Bolt Action – Where Do We Go From Here?

This article was originally supposed to be published on June 6th, after a special Bolt Action talk from author Alessio Cavatore at the Grand Opening of Warlord Games Wigan. However, the day proved to be incredibly busy, with so many people crammed into the building that there was no chance of giving the talk. We’ve therefore brought it forward, to make sure that everyone gets a chance to hear the good news!

In brief, it’s full steam ahead for the future of Bolt Action, including the first look at the next book in the Armies of… series. Read on for more!

As a quick recap, Bolt Action: Third Edition launched in September 2024, with the main rulebook providing ‘get you by’ lists for the ‘core five’ nations – Great Britain, Germany, the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union – and the other nations covered by PDFs. Right from the get-go, we said we would be bringing out new Armies of… books to replace them – six books later (with the seventh arriving very soon), Bolt Action is in a great place. Next up is…

Armies of France

When Armies of the British Commonwealth lands at the end of this month, Armies of France pre-orders will begin. This one has been eagerly awaited, and it’s shaping up to be an absolute corker of a book. Covering the French army of 1939-40, the Vichy ‘Armistice Army’, and Free French forces, it’ll be accompanied by an awesome new plastic infantry kit, which will be revealed in the coming weeks. Much like Armies of Italy, this is a huge upgrade on the previous book, letting you field French forces in far more depth than ever before.

Armies of France is the last of the ‘big nation’ army books, covering the major belligerents of World War II. However, there are still plenty of other nations out there, and that brings us to…

Armies of Europe

This book is rather different to the rest of the Armies of… series, but it’s a concept that will be familiar to players of First and Second Edition. There are a number of armies that were previously called ‘minor nations’ who simply don’t have as large of a selection of units as some of the main participants in the war, but who nonetheless should absolutely be represented. When Third Edition came out, this was handled by the free PDF army lists – stripped-down versions of their old lists, intended to serve as placeholders. For five lucky armies, their wait will soon be over!

Armies of Europe brings Belgium, Poland, Finland, and Hungary into one book, with greatly expanded unit rosters and brand new special rules. Stripped-down no longer, these are fully-fledged army lists, collected inside one book. Eagle-eyed readers will likely notice that these armies are the ones of the PDF lists that we currently produce models for, and that I said ‘five armies’ – and these are only four.

Alongside these ‘regular’ combatants, Partisans are the final entry in Armies of Europe. Partisan forces are fiendishly difficult to compile into a cohesive list, but we’ve sidestepped this issue by providing a list of ‘common’ Partisan units and army special rules, alongside unique units and special rules for three distinct ‘flavours’ of Partisan forces – Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. Think of it a bit like Armies of the British Commonwealth on a smaller scale!

What About the Rest?

Armies of Europe covers some of the nations who currently have free PDF rules – what about the others? Well, first off we’ll be going over these and giving their PDFs some love, turning them into something much closer in scope to full Armies of… books. However, they’ll remain free PDFs in this new form, and we aren’t currently planning to make books for them. The reason for this is simple – as we don’t produce models for those nations, it doesn’t make sense from a business point of view for us to do full-scale books for them when they don’t have the necessary supporting kits. Of course, all that could change in the future…

We’re also excited to announce that some new nations will be joining the PDF roster. We don’t have an exact timeline for when they or the updates will arrive, but we’ve already started the writing process on some very exciting army lists, including a couple of returners from previous editions, and one that’s brand new to Bolt Action!

More New Models!

Of course, Armies of Europe will have its own accompanying plastic kit (cue the guessing as to who will be the lucky recipient!), but the plastic doesn’t stop there. As you’ve seen over the last couple of months, we’ve massively stepped up our ‘plastification’ of Bolt Action, with new artillery and heavy weapons teams coming off the production line at a rate of knots.

This is going to continue well into the future (you can read about the plans for our plastic guns and support weapons HERE), and we’re also looking at ways to step up the number of new plastic infantry and vehicle kits we bring out. Some of these will be ‘refreshes’ of kits which have given sterling service but are starting to show their age, some will replace existing resin or metal kits, and a few will be totally new to the range. In addition, as more of these kits come out, we’ll be able to make more and more all-plastic starter armies. The knock-on for you as players here is obvious – more models at better value!

And After All That?

We’ve got a very cool (and very large) project planned for giving you even more ways to play Bolt Action over the next few years… but you’ll have to wait and see what that one is. We absolutely encourage wild speculation, but rest assured – it’s looking like a lot of fun!