Bolt Action – Page 3 – Lair of the Lagomorph

Tank War!

A friend of mine gave me his Bolt Action army last weekend after a year of not doing too much with it, he felt he’d rather not have it than having the pressure to complete it, and focus instead on Star Wars Legion. He’d amassed a pretty large collection of models, so this was very generous of him indeed. I’ve been itching to get a game of Bolt Action in after all this time so decided to act quickly and paint all his tanks so we could play the Tank War set of rules for Bolt Action, with the goal of painting the infantry later. After tallying up his vehicles (1 Puma, 2 Panzer III, 2 Tigers), I ended up at around 1500 points, so decided to round that up to 2000 by buying a couple of extra tanks to fill out the numbers (a Panzer IV and a Stug IV). This would let this army play against my own 1000pts of British tanks and another friend’s 1000pts of Russian tanks.

I decided to go for a late war scheme (the famed Dunkelgelb, Olivgrün, Rotbraun camo) to match my own armies which I mostly picked because of their presence in Normandy. The Panzer IIIs are a little bit out of place there, but I found three sources that mention there being a handful present, good enough for me!

With that goal in mind I decided that for time efficiency I would paint the lot together as there are a lot of efficiencies to be gained there. Tank painting with oils washes and layers of varnish has a lot of drying time in between steps, while the steps themselves are relatively short. Here’s a quick summary of the steps:

Undercoat – Vallejo Dunkelgelb Primer through the airbrush for the tank bodies, Vallejo Plate Mail Metal for the tracks (Kept separate where possible)
Camo – Vallejo Olivgrün and Vallejo Rotbraun through the airbrush, I decided to do a loose striped pattern.
Basecoat the bits that are not tank bodies (Rubber on the wheels, tracks where attached, attached equipment etc.)
Gloss Varnish the lot
Apply Decals
Gloss Varnish again
Overall oil wash – Abteiling 502 Dark Mud
Streaking rust, applied dots and streaked them downwards – Abteilung 502 Oxide Patina
Satin Varnish all over
Used Graphite pencil to wear the edges
Applied mud to tracks – AK Wet Mud
Applied dust – Mig Europeant Dust Dry Pigment
Matt varnish all over

Some of those decals were very tricky to apply! Luckily decal solvents saw me through! (I used Mig Decal Set/Fix for this)

Very happy with the outcome of the rust streaks, I’ll definitely use that technique again.

Here’s a gallery of all the vehicles

The Tigers – Warlord Games/Italeri Plastic kits

The Panzer IIIs – Warlord Games/Italeri Plastic kits

The Puma – Warlord Games/Italeri Plastic kit

The Stug IV – Die Waffenkammer resin kit

The Panzer IV – Die Waffenkammer resin kit

Very fun little project, now I need to paint my British tanks otherwise this will all be in vain!

2ème Division Blindée – Support Teams

Bolt Action

I’ve had plans to put together a Bolt Action army themed around the 2ème DB for quite a while now, and with renewed WW2 inspiration in the past few weeks I’ve made a bit of time to turn plans into reality. While painting my 6th airborne roughly a year ago I was listening to the audiobook version of Anthony Beevor’s “D-Day: The Battle for Normandy”, and his retelling of the liberation of Paris by the division struck a chord with me. Since then I’ve been gathering research materials and reading up what I can find on the history behind the creation and the actions of the division. The 9th company of the RMT (Régiment de Marche du Tchad) “La Nueve”, so called because it was home to many spanish revolutionary exiles, were first in Paris, and are who I’m going to mostly focus on in this army. This will mostly impact the vehicle painting, as most if not all of the vehicles in the 2ème DB were named, and had those names painted on them. In “La Nueve”, those names were based on important Spanish civil war battles and republican leaders. The division being mechanised there will be many vehicles to paint! I currently have 3 Half Tracks and an M8 Scott for the army, and I’m eyeing off some more vehicles.

These first models are the support weapons I’m thinking of including in the army. I assembled these first as they require the most specific poses. I’ll put together the regular infantry next without having to worry about whether I’m leaving the right parts for the support weapons!

The 2ème DB, as all late war Free French unit, were outfitted by the Americans so I used Perry Miniature’s late war US Infantry plastic set and their matching 60mm mortar metal kit.

The paintjobs are quick, done in two sittings, but should look good enough on the table. I’m mostly excited to get to the vehicles! I experimented with the bases some, trying out for the first time something else I’ve had for a while but never used: Green Stuff World’s Leaf Punches, specifically the oak leaf punch they make. I used dead leaves from the garden as the starting point, punching these small leaves out of them. These leaves are a bit out of scale for these models but I’m quite satisfied with the effect otherwise.

6th Airborne

Bolt Action

I painted this army for Bolt Action back in June-July 2020, before I’d started this blog and I’ve been wanting to document it on the blog for a while now, but haven’t made time for it. Seeing other blogs post about WW2 models ( the tipping point was the latest post from John over at https://justneedsvarnish.wordpress.com/) has finally motivated me to get these models photographed and uploaded!

I’ve had a soft spot for the British airborne regiments and their operations in Normandy on and after D-Day for a while, so when some friends and I decided to break away from our usual fare of Fantasy and Sci-fi wargaming to try out historical games (Bolt Action in this case) these models caught my attention very quickly.

I didn’t aim for any particular operation when deciding what to include, rather focusing on including units that would make sense in the period following D-Day, when the 6th AARR started using Cromwells rather than the Tetrarch for example. The force is a 1000pt army made of a single reinforced platoon under Bolt Actions army selection rules.

Artllery Observer (Left) and Lieutenant with a bodyguard (Right)

This was my first foray into historical wargaming and I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in research material, learning about the actions of the troops the models represent and trying to get markings right! (Although I could never find a photo of the AARR Cromwells so I improvised the markings on those using pictures of Tetrarchs and Locusts)

I have 3 more cromwells to paint at some stage for when we want to play with the tank war rules, and a second Bolt Action army unbuilt, waiting for its day, so there will be more WW2 content in the future!