*Clack-shick* - it's the Bolt Action thread!

Ah, right, I’ll just look up and see what colours I need to paint these up…

“Early-Mid-Late… what unit… what theatre… what supplier… have they been there long?”

“Use these paints” “No! Don’t use those paints, they’re the wrong colour.”

“You’re not going to use the paints based on the names on the dropper are you? LOL”

*sigh*

Uniform really is a contradiction in terms isn’t it? 🤪

(I may have a project to start next year assuming I can work out which khaki-tan-buff-green-grey-olive-drab combination to use)
you start with Goblin green bases....
 
The one I got from Temu was green printed onto a white fur type stuff so it didn’t really work, as soon as you ruffed it up the white came through - still looking.
 
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The one in the photo looks to be a hand made one using paint on teddy bear fur. There's plenty of tutorials on YouTube, but it looks super labour intensive.
Yeah, it does look like Teddy bear fur. You can scroll through the photos on there (just swipe on mobile it click the arrows on computer) and get close ups.

I wonder if it would be possible to get a bit crafty and get some cloth dye, probably a green and a brown, mix to create a more natural grassy green and then just dye the fabric?? Could be the quickest way to salvage your existing sheet @ClockworkOrange
 
So, Bolt Action boys;

@Tiny @spafe @MancInventor @ClockworkOrange @Stoof and @Pagumb (should you return)

I’ve got my Mini 2nd Edition rule book and now I’m looking at getting the “Armies of” from eBay as you can pick up a decent copy for around £5 for most of them now 3rd has been released.

As I’m most likely to barely ever play BA outside of TribeMeet are you all ok with 2nd or have you all run off to the distant future of 3rd??

Japan isn’t even scheduled to get its updated book until end of January 2026! So, I’m quite happy to stay with 2nd.

Ultimately I don’t want to buy more books to replace books I have! I don’t give a stuff about “competitive” play and am just up for fun games and thematic ideas based on movies/TV etc.

GW has given me Edition Anxiety!! 🤣
 
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I haven't tried 3rd edition yet. I was going to wait until I see the armies books before I think about it. I'll play either. I'm no edition snob.

I plan on expanding my forces to fit 3rd where I need to though. Probably only means a couple of MMG teams for my Germans and another officer for my Indians.
 
I haven't tried 3rd yet either though I've briefly read through it. The main changes for third seem to be vehicles are slightly less effective (ok I guess) and you need far more officers if you want to build a varied force, which also means more dice (both annoying).

Honestly I suspect 3rd only exists because they needed to make a new version purely so they could sell a new version (and more order dice, natch). Sure, there were ways of really gaming 2nd for the tournament scene, but:
1) the TribeMeet crew are mainly fluffy varied list types rather than WAAC tournamenters.
2) their claims of making it simpler etc are patently nonsense ("We've made 3rd simpler!" "Why is the gameplay rules section of the book for 3rd far more pages then?" "You weren't supposed to notice that.")

So... Yeah. I'm in no great rush to play 3rd. So if you want to beat Italians, the SAS, 8th Army or the US Airborne in 2nd, I'm your guy. (I also have DAK but I've played them twice and won both games so they appear actually effective which is unusual and confusing for me).
 
I’ve played about 8 games of 2nd and 1 of 3rd, and the changes are good!

I like the simplified force selection rules and hope they don’t change it in the theatre books.
The officers are not a big change either, most of us will have NCO’s already modelled that will easily stand in, and from my admittedly limited experience it makes the multiple order rules more tactical / game changing. My general take was it put more importance on soldiers over vehicles which at 28mm scale skirmish is how it should be.
 
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I can't say anything about the core rules and any simplicity, but I do like a few changes that I've seen so far:

Tanks appear to be better at fighting other tanks but worse at fighting infantry.
They made AT guns better, so now they're just as useful as howitzers but for different tasks.
They made man-portable MMGs useful, as they should be.
They made multiple MG-armed vehicles less useful so they're no longer a must-take.

Lots of seemingly positive changes to units whichever way you look at it.

There's a few odd things I don't like though. Mostly tied to force organisation. e.g.:

If I want one tank / armoured car, I have to take 2.
If I want one MMG team / mortar, I have to take 2.
If I want one flamethrower team, I need at least 2 engineer units, incentivising me to take 4+ flamethrowers.

Maybe it works fine though, and once I get into playing it, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
 
Fairly sure the vehicle can be the “command“ vehicle in the platoon so you only need to take one, but yeah the flamethrower thing is weird.
 
Sadly its 1 command vehicle and one other vehicle, then 0-3 optional vehicles. Its a bit odd to me for a game that should concentrate on infantry.

1739106104825.png
 
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lol that’s my first game invalidated - that said most of the forces we fielded at Boltmeet had a tank and an armoured car so no real hardship.