonesing for that next gaming fix.
We are always looking for that new game to pick up in which we invest time and money for the ultimate payoff which is to have Fun.
So. over the last few months, I took the excitement of my latest enabler, Jon Russell from and decided to give Bolt Action a try. Bolt Action is now in its second edition and has been around for a while now. Two editions and I hadn’t tried it yet? Why not?
Perhaps it was for the same reason many gamers don’t try new games? We tend to look for the bad in a game in order to give us an excuse to ignore it. But, the only time I heard anything bad about Bolt Action was one person say it wasn’t his cup of tea. This excuse gave me the ability to avoid the game, to not paint 28mm models, and not pick up another money and time suck.
