My 'By Fire & Sword' rulebook has arrived

So my copy of 'By Fire & Sword' arrived this morning from NorthStar and first impressions are good. I'll be doing a more in depth review next week but here's my thoughts so far. 

The book is indeed a weighty tome weighing in at nearly 2 Kg or 4.5 pounds. The hardback binding looks sturdy and the pages are fairly heavy duty so should stand up to wear and tear. The text is a decent size and it's lavishly sprinkled with photos and illustrations. There is an index at the back but strangely many pages don't have page numbers on them. The rules are all on numbered pages but things like the army lists have no page numbers. It probably won't be a problem but it is a little unusual.

There's a nice section at the start that explains some of the basics and gives a guide on the different approaches to painting miniatures which seems useful to both beginners and more experienced painters. The rules comprise about 100 pages of the total 408 pages and are well set out with lots of examples and diagrams. The rest of the book comprises the scenarios and detailed army lists and history of the various combatants. There is also a quick reference section at the back of the book although I'm sure someone will produce a pdf version soon if they haven't already done so.

The rules aren't cheap at £38.50 plus p&p but you get a lot for your money. They could have produced a softback version containing just the rules and scenarios but, if you're anything like me you won't know much about this period and it's armies. So you would have probably bought various reference books/painting guides to help you out which would probably take you well past £38.50. 

Hopefully I'll have a more detailled review early next week although 408 pages may take me a while to get through.

Assembling my Warlord Games Brits

Having decided on the weapon mix for my Bolt Action Brits it's now time to assemble the figures. This is the part I wasn't looking forward to doing. The figures are lovely sculpts with no flash or mould lines but the fact that they have lots of options and accessories means there are lots of parts to assemble.

I decided to start with a rifleman with a backpack and no other options. But this still meant assembling eight separate parts. These being the base, right arm, left arm. rifle, head, helmet and backpack all attached to the body. If I'd chosen to start with a kneeling figure the body would be further split into the torso and two separate legs as well.

Getting the order of assembly right makes a big difference. I decided to start with the right arm as I could then add the weapon which would make positioning the left arm easier. With all the weapon and arm options it's important to check carefully on the instruction sheet which parts you need. It's also useful to check where your chosen right arm goes by referring to the illustrations. Having big fingers makes the assembly very fiddly and it was quite tricky to get the arm positioned correctly. Once the glue was dry I added the rifle which wasn't too tricky to do. Attaching the left arm was much easier as I had two reference points but The arm didn't fit the body as well as I would have liked as the position of the right arm was a little out skewing everything else.

Arms and rifle attached to the body

Next I attached the head which has a nice recess to making fitting easier but it still took a few goes to get a position I was happy with as my fingers obscured the head as i was holding it into position. By contrast the helmet was a doddle, fitting quickly and easily as were the backpack and base.

Front view of the assembled model

Rear view of the assembled model

Overall I'd rather have one piece models even if the quality was poorer. I'm a wargamer not a modeller and from three feet away most of the detail is lost anyway. I can see the appeal of these figures for people who want a variety of options and poses but for me they're just a pain. One thing that would help are lugs and sockets on the arms/torso to position the arms as they are the trickiest pieces. One final note, I've seen people say that they broke some weapons removing them from the sprue but using snips I've had no problems.

'Chain of Command' Playthrough

Yesterday TooFatLardies hosted a live playthrough of their upcoming WW2 skirmish rules 'Chain of Command' on their blog. It was really interesting to read through the action as it happened and it also gave a greater insight into how the rules worked. The playthrough can be found here. But here's a brief snippet of the action:

Chain of Command. A Day of Action

Right chaps, we will be updating this thread throughout the day as we work our way through the Phases and Turns. Feel free to add comments and ask questions.
Prelims
We began the Patrol Phase yesterday with a roll to see our Force Morale and, with this particular scenario, who went first. Rich won that and as a result he gets the first Phase of play in the game itself. As it happens both sides threw 6 for their morale so begin the game brimming with confidence with matching Force Moral levels of 11.
Phase 1. German. The Command Dice are 44431. Not a great combination for me as the Hun. I have only my Platoon commander who can be activates on a 4 and I want him back commanding his O Group off table for now. So only a 3 and 1 to be used. Mindful of my plan to find good dominating positions for my armour I bring on the Puma and, being a wheeled vehicle I get to move that immediately. It advances to the T junction. No 6’s rolled means that the next Phase is British.

Phase 2. British. My Command Dice are 64331. The single 6 means that Rich will get the next Phase. I am keen to push on my armour with infantry ahead of them to protect them from the damned bosche bazooka men. I deploy one section to the T junction just beyond the village and bring on Sherman 1 on the road in the village itself. As it is a tank it just deploys, it doesn’t move in this Phase.

The full playthrough is well worth the read. The more I see of these rules the more I like them. Sadly they don't come out until August.

Bolt Action: Building my British Infantry at 500pts

Now I have my figures, thanks Tamsin, I need to work out my force composition. Normally I build my forces on paper and then buy the figures I need but this time I need to make the figures I won fit a force.

My first thought was to make all the 'extras' from the box (PIATs, mortars, snipers, lmgs etc) to maximise the points and then use what's left as my troops. But on reflection I decided that was a bad move as the core of the force should be the infantry. So I looked at what was compulsory and then what would be good additions.

So I have to have an officer and two squads, each of five men minimum, I also get a free Forward Artillery Observer as the British 'perk'. This uses twelve of the twenty five figures in the box. I thought about giving them some anti-tank capability with the PIAT but discarded that idea. It's unlikely that I'll be facing much in the way of armour at 500 pts plus the PIAT only has a range of twelve inches limiting it's effectiveness.

The next thing I looked at was artillery support. Getting a free FAO is nice but you only get to call in one barrage which may or may not be effective. So I decided to include the 2" mortar. It's not particularly powerful but it gives your opponent something else to think about plus some well timed smoke may make the difference between success and failure for an assault. This brings my running total to fourteen figures used.

Like most wargamers I have a thing for snipers so adding a sniper team was a no-brainer. Having them sitting on an objective picking off advancing NCO's can really stall an enemy advance as well. Which brings my total to sixteen figures.

My force is a little short on firepower so I decided to add a Bren gun to each of my squads. There is some discussion as to whether LMG's are worth the points but I like the longer range and extra firepower they bring. This leaves me with seven figures spare.

So I've added three infantry to each squad making them nine man squads. I decided to use the last figure as a Medic because it gives me an extra dice and in a small force being able to cancel out a casualty could be crucial.

Next I had to decide on the various options like regular, veteran, weapon choice etc. To do this I used the army builder spreadsheet from BoltAction.net. This gave me the following force:

Veteran 1st Lieutenant
Medic (Veteran)
Forward Artillery Observer (Regular)
1st Squad: NCO with Sten, LMG, 7 Riflemen (Veteran)
2nd Squad: NCO with Sten, LMG, 7 Riflemen (Veteran)
Regular Light Mortar
Veteran Sniper Team

This works out at exactly 500 pts and uses all the figures in the box. It's far from being the best 500 pt force you could build for the Brits but it has the benefit of being free. Now I've decided on my force it's on to the hard part, assembling the figures. I think plastic miniatures are the way to go for lots of reasons but I hate the fiddly assembly. This is my first set from Warlord so I'm interested in seeing how they go together.