Starting Bolt Action - Fall of Singapore

Bolt Action is typically played at 1000 points. I have found when experimenting with new games I generally prefer to err on the small side until I am confident a standard game can be played in a typical 3 hour gaming club session with set up and tear down.

As my only experience with Bolt Action is a few 2 player starter set games I decided to pitch for a points value of 650 points, roughly two thirds of a standard game.

A bit of fiddling around with easyarmy.com and using only the sprues in the Banzai box I already owned, my Japanese list was set out. Using this template I then looked at how to speed paint the whole army in around two weeks.

YouTube threw up a great tutorial video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRQQpoMLhp8&t=427s), and I set to work.

The addition of the Chi-Ha medium tank (still to get painted) brought the list to 648 points.

I copied Sonic Sledgehammer’s tutorial pretty closely, except I chose Japanese Uniform as the base colour for the uniforms, as I knew that I was going to be speed-painting both armies and I didn’t want the khaki drill of the British to look too similar to the Japanese at uniforms at the end of it.

Essentially, I applied only base coats as described in the video, applied a simple drybrush all over for some highlight and then applied Soft Tone Quickshade with a brush over the whole model.

A coat of Vallejo Model Colour US Field Drab was applied over the bases before I added Geek Gaming Scenics Mediterranean Soil Base Ready mix. While the GGS Base Ready products are excellent, underpainting with a colour close to your final effect helps to hide thin spots and patches and makes the products a delight to use.

Lastly a generous varnish with GWs Munitorum spray varnish got them finished.

The whole army was assembled and painted in my allotted two weeks barring the Chi-Ha, and while not spectacular I’m happy with the result overall.

Next, on to the Brits…