A quick survey of my World War 2 wargaming journey so far up until September 2022.
Bolt Action
Bolt Action is the absolute juggernaut of hobbyist World War 2 wargaming. A lot of wargamers enter the hobby through Games Workshop sci-fi offerings eventually want to go historical and the logical place for them to go is Bolt Action.
Bolt Action has quite a bustling tournament scene. I have taken part in three tournaments so far. I have garnered two wooden spoons. In my defence, I don’t take the competitive side of the hobby particularly seriously. If you want to win tournaments, don’t show up with a Last Levy list or play with an early war list in a late war tournament.
Flames of War
Flames of War is probably my favourite World War 2 ruleset. I enjoy the theatre of it as well as the interactivity you have with your opponent. I started off by purchasing a ready painted version 3 starter set containing both British and Germans from eBay and a couple of years later purchased a job lot of Germans.
I have recently painted quite a lot of German mortars as well as 7.5cm light and 15cm heavy artillery to complete my Beach D Day German Company. Takes quite a bit of breaking down when fielded with the full allocation of artillery.
‘O’ Group
‘O’ Group is a battalion level game usable with figures of pretty well any scale you want. Whilst I do have two painted armies for ‘O’ Group, I haven’t actually played a full game as yet. I am hoping to fix this oversight by the end of 2022. I have played in a demonstration game at the Recon wargaming show put on by Leeds Night Owls.
The Future
One of the problems with the rules already mentioned is that they focus on quite small actions within a battle. What I want to do is to actually fight large, multi-day named battles. My initial idea when starting wargaming was to give some focus to learn more about the history of World War 2. I don’t feel that platoon or company level games really provide the scaffolding to aid that learning. Partly this blog is my way to document the search for a set of rules that will allow me to fight full named battles.
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