Band of Brothers - The Bolt Action 2 boxed game

Well Bolt Action 2 arrived this morning.

And it’s packed. I got mine directly from Warlord so I could get a box of free plastic infantry (I went with Japanese, to start doing the Pacific theatre) so I’ve received it nice and early from the first print run.

So what’s in it? I know you’ve come mainly for the pictures, so I’m not going to tease you.

A very thick softback rulebook.

24 US paratroopers, which are new plastic models and one of the two paratrooper set Warlord are bringing out (the hope being that we'll see British Paratroopers in the next few months). 

I have done a photo of the whole sprue and close ups on the weapons and heads so you can see them. The weapons per 6 body sprue are - 1 .30 cal MMG, 1 Browning Automatic Rifle, 3 Thompson SMGs, 5 rifles (2 M1 Garands, 3 rifles), a 1911 pistol and a machete. There are 15 heads, 12 helmets, 1 soft cap, 2 bare heads. 

12 German Grenadiers - these are quite recent plastics though not new, and again have a good mix of weapons, with 2 LMGs, 3 assault rifles, 5 rifles, 3 SMGs and a panzerfaust per sprue between 6 bodies.  

1 German Sd.KFz 251/10 Aus D half track.

1 Ruined farmhouse

Pin markers, dice, order dice and the new templates.

A quick reference sheet.

A get started booklet.

I am not going to get into the minutiae of the rules changes in this article. The major complaints I heard about Bolt Action 1^st Edition were machine guns weren’t effective enough for the points, and assault (particularly cavalry) was too effective for units that rolled multiple dice (and particularly Tough Fighters).

I played someone who had gone through the German army book and picked what they felt were the most effective units they could fit into a 500 point force, vs my entirely in theme British Paratroopers. So I faced cavalry, a mixture of veteran infantry with assault rifles and regular support teams, generally all 6 man units. I did field 5 man paratrooper squads, splitting my units into rifles/LMG and SMG squads to leap frog them around the board. It worked very well. It also proved to me that snipers are absolutely worth taking.

I absolutely creamed them, because veteran assaults are lethal in BA, but it was a very different game to the first one I played where I took a Last Levy german force against Americans and got battered (though my Volksturm launched a surprise assault and wiped out a Ranger squad).

This has been addressed in the new edition. On first reading the book is well laid out, logical, has examples and diagrams and is colour throughout.

Looking at the US paratrooper sprue, which is the brand new sprue in the set, it is crisp, has a good weapon mix, and includes the parts to make a 30. Cal MMG team.

I picked up the bazooka and mortar set with the order, a command squad, and another grunt with a Thompson to attach to one of the command elements and bring the force closer to 500 points.

I’m impressed with the sculpts and sprue layout, and later I will assemble and post some.

The rulebook now includes the Japanese, allowing you to play the Pacific Theatre from the base set. It’s a nice addition. The changes to assault will hopefully make Japanese players less unpopular amongst other players, because I’ve seen a lot of armies built around militia squads with spears swarming across the table.

The army lists in the main rulebook are enough to play games, but there are specific army books and theatre books that provide significantly more detail and options.

I’ve previously discussed Konflikt 47. The rules changes in BA2 are easily integrated into it, and will only improve the game further. The army lists in BA seem completely compatible still with the Konflikt 47 stuff, meaning I can support my new small American Paratrooper force with a Coyote Light Walker, and wait for American Jump Infantry to be released.

If you are thinking about getting into Bolt Action, this is a very good set to get. Lots of people collect Germans, going ‘it means I’ll be able to play everybody’ and this is to some extent true.

However a lot of people get pleasure out of picking specific campaigns and either as clubs or small groups collecting forces around that.

Warlord have now released so many plastic sets that for the main players (US, UK and Commonwealth, German, Russian, Japanese) there are hard plastic boxes of figures at around £20 for 30 models, that give you the core of a 500 point force. A handful of metal blisters or a vehicle or two is enough to take you to 500 points and that’s a good level for a BA game. Certainly you can find a lot of 500 point battle reports online. 

A 500 point force will be about 25-35 infantry, a weapon team or two and a vehicle or transport or two. This also means it’s paintable in a realistic timescale, as there’s nothing worse than grey armies facing off against each other.

Would I recommend Bolt Action as a game? Yes. There are large numbers of armies and it gives you the opportunity to nicely theme your forces. You can pick battles and situations you find interesting, learn more about them (Osprey books are notoriously good for this) and paint up and model themed forces. I prefer collecting both sides (and with hard plastics at £20 for 30 troopers that’s not bank breaking, particularly compared to GW prices) and so I don't go for super tough tournament builds. 

However Bolt Action, unlike 40k, is a game balanced enough to play competitively in a tournament format, and balance only benefits casual play, scenario based games and campaigns. 

Bolt Action is not enormously complicated. The Get Started booklet does a good job of explaining how to play, and talks about the background of the forces given in the box and show you lots of painted models and how to play, including what happens when units take pins and fail command checks. 

It's a well thought out and put together set, and I'd recommend it for gamers and WWII enthusiasts looking to get into tabletop gaming. 

Konflikt 47 - Background thoughts.

So what’s the background and opportunities for conflict in Konflikt 47?

It changes a couple of things in the background. The Battle of Midway is more indecisive, and it was only decisive because an American attack caught the Japanese in the middle of re-arming and refuelling their planes on deck. Stalingrad is more indecisive and the 6^th army escapes. These two events change the balance on the Eastern front and allow the Germans to better consolidate into defensive lines there (and Stalin has a purge of his generals again) and the Pacific, where things bog down into stalemate between the US and Japanese navies.

Then the US test a nuclear weapon, creating a rift in space at Los Alamos. The US don’t really understand or study it that much, concentrating on getting a second device built. The US drop the device on Dresden after Hitler calls the Allies bluff after they threaten to use atomic weapons on Germany.

However the US are then out of nuclear weapons.

The Germans start studying the rift much sooner, and both the US and Germany find signals coming from them with new scientific concepts. As they don’t talk to each other, they don’t work out that they are receiving different messages.

They start developing technology based on these messages. Which leads into the parallel history.

Konflikt 47 kicks off when the war has already gone on two years longer, and Germany and Japan are nowhere near defeat. The worst winter in a century is finally lifting and everyone gets back to it.

There are 4 major theatre’s of conflict.

Western Front – US/Commonwealth vs Germany.

Eastern Front – Germany vs Soviet Union with partisans supported by both sides and the US.

Persian Front – Soviet Union vs UK/Commonwealth vs Axis (which Turkey has joined).

Pacific Theatre – Japan vs US and UK/Commonwealth with Soviets

This takes in pretty much every major theatre of WWII.

But it leaves it open for big changes.

Would countries like Spain and Argentina join the war on the Axis side? Turkey has joined the Axis, there’s plenty of room for more countries to join the Axis.

Spain’s Blue Division fought alongside the Axis on the Russian front, would they join the Axis with the promise of Nazi technology?

With Brazil siding with the Allies would Argentina officially join the Axis? Particularly given how many members of the SS and Nazi regime settled in Argentina after the war.  

There’s a lot of space to expand things or plot hooks to use.

The jungles of South America, with secret Nazi labs plotting to release Nachtjagers into American cities and cause mass panic.

A jungle war in South America between Argentina and Brazil with walkers might be a very interesting route to go down.

Argentina attacks the Falkland Islands as part of joining the Axis.

It would also add conflict to South America.

What about me?

There has been a lot of discussion some places from people with less mainstream armies (Polish, Italians, French, Hungarians etc) asking what they will get. In the interim there is a very simple solution to this.

In the background, who is supplying this nation with tanks?

Hungarians are being supplied by Germany, so add the Spinne light walker to their force list.

Brazil is being armed by the Americans under Lend Lease, so add Coyote and Grizzly walkers to their list.

Communist China is being supplied by the Soviets, so they get Cossacks. 

Konflikt 47 - US Starter Unboxing

Well guess what I got in the post today?

I’ve been quite excited about Konflikt 47 by Warlord Games and Clockwork Goblin, and liked Secrets of the Third Reich (SOTR) and some of the other Weird War stuff done 10 years ago.

However going back and looking at the sculpts now SOTR minis look a bit rough. 10 years of advances in sculpting (including the move to digital sculpting by a lot of companies), means the West Wind figures are showing their age.

In the last year I’ve got into Bolt Action (BA) and Beyond the Gates of Antares (GoA) in a big way, and sci fi WWII where I can use the existing figures I have appeals to me.

I bought the £70 American starter, as I don’t have an American force (though I do have 3 Shermans knocking around because I picked them up on sale). My Bolt Action forces are British Paras and a Last Levy based late war German force. They are of course as yet unpainted, though at least based and cleaned up, and in the case of some of the German units, undercoated. 

So what’s in the box? I’ve actually got my phone out and taken pictures of the stuff so you guys can see it. I hate reviews where you don't see the goods because if I'm thinking of buying the Warlord 'Rangers Lead the Way' set I want to know what the extra bits actually look like rather than having a description of them as 'additional metal pieces'.

The starter contains everything you need to start your army. Which starters should, but we can all name some companies that give you starters full of stuff you wouldn't take in an army if you wanted to stand a chance of winning. 

Dice and Pin Markers (the GoA plastic pins look like being a staple for GoA and BA going forward) and Warlord have got a supply of small dice from somewhere to go in my increasingly cramped dice tin. I have the Pretty Princess bag (£1 from Poundland) so I have an order dice bag (though Warlord sell faction specific bags for BA and GoA).

There is a 208 page rulebook. This contains army lists for the big 4 (USA, Germany, Russia and Great Britain and the Commonwealth), the background for Konflikt 47 and an amended version of the BA 1^st edition rules.

When Konflikt 47 was written there was no set date for the publication of Bolt Action 2^nd edition. 

BA2 has been brought forward (I’m guessing because of the same rumblings from GW about the future of 40k that mean Mantic are trying to get their sci-fi skirmish offerings finished and in stores) to September, so there will be a gap of a month. 

Clockwork Goblin will be producing an FAQ when it comes out, and the changes between the editions are largely small (LMGs in squads getting a fix for example) so a 1-2 page long FAQ to cover those changes seems likely. When the new and much more flexible way of organising forces comes out we'll see the effect on Konflikt, as suddenly squadrons of walkers start taking to the table. 

It's a shame they weren't more bold in the main Konflikt rulebook and switched to a system where you could take a lot more tanks and walkers.

Don’t let edition shenanigans put you off. Konflikt 47 is also compatible with the force and theatre books that currently exist for Bolt Action. You can add walkers to the defense of Berlin, or Operation Market Garden, or D-Day.

Certainly to have walker heavy forces you can just swap them for similar category vehicles in the Tank War supplement organisation structure. 

Then to the meat, the miniatures.

There are 20 US troopers (4 of the US infantry sprue) in the box, with 2 gun sprues. Each sprue has 3 LMGs (2 Thompsons, 1 Grease gun), a BAR, a bazooka, a sniper rifle, 9 rifles (2 with fixed bayonet), 1 pistol hand and 2 pistols, and two M1s.

This means from the box I can create 2 infantry squads, a command team, a bazooka team and a sniper team.

But what about the weird stuff? Well here we go…

US heavy infantry.

Nice clean metal models coming in 4 pieces plus base. They are armed with assault rifles, meaning a squad throws out reasonable firepower. I will delve into the rules significantly more in a separate post.

I like them, they are nicely sculpted, imposing next to standard BA infantry, but they aren’t crazy sci fi. They don’t have colossal shoulder pads and look like something that could actually exist.

The M4A9 Sherman T tank. This is the Warlord plastic Sherman with a resin turret and metal piece  to add to the rear of the turret. I’ll be adding some stowage when I make it as well. The turret is cleanly cast and quite detailed, but isn’t ‘busy’ and again looks like something that could actually exist.

As it is the standard Sherman sprue, you can build the normal turret and switch them, meaning you can use the normal historical Sherman as well. 

Finally the M5A2 Coyote Light Walker. In the rules this replaces a recce unit, and with a HMG and MMG (though it can only fire one in a turn due to having a single crew member) it can do a recce role the same as a light armoured car, with a similar level of threat. However two fists mean it rolls three dice in assaulting another vehicle and can tear apart soft skins or armoured cars quite easily. 

Walkers can also assault infantry, which will certainly be interesting.

The kit itself is a resin body with metal limbs. The resin is cleanly cast, and again the model isn’t too ‘busy’ (covered in unnecessary crap is what I mean). Look at the nice clear front for adding a big allied star or nose art.

I like the set and I would say it is a good buy for anyone looking to get into WWII. In terms of value it’s £20 of plastic US infantry, a £20 tank, and likely £15-20 for the Heavy Infantry and Light Walker, so the dice, pin markers and rulebook are free.

The models are nice, and if you are thinking of getting into Bolt Action or Weird War II then it’s a very good starter set.

As the first question I know I’m going to be asked is about points, I’ll give a breakdown of how I’ll make up the set.

1^st Lieutenant + 1 man (veteran with SMGs) – 103 points

Heavy Infantry Squad (veteran) – 105 points

Infantry squad (Regular, 1 SMG, 1 BAR, +2 men) – 78 points

Infantry squad (Regular, 1 SMG, 1 BAR, +2 men) – 78 points

Bazooka Team (Regular) – 60 points

Sniper Team (Veteran) – 67 points

Sherman M4A9 (Regular) – 210 points

Coyote Light Walker (Regular) – 90 points

Total 791 points. I could add anti-tank grenades, I’ve got two spare SMGs, I could upgrade regular to Veteran squads, etc to get to 1000, but this is 8 units at 800 points.

A firefly squad and a heavy anti tank gun would put that at 1000 points with 10 order dice and give 3 units enemy armour has to worry about (Sherman T, anti-tank gun and the walker getting into combat).

Doubtless I’ll end up with a bunch of extra options anyway, and the prospect of the next theatre book being Pacific and being able to throw Walkers and Marines at Japanese Terror troops is appealing.

400 points of weird stuff and 400 points of normal WWII stuff. By switching the turret on the Sherman you have 600 points of normal stuff. Can you see what Warlord are doing?

The beauty of the range is that:

• 1     It’s a sci fi point of entry into the Bolt Action system, which while BA isn’t particularly groggy makes it easy for players used to having dreadnought style stuff and centre piece units in their army.
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• 2      It’s an easy buy for BA players to yet again expand their forces and give them another way to play. Bolt Action is fully compatible with Konflikt 47, which means you can throw your Italians or Vichy French or Polish against them and you don’t have to buy a new army. It gives a built in player base that games need to be successful. 
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• 3      The starter sets are an excellent buy. I got mine at £10 off because of the Warlord July offer, but full price it still gives you everything you need to play the game.

 Would I recommend this? Yes I would. I'll also actually be painting the set up in the next few weeks.