With the recent release of the Ghost Infiltration Platoon, Steff’s been hard at work on an Imperial Japanese force. We’ve already seen her Onryō, and now it’s surrounded by a truly lethal cadre of the Emperor’s favourites. Take it away, Steff!

The new Ghost platoon came out a few weeks ago, giving Japanese players new ways to play the army, with teleporting troops out the wazoo. It’s a platoon that gives you a lot of powerful toys to play with, and I’ve decided to lean into that and build something that I can take to tournaments. This is my first attempt at a competitive list, so I’ll need to read every rule properly to see how the army rules synergize and think about list building from a different angle than my usual ‘is this cool and thematic?’.

The List

I needed one Ghost Infiltration Platoon Commander, two Ghost Attack Squads, and an Onryō as my mandatory choices. The officer gets a point of Guts, which can really swing a turn with a reactivation. This would be given to the nearest Ghost or Shadow Warrior unit as soon as they were in a good position to hit two targets. He also gets a combat blade for a bit of close quarters punch, as well as an SMG to keep his cost down.

The two Ghost Attack Squads are five-man barebones affairs, except for the (in my opinion mandatory) combat blades and anti-tank launchers. My idea here is to either get into cover and benefit from the 2+ cover save, while shooting a potential ten shots at Pen +1, or teleporting into the rear arc of a high-value vehicle and hitting it with the launchers.

The Onryō was already built with the twin Shiboru cannon, which is a beast of a gun, and it’s highly mobile, so it can get into rear arcs if I need to make sure of a kill on a vehicle.

There were a lot of options for what to add once I got past the basics, but I had a clear vision of what I currently didn’t have in the list: assault units!

In went 2×8 Shadow Warriors with no upgrades. These guys are really mobile, hit hard and have a ton of attacks, so I felt this was an important element to add in. Two squads of eight means I can hit two targets a turn rather than just one, so I opted for this configuration rather than a single full-strength squad. Also, more Order and Rift dice means more bag control and a better chance of a Surging result.

I finished the Ghost Infiltration Platoon off with Kimura Tadaaki. He’s mobile, so matches the rest of the army, and can apply some hefty morale penalties (and remove Fearless!) with his Shadow tokens. This ties in nicely with the rest of the army, softening up enemy units for the Ghosts and Shadow Warriors to finish off.

I was left with a bunch of points to fill to get to 1,750 (the standard size played in our HQ Store tournaments), so I opted for an Engineer Platoon. Two squads of six infantry, each with a flamethrower, plus two independent flamethrower teams (I used the German Veteran plastics for the flamethrowers) gives me a powerful combination for taking out enemy units who’ve already been hit by Tadaaki’s Shadows. Good luck making all those morale checks! I finished the platoon off with a pair of trucks to ensure I can get my short-ranged flamethrowers into action as soon as possible.

The Gameplan

My overall plan is to concentrate fire, hit key targets before they can act, and either destroy them or cripple the unit with Pins to freeze them in place.

Tadaaki will follow one of the Shadow Warrior squads, along with a truck full of flamethrowers, and focus fire on a unit at a time.  The Platoon Commander and Ghost officer will follow the other Shadow Warrior unit in a truck and do the same, spending their Guts aggressively to get some critical early game damage in.

The Onryō will go off tank-hunting with the Ghosts until there’s no more enemy armour, and then pivot to chip in some anti-infantry firepower while the Ghosts secure objectives and provide extra support.

Like all plans, this might not survive an encounter with a determined opponent, but I feel like this is a strong list that should have a good chance on the tabletop. It feels decently thematic, but it’s also focussed on what it’s doing, and it’s not ‘carrying’ any units that don’t have a definite battlefield purpose.

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The team over at Warlord Games Wigan have been hard at work – not just with making sure our first store outside of Nottingham is running smoothly, but on their own hobby projects too! We spotted Wigan staffer Tom’s fantastic Axis collection on a recent supply run to the shop, kidnapped it for a photoshoot at HQ, and made him tell us all about it. It’s a hard old life for the gang up North!

TR – I chose Konflikt ’47 as my first project to work on because I enjoy the combination of the science fiction and World War II aesthetics, as well as its lore. When it came to picking my first army, the Axis immediately won me over because of the variety within their model range. They’re an army I feel I could never get bored painting! One day I can be working on large, power-armoured Stahltruppen, and the next I can switch to something completely different and paint the grisly undead Totenkorps.

When choosing my colour scheme, I wanted to go with something different from the traditional box art. I decided on an almost bone-like armour colour, contrasted with bold red stripes and red helmets across the infantry. The scheme was incredibly quick to do; in fact, I managed to paint the entire army in just a single day! (Now that’s just showing off… -ed.) To achieve this effect quickly and efficiently, I utilised speed paints and heavy drybrushing techniques, which allowed me to get great depth and contrast without spending hours on every model.

To achieve the armour tone, I first primed all the models using Colour Forge Wight Bone, followed by a base coat of Army Painter Pallid Bone over the entire miniature. Once it was fully dry, I did a heavy drybrush of AK Interactive Buff across the model, purposefully leaving the darker Pallid Bone visible in the harder-to-reach recesses.

For an extra highlight, you can mix a small amount of white paint into the Buff and apply a much lighter drybrush to really make the raised edges pop. The red markings are incredibly simple to achieve; I painted red lines across the chosen armour panels, not worrying about perfectly straight lines because any imperfections are easily masked by weathering.

To create a realistic chipping effect, I took a small piece of foam from a blister pack, dipped it into the AK Interactive Buff, and dabbed most of it off on some kitchen roll. Lightly stippling this over the red stripes instantly creates a weathered, battle-worn look while perfectly hiding any wobbly brushwork.

For the basing, I used AK Interactive Terrain Dark Earth to give the miniatures a realistic, gritty foundation. Once completely dry, I drybrushed the texture with AK Interactive Buff to make all the earth details pop. Finally, I used a variety of Army Painter tufts to break up the earth tones and add some great spots of realistic colour across the army’s bases

Since finishing this initial force, I have more than doubled the size of my Axis army! I have painted up a lot more Totenkorps and Stahltruppen, and I have just finished working on Hauptmann Heinrich Gross and his retinue. Looking ahead, I plan to add the behemoth Wotan walker with its devastating Schienenkanone to the roster in the near future. Sounds like we’ll need to get another photoshoot sorted! -ed.

Has Tom’s force got you inspired to join the ranks of the Green Vault?

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Armies of France looms large on the horizon,

and we’ve only just begun looking at it. In last week’s reveal of the National Special Rules, we mentioned that the book also contains army lists and rules for Free French forces and the Vichy Armistice Army – let’s dive into them, see their special rules, and have a look at a couple of new units!

Free France

We’ll kick off with the Free French ‘Forces of Liberation’, a diverse force of Frenchmen in exile fighting to reclaim their homeland, both in France itself and across her colonies and beyond. It’s worth noting here that this is not intended to be a French Resistance army list – that’ll come in the Partisans section of Armies of Europe – although some Resistance units are of course included. A Free French force includes a large number of British and US units, reflecting the vast quantities of materiel provided and doctrinal realignment that took place, but is very much its own force, courtesy of its special rules:

We can see that these rules give us the foundation of a dogged, tactically flexible force. Massed Stubborn makes Free French infantry and artillery far more likely to stay in the fight to the bitter end, while Sacred Ground makes timely outflanking manoeuvres that little bit easier. La Resistance unlocks – what else? – the legendary French Resistance to support your troops, and the option to field certain units as Armée d’Afrique gives you even more flexibility of movement, courtesy of Fieldcraft.

We’ve mentioned the Resistance units a couple of times, so let’s have a look at one of the squads they can bring to a Free French army:

15-man Green infantry squads? You know ‘em and love ‘em, and Free France has ‘em! Perfect for swarming the table with bodies (although remember, these can’t be compulsory units in a Platoon), these chaps are great for occupying space and forcing your opponent to waste valuable shooting on them. In addition, Intelligence Gathering adds a fun little wrinkle if you want some dice bag control.

Now we’ve had a taste of the Free French, let’s take a look at their polar opposite:

Vichy France

Being the army permitted to the collaborationist Vichy state by the Germans, the Armistice Army is naturally lacking in the most modern technology and equipment, most notably tanks and heavy artillery. In many ways it resembles a sort of ‘toned down’ version of the early-war French army that preceded it, and it makes for a great challenge on the tabletop. It still makes use of Colmater, giving it access to the powerful outflanking tactics of its predecessor, as well as Lack of Radios, and can field dangerous Foreign Legion troops, but commanders may find their troops behaving a little… unpredictably when forced to make Morale tests. This isn’t always a bad thing, though!

Just like Free France, the Vichy army list also includes some new unique units, including a couple specifically designed to combat the Resistance. One of them is the:

The GMR section is a bit of a beast, and a powerful one at that! Bristling with SMGs and with the option for one section per Platoon to take Infiltrators or motorcycles, it’s an unusual example of a Regular squad boasting these options. The Counter-Partisan Tactics rule also gives it a massive 24” anti-Infiltrators bubble, giving you a potent counter to one of the most dangerous unit abilities in the game!

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It’s that time again! Armies of France is nearing its release, and we’re beginning our Intelligence Report series, taking you inside the covers of the newest Bolt Action book. As is traditional, we’re starting with the National Special Rules, which inform the army’s overall character and determine how it plays on the tabletop. En avant!

We’ll begin where we usually do, with the overarching rules which apply to your entire army, but this book is, like Armies of Italy, a little bit different. Armies of France includes not only rules for fielding French forces of 1939-40, but also the collaborationist Vichy ‘Armistice Army’, and the Free French forces who would continue to fight alongside the Allies for the liberation of their homeland. These latter two will be shown off in their own article, but for now we’re focussing on the core of the book!

As we can see, while Battaille Conduite rewards getting your troops to take up defensive positions in cover, a French force need not be a purely static entity! Colmater allows you to turn a single unit per platoon into an Outflanking machine, letting you build a small but incredibly flexible strike force within your army that can arrive exactly when and where it’s needed to wreak havoc on the enemy’s plans late in the game. Supporting this is Le Feu Tue, because while one artillery strike is nice, two is significantly nicer – unless you’re the enemy! Finally, Lack of Radios is a blessing in disguise for armour aficionados, letting you save a few points on your Command vehicles.

French forces with these rules naturally tend towards a ‘hold-and-counter’ style of play, blunting enemy thrusts on their defensive positions before launching a deadly counterattack (although of course as with any Bolt Action army you can build your list to play in an endless variety of ways!), and they aren’t doing it with just the basic troops in the army list. As with all our other Armies of… books, you can theme many of your units to represent the elite formations of the French army. Let’s meet Honneur et Patrie!

Whether you want the last word in defensive grit with the French Foreign Legion (and their snazzy new plastics!), an elite force of Chasseurs Alpins moving swiftly through cover courtesy of Fieldcraft, or fast-moving Dragons Portés driving headlong into the fray, you can do it with Armies of France. While these are some of the most important rules in the books, we’ve not even scratched the surface when it comes to the new and updated unit roster or the two new ways to field French forces – we’ve got plenty more to come!

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We recently held our annual Trade Sales Conference, with staff flying in from all over the globe to attend. Naturally, we had them face off in a Konflikt ’47 tournament while they were here! (I’m given to understand that this is how bonuses are decided in the Trade team. -ed.) Isaac arrived from the US with a frankly astonishing effort on his British Commonwealth force, so of course we had to get him to tell us all about it!

“Holding Burma was not what we expected. Years of fighting the reanimated bodies of friends and enemies in the darkness of the jungle, of ghosts appearing among us, slaughtering my friends before they even knew what was happening. Morale was… lacking.

Once we were bolstered by the metal men, something changed in our disposition. We no longer felt that we were on the back foot.”

This 999pt British Commonwealth list is based on a rag-tag squad of Chindit engineers and the automated infantry assigned to their sector. They have been fighting a war so visceral that a unique bond has grown between the bots and men.

The Burma Campaign was always fascinating to me, as it’s often forgotten against the backdrop of the wider war. Chindits were always going to be my go-to for Commonwealth forces in Bolt Action, and the squads I kitbashed using the Commonwealth and Inter-Allied Commandos sprues were originally the foundation of this Bolt Action army. (Finally something from Isaac that isn’t German or Romanian! -ed.)

Once I saw the Automated Platoon box featuring all the new plastic K47 British Commonwealth kits I couldn’t say no. The project pivoted to K4, and I targeted completion for the Sales Conference Tournament while we were visiting HQ. I… may have gone a touch overboard with the theming. (Leaflets. He produced gorgeous informational leaflets for every opponent. Honestly, I think he’s just showing off! -ed.)

The Chindits were painted using Ghillie Dew speedpaint over a zenithal prime of Vallejo Ivory on black primer. I highlighted the uniform using Warpaint Witch Brew to really make them stand out on the board compared to the colors I used on the ‘lifeless’ bots.

The Mk IIs were built pretty much identically using light autocannons with the only kitbashing being slight battle damage and barbed wire rusting around their bayonets. The Mk IIC Director got a head swap from the base MKII set and a reposition of the left arm to give him a more, well, directing pose, easily setting him apart from all future MKIIs I may add.

Painting the bots was trial and error. I started with a pure black primer, followed by a drybrush of Vallejo German Grey, and an overbrush of AP John Blanche Thicket Grove. On the MKIIs Vallejo Burnt Umber was sponged on to give them a dirtier, rustier appearance.  The models were doused in enamel grime wash and cleaned up using odourless spirits. Once the enamel dried overnight I went over and did a light dry brush, as well as adding splotches of Warpaint Crypt Wraith to brighten up the drab look. I used a sponge to add a bold metal chipping effect using Vallejo Air Aluminium. After all those colors were applied, I mixed black acrylic with gloss varnish and applied it to many of the joints and spots that looked like they were leaking oil. They’re machines in motion after all!

The 10 Mk Is were split into 5-bot squads. The cleanest and most put together were the HMG-wielding bunch who were pretty much painted identically to the Mk IIs. The MMG gunners with their bayonets received the extra touch of red paint to their replaced limbs and blood splatter to represent them dealing frontline Banzai charges, Shibito, and traps!

The truck is an ever-so-slightly modified Bedford with a jury-rigged automaton to drive it. I’d like to say this was an inspired idea, but really it’s because I completely forgot to put the driver in his seat before I glued the cab shut! It features the closed canopy without the full frame giving it more of a flatbed design. Painted identically to the automated infantry, I adorned it with spare bits to show how the Chindit mechanics fight to keep their automated comrades in working order as best they can in the hellish jungle.

We’ve also reproduced Isaac’s leaflet here for you – it’s things like this that can really elevate a force, and if you’re hunting for ideas for winning those all-important ‘best themed’ prizes at events, you could do worse than take a leaf (geddit?) out of his book!

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