Upgrade 2.0

I received an email from Warlord Games yesterday inviting me to upgrade to Version 2 of the Bolt Action Rules for being a loyal customer, I have spent quite a bit of money with them since my decision to jump in with two feet. The whole thing confused me as when I went to the site to order the rules it said the price was £30 and in brackets the real price was £60, however on the BA page the rules were indeed available for pre order at £30. Perhaps the higher price tag included the free box of soldiers I am allowed with my secret code because surely wargame rules are not reaching the dizzy heights of £60.

The GW ethos of parting you with your money is certainly alive and well at WG, for instance the rules now favour cavalry, yes I kid you not, WWII and cavalry are the big thing at the moment and two armies vie for first place in the popularity stakes being top of the list for new stuff, Finns and Japanese, with the Japs edging ahead. I use that word deliberately because I know it is frowned upon on the BA Facebook groups, to the Allies in WWII they were Japs, to me growing up they were Japs so the Imperial Forces of Japan in 1945 are, Japs. Anyway I digress, WG's newest vehicle is a German armoured car based on the Sdkfz 234 'Puma' chassis for which they readily agree was probably a one off and they can only find one photograph of, it is a field conversion putting a tank turret on the vehicle, I know BA is a WWII game but this is slipping into World of Tanks territory.

Why am I moaning about a game I enjoy, well when did you ever start a period or use a set of rules or buy a figure where you didn't moan about something, it's part of being a dedicated wargamer, even with Johnny Reb, the best set of rules I have ever played with I shake my head at the rules covering woods, still do after nearly 30 years of playing them.

When I do a good deed and I do occasionally despite my reputation in certain circles, I say I will get my reward in heaven, well my reward came early last week, I asked where to get a machine gunner for my Hanomag on the Bolt Action forum and Eric Hillen of Airdrie offered to send me one free gratis. He posted it the next day and you can see a photo of the chap below, I also have the upper body of a second gunner and I hope to convert him for a second vehicle at some point. Thank you Eric.

Also in the photo are some Objective markers I made from some stuff which I 'needed' a few years ago and have now thankfully been able to use, I will try and base my BA games historically if possible but when time is of the essence then I shall fall back on some of the scenarios I have collected for which objective markers are needed.

I had two customers who fought in the Far East, both sadly passed away now and both nice men, 'Jock' who fought at Kohima who was in fact English but fought in a Scottish regiment and Laury. Laury gave me two very interesting books from WWII, the one below is an official US Army Infantry manual on their enemy, and subtlety is not a word to use on the contents.

I am approaching 50,000 hits for the blog, spoiled somewhat by Russian robots which latched on to me and pushed my stats up by nearly 2,000 hits last week but which now seem to have moved on to someone else. I always enjoyed looking at the stats to see where my audience comes from so for a more realistic view I joined Google Analytics and it is far better at giving you statistics, I also filtered out the Russians, but as I said, the 'bots have moved on, not being interested in wargames I imagine.

I don't think there will be time tomorrow for the weekly View, we are hitting the road early, but we will see.