The Battle for Outer Cherbourg - Promo

 On 16 August we will be running the Bolt Action demo game for The Battle for Outer Cherbourg at Victorious at Box Hill, Victoria.

Here is a video providing a bit of an overview of the board and plan for the day.

We are greatly looking forward to joining the Nunawading Wargames Association and all the other players for an exciting day of gaming!

The 2017 U-Boat Railway Station Board

Starting to play test the board

We have been planning a new board for this season's public participation games fr some time. The core idea was to have a board which provided the following features:

1. A certain "Wow!" factor which would attract visitors to investigate the game further.
2. Lots of tactical options
3. An excuse to show off some of our newer buildings and scenery
4. A fun board with plenty of tense moments.

This is in line with our article on How to Run A Public Participation Game.

Here is the link to a couple of short videos we put up about this board as it was too large to capture in one or two photos:

U-Boat Railway Station Board Overview

U-Boat Railway Station - a look inside

Our first play-test had the road down the middle with the Railway Station and Stone Hotel opposite each other along the long edge. While this worked in the game it had one major failing.

The Russians have the Cafe. The Germans really want their coffee.

It's a long way to reach over the Railway Station

No-one actually fought in the buildings other than the cafe. Now that is a waste of good playing real-estate!
So the board has been reconfigured.
Now the Railway Station bisects the board and there are reasons to go into lots of buildings. Now that should make for suitably deadly encounters all over the board!
The other innovation we are experimenting with this time around is to have differing size paired enemy forces with non-synchronised game turns. This means that we will have 8 dice armies (about 900 points) for those that can play longer (about 2 to 2.5 hrs) and smaller starter armies of 5 dice (500 pts) for those that can only play 1 to 1.5 hours.
The forces can still fire at the enemies and work with their allies, but they will find that one pair f players may be at turn 5 and another at turn 2. Other than a most enjoyable chaos and interesting situations, players pairs joining in on an already active board are treated as "reinforcements". We expect to see a longer game in progress and in the middle a shorter player pair starts and finishes before they have completed their game! We'll see how this all works in the real world, but it looks interesting enough to try.
The reason we want to attempt this is so that more people can experience the fun that is Bolt Action wargaming.

The Australians are rushing through the Station gardens

Often visitors to conventions or events only have a limited time to play. "Just give us an hour and you'll get a good taste of how this works," we'll say and once they are in we are sure they will get a taste for more.
As always we provide all the armies and everything required to play.
You will note we haven't added any of the free stuff like Artillery observers or free armies. This is because the games are for new players and the game results in this style of game can be really badly impacted by the apparent imbalances of the free stuff on smaller armies. When they play a proper 1,000 point or greater game then these are all put back into play.

Here are some of the armies we will be using:

Finally not afraid of the pseudo-Tiger, the Allies attack

1 Hour (5 Dice) Armies

500 point 1 Hour Germans

85 First Lieutenant and Buddy
123 Heer Grenadiers (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
123 Heer Grenadiers (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
125 Heer Veterans (SMG, LMG, 6 Rifles)
50 MMG Team
508 Total: 5 Dice

500 Point 1 Hour British

85 First Lieutenant and Buddy
123 Regular Infantry (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
123 Regular Infantry (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
125 Veteran Infantry (SMG, LMG, 6 Rifles)
50 MMG Team
508 Total: 5 Dice

500 point 1 Hour French

85 First Lieutenant and Buddy
120 Regular Infantry (LMG, 9 Rifles)
120 Regular Infantry (LMG, 9 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
42 Veteran Renault FT tank
507 Total: 6 Dice

Reworking of the board

A Dalek bringing Tea to the Railway Station

500 point 1 Hour French

85 First Lieutenant and Buddy
120 Regular Infantry (LMG, 9 Rifles)
120 Regular Infantry (LMG, 9 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
42 Veteran Renault FT tank
507 Total: 6 Dice

Pz IV and Cromwell facing it off down the road

An Aerial shot of the board

The FT17 "Tank of Fear" fits in the doors of the Railway Station.

500 point 1 Hour Russian

95 First Lieutenant and 2 Buddies
143 LMG Squad (SMG, 2 LMG, 7 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
70 Inexperienced Infantry (10 Rifles)
55 MMG Team with Gun Shield
503 Total: 6 Dice

The view from the U-Boat tower.

2 Hour (8 Dice) Armies

900 Point 2 Hour German

85 First Lieutenant and Buddy
123 Heer Grenadiers (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
123 Heer Grenadiers (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
119 Volks Grenadier (5 AssR, LMG, 2 Rifles, 2 PzFst)
119 Volks Grenadier (5 AssR, LMG, 2 Rifles, 2 PzFst)
50 MMG Team
50 Sniper Team
235 Panzer IV H
904 Total: 8 Dice

900 Point 2 Hour Australian

95 First Lieutenant and 2 Buddies
123 Regular Infantry (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
123 Regular Infantry (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
123 Regular Infantry (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
123 Regular Infantry (SMG,LMG, 8 Rifles)
50 MMG Team
60 Medium Mortar Team with Spotter
205 Cromwell Tank
902 Total: 8 Dice

900 Point 2 Hour USA

85 First Lieutenant and 2 Buddies
120 Regular Infantry (2 BAR, 9 Rifles)
120 Regular Infantry (2 BAR, 9 Rifles)
120 Regular Infantry (2 BAR, 9 Rifles)

120 Regular Infantry (2 BAR, 9 Rifles)

50 MMG Team
50 MMG Team
230 Sherman M4A1
905 Total: 8 Dice

Overall we are looking at having a very busy time!

The conventions we will be attending are:
MOAB - Mother Of All Battles 30 Sep and 1 Oct 2017
Little Wars Canberra 12 November 2017
Goulburn Library 4 November 2017
CanCon 2018 Australia Day 2018

Video run through of the Lorient Dockyards board

In response to various requests we have provided a video overview of the board we set up for the "Battle of the Lorient Dockyards 1942" which features our U 505 submarine.
More details are in our previous post, but sometimes it is just better seeing the board in more detail.

Building Wooden Foot Bridges

The cheap Ingredients

While preparing our Attack on the Lorient Dockyards 1942 board, we needed some bridges to get from the walls to the submarine. Like most terrain we build, we want it to be useful for multiple boards and scenarios. And we wanted it to easy to make and inexpensive, yet look good.
So we started with the basic ingredients:

• Pop Rivets 35mm long.
• Icy Pole sticks/Coffee stirrers
• Cheap wool
• Super Glue
• PVA Glue

Using the clippers trim the rounded edges of the wooden sticks.

Completed but unpainted

Then using some shorter pieces as supports make your bridge. You can be rough or neat depending on the look you want. At this point all you are using is the wooden stocks and PVA glue.
Now we want our rails. Drill holes near the edge and at roughly 1 inch intervals. Then poke the pop rivets in so they stick through about 1 cm or half an inch. Use superglue to keep them in position.
Once dry use the wool to create the rope railing, wrapping it around each pop rivet, move it down over the edge and then around the base of each pop rivet. This is to give the bridge lots of strength, and it looks good too.
Then paint the wool with PVA glue.  This strengthens the wool, sticks down the fibres and makes it all very strong.
Lastly, you need to trim down the pop rivets at the end of the bridge.  Either use tough pliers or grind them down - or get some shorter pop rivets for the end poles!

Painted and beautiful

This step is important to allow the bridge to rest on the edge of whatever you are placing it against.  The longer poles in the middle keep it stable.
Then paint it brown with black wash and finally paint it with some satin varnish (we buys ours in a 500ml tin from the paint store).
It turns out pretty well and will work for any setting from modern to ancient where the construction would have been done using basic wood and rope materials.

This isn't going to end well...

Lastly, you can see how we have used it in our dockyards game. We have placed a bridge from each of the Heights Project bridge ends. They make it perfectly across to the sub to provide for a great cinematic charge or two.

Lastly we had a bit of fun with our Gandalf figure and the phrase so many keep repeating, "None Shall Pass".
We couldn't avoid the pun.

This is what bridges are for.

The French Dockyards Part 2 - The sub is built

It takes two to hold the hull together.

Plain Grey Plastic is boring

We have been busy this week building our submarine as the centre piece of our French Dockyards 1944 board. In our heads we thought we could imagine 42 inches of submarine goodness, but it was still quite large in reality.
Being a quality plastic model there are LOTS of tiny little details and pieces everywhere. Even though we won't be using most of them they certainly add to the style of the boat. The difficulty level of a Revell model goes from 1 (easy) to 5 (advanced).  This definitely earned the 5 rating.  The first step was to drill lots of holes in the hull to which the side rails would eventually be attached. This is nothing like the resin tank models with 3 to 10 parts.
This was over 160 parts from little foot rails around 5 mm across to the massive hull sections.
The end result was a success.  Just placing it on the board encouraged us to start placing figures in various battle positions on and around the boat.
Now this boat is 1/72nd scale.  The reason we can get away with this is that it is part of the scenery, but troops will not be going in it.  They may hide around the superstructure, or we will have special rules so they can race to use the 2 twin 20mm or 37mm AA guns on the deck, but in general it is great "eye candy".

Hmmm. Perhaps not.

Now that it is built we had to face the prospect of doing it justice by painting it properly.  Our first idea was to use a grey spray paint and touch it up, but a fellow gamer who is a much better painter than us asked if we wanted to use an Air brush.  "We'd love to," we replied, "But haven't yet advanced to that level."
She then most generously offered to paint it for us with her excellent air brush and superior painting skills.  We'll trade with a specially organised demo game at her place. Wait till you see this next week!
Looking at the plain grey submarine, my family thought that we should consider using the historical documentary "Operation Petticoat" as a guide and paint it pink.  I did a mock up with Photoshop. Perhaps not.

The French Dockyards 1944 - Preview

We are planning our next Boot Camp for Hawkcon on the 9 and 10 May. While pondering over the main board we saw another gamer had an interesting board with a U Boat or something similar as a centre piece. That got us thinking, so we searched for an appropriate boat.  Our first discovery? Boats are big.  Actually HUGE would be a better description. Getting most boats to scale would be larger than our standard Bolt Action 6' x 4' board. However, we were able to successfully use 1/72 scale gliders in our Pegasus Bridge game so we thought that would work here.

A little small but it'll do.

We discovered this Revell German Submarine Type IX C 1/72 Model Kit online and were enthused at our options.
At 1063mm long (42") this meant we would have to carefully work out the best way to place this on the board to get the most benefit.
Combining this with our city heights project (the planning and the result) was our solution, as you can see by the video above and the photos here.

Now we have a little work to do.

Add Boat Here

Firstly we need to add a couple of corner height sections, some beach areas and paint the foam.
Then we need a gantry to go across the boat and some walkways from the boat to the sides.
Lastly - or  firstly once the kit arrives this week - will be building and painting the whole point of this board - the submarine!

What else is there?
We then have the fun mission of working on the armies we will be using.

Naturally it will be 600 point forces, but we are considering a mix of Kreigsmarine and boat crew for the Germans and perhaps Americans, British or Commandos for the Allies.
We are considering setting this as a battle just after the Sword Beach landings in June 1944.
We'll see what response we get and how play testing goes.

More next week as we progress.

Our public playtest of this game will be at The Combat Company on Saturday 21 March.  We will also be having a second board on which we will be running our Boot Camp.

Let us know if you will be coming along.

Bolt Action 600 Point Armies - the video

600 Points of Russian goodness

Following up yesterday's post regarding how we use 600 point armies in our Demo Games, we have created a video run-through of some sample armies.
We have also provided the army lists produced at the Bolt Action Easy Army website for the armies featured in our video:
Winter British
Finnish
Germany with Pz IV H and Volks Grenadiers
Russia with T34.

And now to the short video:

We train them young

At the Demo Gamers we need to train up our recruits so they can become Demo Gamer Sergeants, bravely going into public areas and introducing Bolt Action to the next generation. It can be a long journey so we start them young.
Zach is 4 years old and wanted to show off his knowledge.

The Building Personalisation Project

Everyone helps out. But there's a cost. Girls add pretty bits.

As you may have noticed looking over our blog, we have quite a few buildings from a number of different companies.  One issue with this is having our buildings stand out and have more of a personalised nature.  Through various means, we have collected many 4Ground terrace houses and they all look pretty much the same. So, in preparation for Cancon 2015 we have finally sat down, done the work and put our own touch on the buildings.
The paint we have used is all from sample pots purchased from the local paint store. We asked the store clerk for any colours which would match the WWII period.  It is a sort of restoration, we explained.

Now there is daily Mass at our St Michael's church.

The Church needed some long planned customisations.  We built an inner wall with two side doors leading to the rear changing rooms and church office. Then we added a stone floor to the church and lots of different touches such as the stained glass windows and crucifix. My son looked at the bare church and thought, "Why not?" and constructed the altar and sanctuary and then went a little over board and created the altar cloth, candles, host and chalice too. Add in a few religious pictures and of course Saint Michael, patron saint of paratroopers, and the church was finally complete.
Then my wife and daughter got creative and looked in my son's box of many colours and selected lots of bright colours.  These made the doors and window sills very special.

A good place to hide a bazooka team

If you are visiting Cancon next week, pop over and you will see lots of special touches.  There are carpets and rugs in some of the houses, chairs and tables, glass in some windows, edges highlighted, smoke from chimneys and more.  Basically, we wanted to create a town in which people would live so the battle makes a lot more sense.
We did a short video walkthrough of some of the personalisations.
Enjoy.

These citizens have made their homes special.

Lime Green and Blue are perfect colours.

Bolt Action St Mere Eglise - the video

Here is our YouTube video showing the St Mere Eglise board we will be playing at Cancon 2015.
You can see the US Paratroop drop and the initial close combat and re-organisation phase before beginning turn one.
Enjoy.