Bolt Action 3rd Edition "Market Garden" Battle Report!

Well! It's been a minute since we've posted a battle report but we had a great game last week. My copy of the Bolt Action 3rd edition rules arrived on Tuesday 1 October (thank you Tista Minis) and we got the game on the table on Thursday 10 October. Happy birthday (on the Friday) to me!

I had decided to have an Arnhem/Market Garden game to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the campaign that had just passed. The game was a scenario from the 2nd ed rulebook pitting 1st Battalion,  British 1st Parachute Brigade (1,136 points, at left) against elements of the SS-Unteroffizierschule "Arnheim" (1,008 points, on the right). Each side had 12 order dice. The fictional encounter took place on 17 September, the campaign's D-Day. The British were on the move towards the Arnhem and Oosterbeek bridges from their (rather distant) drop zones, and the Germans were mounting a hasty defence to block them. Victory points were scored by the Brits for destroying German units (1 each), for getting units into the German deployment zone (2 each), and for units exiting the German table edge (3 each). The Germans scored one VP for each British unit destroyed.

The Germans deployed first (on the near long table edge), mostly hidden. Here we see the heavy weapons platoon commander with two MMGs and a sniper team.

On the German left was a rifle squad and medium mortar.

Over on the right there was another rifle squad. The Germans left their Puma Sdkfz 234/4 armoured car, two rifle squads and the company commander in reserve. 

The British all came onto the table at once. They had a limited number of turns and had to maximize movement.

On the British right a para section moved forward, taking heavy fire from the German MMG. These weapons are even deadlier in 3rd ed (one more shot than before) PLUS the German special rule gives each MMG another shot again, for 7 shots total! Yikes! It was a good thing for the Brits that their troops are veterans and only wounded on a 5+.

Over on the British left more paras advance, covered by the other MMG and a ranging-in mortar.

Waffen-SS squad enters from reserve to intercept onrushing Brit paras.

The Puma came on from reserve on the German right as well, as the Brits were really putting on pressure there. Unfortunately the PK-berichter missed some of the vital parts of the fight over here. The Puma drove up to the low wall at top centre of the photo to pour some fire on the advancing Brits. Unfortunately neither the armoured car nor the infantry squad were able to eliminate a two-man British PIAT team crouching on the other side of the wall... they put a PIAT round through the side of the Puma and blew it sky-high. Men of the match no doubt.

Over on the German left the Brits mostly got chewed up in close combat, but a platoon commander and the remnants of a para section escaped off the table. 

The company command section shown here also just managed to make it into the German deployment zone. Shooting is nasty when your targets are in the open (no saving throw) but you still have to wound... and this roll failed utterly. Veterans are tough customers.

Anyway the game went seven turns... and at the end, the Germans had destroyed six units for 12 VPs, but the Brits had exited two units, gotten one in the German zone, and destroyed 6 - totalling 14 VPs for the British and a victory for the Red Devils.

The game was really fun, I like 3rd edition a lot. As referee I did fudge one ruling in favour of the attackers for the sake of a cinematic game - allowing the company commander to issue an order to a unit that was more than 12" away at the start of the leader's activation (albeit within 12" after the commander had moved). That was technically contrary to the rules. But it added to the game as it really increased the tension on the German right - and I could justify it by relying on Major Brown's bugle extending the command range slightly... right? And the new command rule was one change that met mixed reviews from the group... commanders now can draw FOUR extra dice from the bag when activating. That can make a real swing in a game with only 10 or 12 order dice. But it worked well in our game.  

The game also inspired me to revisit the models to be used. I painted the group above for the game, 10 Paras (including some excellent new sculpts by Paul Hicks from the recent Kickstarter) and four passengers for the jeep (which was included in the British list but was LOB by the British players).

I'll also make a note for posterity here on the paint colours used: Denison smocks are basecoated Vallejo Khaki, the brown is AK acrylic Dark Brown, the green is GW Caliban Green highlighted GW Warpstone Glow, the whole thing washed with Agrax Earthshade. Webbing and gaiters are Zandri Dust, washed and re-highlighted.

I'd also noticed that some of the Battle Honours (and Foundry?) Paras I'd painted (something over 20 years ago) could use some help with their helmets. The sculpting never pleased me (the helmets were just too small and didn't have nets or scrim) and my "fix" at the time was to apply some very coarse texture gel that I painted like scrim. Well this had to go. So I scraped off the gel and sculpted helmet nets out of greenstuff. Much better I think. 

Maybe we'll have another Market Garden game soon. I shelled out for the Bolt Action 2nd Ed Market Garden campaign book (now obsolete, but the scenarios are useful) and I'd love to get the Red Devils out on the table again. We'll see.

Until next time, or as the Paras would say "WHOA Mohammed!" :-)

 

New Space Marine Project

For those that remember my Minotaur Chapter project, you’ll know I’m a fan of the Badab War. It’s one of my favourite parts of the 40k lore and it’s extremely detailed thanks to Forge Worlds Imperial Armour books. Since finishing the Minotaurs I’ve wanted to create another chapter that took part in the war: The Executioners.

Unfortunately the project stalled because I couldn’t get the armour colour right. I experimented with contrast paints and washes and eventually found something that worked. Unfortunately it was too difficult to replicate and was totally impractical on vehicles. So there the project lingered until I saw someone online mix the Fang with Iron warriors to create the above colour. I painted up a test model and confirmed it worked. Since it didn’t involve any contrast paints for glazes, I could use it on vehicles too. Here’s the first tactical squad painted up:

The chapter decals are from Fallout Hobbies and I’m really happy with them. Fallout Hobbies has some bad online reviews dating from the pandemic. Like most industries , they were hit hard and customer service suffered. I can honestly say that whatever issues they did have were fully resolved. Orders are shipped within a week of purchase and shipped via DHL to Canada. This is a bit pricy, so make sure you order everything you need in one go! The decals are as good as anything GW can do and the pigments are strong enough that the underlying colour doesn't bleed through.

The squad painted up fairly quickly, so I hope to have a bunch of these guys done by the end of the year.

Thanks for visiting!

End of Summer Update

 While still blessed with some warm summer weather this last week, we are rolling through fall into inevitably into winter here in Manitoba. I haven’t posted in a while, but I have been both painting and building models. Last I left off, I was painting fantasy miniatures for Frostgrave and Forbidden Psalm. Here’s the rest of the fantasy stuff I painted since then:

Corpse Collector 3d print with Reaper vampire for scale.

Reaper ghost, golem, vampire. Armoured skeletons are from Diehard miniatures.

Giant frogs from Reaper Bones

Skeletons from Oathmark. These are super light so I strongly recommend a metal base to give them some heft.

That’s it for Fantasy for now, though I hope to do more this winter.

Some Desert Terrain!

So I just wanted to knock off a quick terrain project, so here it is... some LOS-blocking terrain for the desert boards.

Pretty straightforward. Just cut out some shapes from plasticard, superglue on some rocks, slather on the thinned acrylic gel medium...

Sprinkle on some sand, spray prime black...

Then paint with Steel Legion, Zandri Dust, Rakarth Flesh, and Ushabti Bone on the rocks...

Garnish with tufts and lichen, done. Now I have a couple of LOS-blocking pieces of desert terrain for use in Western Desert and maybe even Old West games!
 

Skull & Crown Killer Rabbits

Well you can file this under "models I may never use in a game but painted because they are super-cool."  They're "Killer Rabbits" from Skull & Crown. Once the subject of a popular Kickstarter campaign, the range is based on some pretty freaky medieval manuscript illustrations.

Here's a cavalryrabbit mounted on a lion (!)

The set I bought came with a couple of lapine musicians (piper and hornist) a leader-type with a stick, and a rabbit I converted into a standard-bearer, with handpainted flag, naturally.

There are a few sword-armed rabbits too, including one with a wicked zweihander. I painted the middle rabbit's shield with their carrot heraldry. 

The other has a bronze buckler.

There are some bow- and crossbow-armed rabbits too. How they manage to wield these weapons without opposable thumbs must be known only to the medieval monk artists.

The last bunch have clubs and spears.

These models are just so cool and were pretty fun to paint, even if it did take some time. The challenge will be finding a game to use them in. Fantasy skirmish of some kind, most likely - Otherworld Miniature Skirmish? Or maybe even Forbidden Psalm - but these little guys seem altogether too wholesome for that!

Forbidden Psalm Game! Plus Skull & Crown Skeletons!

WARNING: POST CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF SELF-HARM, HORROR, DEATH, GORE, COARSE LANGUAGE, NUDITY, SOME OF THE OLD ULTRA-VIOLENCE, AND SMOKING. 

So on Thursday Conscript Mike F. and some of the lads came over for our first crack at Forbidden Psalm, the super-grim tabletop game inspired by the Swedish RPG Mork Borg. Mike's been painting like a madman and I was really looking forward to getting a game on the table. We played the first scenario from the book - "Corpse Scavenging." Six corpses were laid out on the table and the two opposing warbands had to search them for treasure and "black fungus", a particular goodie that the Mad Wizard Vriprix would pay handsomely for. Above is Humfrid about to search a corpse. Mike had painted them and they were... horrifying.

Here's two members of Mike's warband trying to search another corpse. This one resisted all attempts to search it - seearchers had to make a Treasure Roll to successfully search, and these guys failed A LOT. Worse still, a model takes 1hp damage when they fail a search roll!

On turn 2 the Disembowelled Ghouls start to appear - these are pretty tough monsters and did for two of my warband. In the background you can see my erstwhile leader, Ulfnar, and great axe-man Karl (RIP).

Ulfnar and Mike's leader put each other out of action - we each used the Omen card that allowed maximum damage from one attack. Wow!

Karl here about to get put out of action by a skeleton summoned by Mike's scroll-user. He'd summoned him to menace my scroll-user, Astrid, but she used her own scroll to immunize herself from attacks by monsters.

This combat went on awhile - my rogue, Nils (second from right) snuck into Mike's deployment zone to mess things up. Unfortunately a Disembowelled Ghoul followed. (They are controlled by an AI formula).

Games run for six turns at most and at the end, I had three men down (one was killed) and I think Mike lost one. I got more fungus so a few more gold pieces from the Wizard. It was a fun game but took longer to play through than I'd anticipated - I felt bad that Frederick, Hugh, John and Dave didn't get to play also, but I think they had a good time kibbitzing. In any case maybe we'll play the four-player variant next time.

I'd painted this horror for Forbidden Psalm - it's the cover model for the game book - the Corpse Collector. Absolutely repulsive.

This model is a 3D print I got on Etsy, I think it came from Greece (!). This was before Mike tipped me to the guy in Quebec that's printing this stuff.

This'll give you an idea of the size of the model. In retrospect I probably should have gotten the next bigger one!

These bony dudes came in a recent order from Skull & Crown. They're super-cool obviously.

Dude carrying a brazier, he'll be the standard bearer if I ever build a unit of these guys.

The unit champion here, of course.

Skelly blowing a trumpet. Not sure how this works exactly but meh, fantasy.

I love this dude toting a huge basket of skulls and bones! Skull & Crown make some superb models and you'll see some more on the blog soon.

Well that's it for now, I hope you weren't too scarred by the Forbidden Psalm stuff :-)