After Action Report - November 2025 Boot Camp

In November we had another Boot Camp, but this time had a couple of themed boards for our recruits to experience a different game than just an encounter or two normal competition armies.

We had 8 recruits join us for the day starting at 10am and finishing at 4pm. A great day for gaming and learning new things. Night fighting is tricky!

Pegasus Bridge

The first game was a game in three parts. 

Part One had the British Airborne land in gliders at night and overwhelm the shirkers waking up to guard the bridge. The defenders aim was not so much to win, but to whittle down the attackers. Veterans vs Shirkers is not much of a challenge.

Part two was for the airborne to capture the rest of the bridge, with potential daylight after turn two. Also unbalanced in favour of the airborne.

Last part we had LOTS of German reinforcements. A regular army with a Marder III and on turn three we had veteran Panzer Grenadiers with Panzer IV from the other side of the river.

Ready to face the Western defenders.

It was interesting seeing the difference Bolt Action v3 made. When we ran the game using v1 (!!) over 11 years ago, the shirkers made a lot more impact. In this game they were rolled over as if they were hardly present.

Here is the original review.

Overall, despite the imbalance, just the concept of an unbalanced game was a fun experience, especially on such a nice board.

St Mere Eglise

Ready for action

Keeping with the theme of dawn on D-Day, we had US Paratroopers drop into the city of Mere Eglise. Using the time honoured tradition of squares of paper for each figure, dropped from a ruler 36" above the table, it was great seeing the fluttering paratroopers drop into the town. A couple landed in the burning buildings so they were counted as casualties. 

Very conveniently, a LMG and rifleman both landed in the church tower. Cool! After the chaos of the paratroopers trying to rally and stray paratroopers fighting the patrolling German squad, the Germans had to wake and get their act together. 

LMG landed first - where's my loader? Ah, There he is!

A lovely stage of confusion with night fighting and then reinforcements began arriving from another 600 pt army of US Airborne and Germans.

The end result was a draw - which was fitting considering the fighting chaos.

Our recruits were very surprised when we had some goodies to share provided by our very generous sponsors.

A sprue for every player was provided by Warlord Games and War & Peace Games.

A number of lucky door prizes of troop and support boxes as well as some crafting gear was provided by Wargames Atlantic and War & Peace Games. The lads were very excited to have a day of gaming and more troops to build later!

The 5 year old brother of some of the recruits came along and watched. He had brought some of his savings to buy "some Bolt Action" like his brothers. We had picked up a variety of well priced gear at the well run MOAB Bring and Buy in October. He had a huge grin as he tightly held his new King Tiger. What a way to start Bolt Action!

Some of our recruits have attended most of our events this year as well as a competition or two. They are sharing their Bolt Action rulebook and it is VERY well read, spine broken but taped up. It is good to see them enjoying wargaming together.