Bolt Action: Built To Order. In Praise Of Bolt Action Campaign Theatre Selectors

Snap shot from Campaign Market-Garden

Introduction: Get the kettle on or pour yourself a stiff one as in this post it's my intention to wax (almost) lyrical about Bolt Action Campaign Theatre Selectors. 

     For the few of you who take the time read these posts (for which I am eternally or even slightly longer, grateful for) but aren't acquainted with Bolt Action I shall explain very briefly what Bolt Action Campaign Theatre Selectors are. 

       Warlord Games began producing theatre campaign books shortly after the release of their various Armies supplements (each of the Armies supplements contains general theatre selectors that cover, surprise, surprise, the various theatres that that army fought in and gives a general, chronologically correct selection of units and vehicles that appeared in these theatres) that aimed to give players the chance to refight actions from the big campaigns of WW2 be that D Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Barbarossa etc with appropriate forces. 

      The initial releases were very broad brush in their approach, for instance Campaign Ostfront which covered all the major battles of the Eastern Front including the Soviet Unions battles with the Japanese and it's attack on Finland; the Soviets that is, not the Japanese. 

     More recently, that is in the last couple of years, campaign books have focused on particular battles or campaigns of World War 2, for instance Operation Market-Garden, in more depth and have scenarios based on important or notable actions from the campaign as well as a couple of what-if scenarios. These supplements also contain army lists based on what units, equipment and arms the main protagonists actually fielded in the campaign and thatvis what I will be primarily looking at here.

     It's not my plan to write about all the campaign books (Hurrah!! you cry) as I don't own a copy of each one. What I will look at is the ones I do own and how they have influenced the direction my force building.

Campaign Market Garden

     Campaign Market-Garden: My theatre selector journey really begins with Campaign Market-Garden. Written by Chris Brown, an author of several histories of the campaign amongst many others so he's a chap with a deep insight into the battles, formations and equipment of the combatants (I should add here that the campaign books I refer to here have been written by keen players of Bolt Action and Chris I know is mad keen on Bolt Action and his 1/32 scale display games that he runs at many of the Scottish wargames shows are a joy to behold) and that resulted in a campaign book chock full of great scenarios and theatre selectors, some of them quite inspired. 

      I was bedazzled at the array of choice and Rich and I played a selection of the scenarios from the Market Garden supplement. At the time we started playing I had only a small collection of British Airborne types painted up (I was trying to avoid painting Dennison Smocks, lazy git that I am) so we had focused instead on the Garden part of the campaign as I had lots of British infantry and armour to which I added a platoon of US Paras (I had a few sprues of the then new plastic US Airborne sprues kicking about in my plastic mountain) as this was an theatre selector option, no I should say they were a necessity in some of the scenarios. 

       Though we kicked off playing the campaign with the initial British pathfinders missions and an excellent fighting patrol mission both of which I have blogged about elsewhere we decided to go full Tonto into the XXX Corps part of the campaign entitled Hell's Highway: The Road To The Reich. which has four linked scenarios starting with The Breakout From Neerpelt. For this initial scenario the British player must take a troop of Shermans tanks plus a Firefly and two platoons of mounted British Infantry with supports all selected from the grandly titled (a common theme in campaign books, this grand titles malarkey) Guards Division Battlegroup Reinforced Platoon. If you search out the Market Garden section of the blog you'll come across the actual lists of both sides of that particular scrap but for the moment, here's a photo of them. I really enjoyed putting this force together.

My XXX Corps platoon. The only deviation I made
from the choices in the book was the Forward Artillery
Observer who should be mounted in an M5 Half Track.
I mounted mine in a Daimler Dingo as I had one and
wanted to use it.

A bit late for the Market Garden campaign, I have finally
painted up the majority of my British Airborne just in time
for Operation Fustian and Sicily, a future project. I also
nurture ambitions to use them in the Too Fat Lardies Chain
of Command pint sized campaign Kampfgruppe Von Luck 

My US Paras from Market Garden. They did a sterling job...mostly.
They have gone onto pastures new after a brief appearance in some
of our Battle of the Bulge games

Campaign Fortress Budapest

    

     Campaign Fortress Budapest. What? Where? When? I know, the Siege of Budapest, never heard of it. Or at least I hadn't till last year when this corker was published. The author, Bryan Cook, has done an excellent job in putting together an overview of the campaign and then suitable scenarios set in and around the bloody battles that raged in Hungary in the closing stages of WW2 involving the Germans, Soviets, Hungarians (fighting for both sides) and the Romanians. He has expanded on the former lists that had existed for both the Hungarians and Romanian forces within Bolt Action as well as giving us new units and theatre selectors for both the Germans and Soviets. Now whilst I could probably field a few of the German lists I wanted to to put together some of the Soviet ones in particular the Urban Assault Group Reinforced Platoon.

Soviet Urban Assault Group Reinforced Platoon. My first
bespoke theatre selector. The building and painting of this
lot was determined by the options in the book specifically
for playing one of the scenarios in the book (which we have
revisited at least three times) that scenario being Street
Fighting In Pest.

     With a core force of Soviets built and painted my next theatre selector build was the <deep breathe> Forward Detachment Reconnaissance Party Reinforced Platoon....(see what I mean about grand titles!!) Again this was put together for a specific scenario, The Back Door Left Open. There's a batrep from that game here in the blog so I won't go into detail. Suffice to say the force requires lots of transport vehicles and all of them Lend Lease. I consequently bought, built and painted three Universal Carriers, two M3 Scout Cars and a Sherman tank as well as adding crew figures and a new platoon commander (I couldn't possibly use the same figure who leads my Urban Assault force, could I?)

Action shot of my new Soviet platoon commander, Senior
Lieutenant Walther Sonovabich, centre

Three Universal carriers....

Two M3 Scout Cars..

...and a Sherman with a looted grandfather clock!!

     One outstanding feature of the Campaign Fortress Budapest book is the terrain that appears in many of the photos. Much of it was bespoke for the book and was based on photos from the actual siege. This inspired me to begin putting together specific scatter terrain pieces to enhance our table tops. 

One of the scenarios, Supply Drop, involves a German DFS 230 glider that
lands in the midst of a battle and promptly explodes. I have one of Sarissa
Precision's glider but it is whole and in one piece so I scratch built parts of
a wrecked one for the Supply Drop mission

The Back Door Left Open scenario is based on an encounter with a Soviet recce force
and the SS and Hungarians near a hospital. As we needed a building for the hospital I
had to overcome my natural laziness and put together the 4Ground hotel that I had
bought after a rush of blood to the head. And what's a hospital without an ambulance?
Finding that idea intolerable I bought an Opel Blitz Ambulance from Anyscale Models
and I must admit to being chuffed with the end result 

      Campaign Battle Of The Bulge

     The Campaign Battle of the Bulge book was one of the earlier campaign supplements. It does an admirable job of covering that particular period including introducing a whole new French force to Bolt Action; too whit the Late War French selector. That, however, didn't really ding my bell. What I did end up doing was creating my own home brew theatre selector in the shape of the US Cavalry theatre selector. I have blogged about this already and it's still a work in progress and it has been put on the back burner for the moment but for completeness I have included it here. 

My own efforts. As I mentioned, it's a WIP, and there have been a couple
of changes not least replacing the M10 Wolverine with an M18 Hellcat.
More on that soon, I hope.

Campaign D Day: Overlord

     

     Warlord Games other big Bolt Action campaign book for 2019 was D Day: Overlord. This rather hefty book focuses purely on D Day itself and certainly delivers on choice of theatre selectors. My first foray into a specific theatre selector for this one was a force for the D Day event that Warlord Games ran at Warlord HQ down in Nottingham. Participants were sent a mission pack with a selection of theatre selectors that they could choose from and I found myself choosing to field a force from the 100th Panzer Replacement And Training Battalion list inspired as I was by this picture by the wonderfully talented Steve Noon.

I am an advertisers dream; I am a sucker for a pretty picture. 

    

       Now while that wonderful illustration shows a convoy of Hotchkiss and Somau tanks there is also the option to take Renault R35s in the theatre selector. I had one for an early war French force that I plan/hope/intend to build. It was a no-brainer to utilize it for the Germans and equally no problem getting a hold of two more to complete the armoured core of my tank platoon force. I the added other requisite parts and took them south to stem the invasion. Again I have blogged elsewhere about this event if you want to know some more about this theatre selector.

A detachment from 100th Panzer Replacement and Training
battalion parade for a team photo before heading south. 

MMGs mounted on the Opel Blitzes. 

    

     So that was away last year when the world was a wee bit saner; scroll forward to my latest theatre selector and once more it's a biggy. This force has been put together to play out the Get Off The Beach scenario. We played this one before in which I played the German defenders and I have blogged about it elsewhere on this here blog. However as mentioned in my last batrep, Richie and I have new forces we want to use in a Normandy based campaign and we felt it only right to kick off with a beach landing scenario. This one involves the 29th Division on Omaha Beach and it has a quite specific force selector attached, much like the Hell's Highway scenario from Market Garden. So here it is so far..

the 29th Division platoon. Still WIP as you can tell by the unpainted medium mortar
in the back row

My take on Brigadier General Norman "Dutch" Cota. The wrecked Sherman
has been purchased mostly with this scenario in mind but no doubt will grace
many other table tops 

Another scenario specific build, a Sherman Dozer

Our Atlantic Wall terrain section

Two Panzerstellungs build using Anyscale Models R17 turrets,
Milliput and 40mm bases

     The other terrain peices/units we need for this are some Tobruk MMG positions. They are in the pipeline (along with about 95 other "priorities" that are clogging up my pipeline....stop that sniggering!!) 

      So there you have it, my forays into theatre selectors so far. As I stated at the beginning (or maybe I didn't, it was such a long time ago...) I really like theatre selectors for giving me historically accurate units to choose from and allows me to build a list to work towards. Which should, theoretically, mean I only buy what I need, right? Hahahahaha, yeah like that is ever going to happen.

     I don't know about you but I am looking forward to getting the Get Off The Beach scenario played and kicking off another Normandy mini campaign so stay tuned for that....though I wouldn't recommend sitting watching your PC screen in anticipation of it happening in the next quarter of an hour or so; go live your lives; I'll tip you the wink when it, the batrep, is done and dusted, okay? Meanwhile, thanks for popping by, pip pip!!

GJ