April 11, 2024 • 28 mins
This week we are unraveling the best Bulgarian tactics and strategies in Bolt Action with our World Team Championship and World Open War team mate: Alan!
Please do check out the ranges at Firestorm Games and Wayland Games: not only will you get great discounts, you'll also help us continue to create great content for you every week!
You can also support our endeavour to produce weekly listenable Bolt Action content on Patreon, or you can support these two mugs by buying a fancy mug.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Johnny. And I'm Phil.
And in today's episode, we're joined by a very special guest,
a teammate for numerous events.
He was our teammate at World Open War 2023.
He was our teammate at WTC 2024. And most recently, he was our third good man at Three Good Men 2024.
(00:32):
So please welcome to the podcast, Alan. Hi, Alan.
Thank you, and hello to everyone out there. Alan's on to talk to us about Bulgaria
and specifically why you should consider playing them in bolt action.
So firstly, Alan, could you summarise Bulgaria's history in the war for us?
Because I imagine theme's a big reason to play Bulgaria. Very much so.
(00:53):
Bulgaria sits in a very strange place in World War II.
It really wasn't really an Axis power, even though it signed the Tripartite Pact.
They only declared war on the
u.s and britain as a sort of
token gesture to get equipment from the germans and
they refused due to popular opinion back home
(01:15):
to declare war on the soviet union i mean it's
probably a good point that until mid-war bulgaria
was ruled by a czar so they were still a monarchy and you can tell by the name
very similar to the old russian republics So largely their war early on was
allowing the Germans to invade Greece through them and then occupying Greece
(01:37):
in exchange for a lot of the territory they'd lost many years before.
So they're quite an unusual part in that.
And the biggest campaign before the Soviets actually invade them and declare
war on them in, I think, 1943, is fighting the Tito's partisans in the Balkans.
So it's a very unusual army for that, which...
Kind of then leads into what makes them special and am
(01:59):
i right alan in saying that they also fought against the germans
at the end of the war they did after the they flipped
sides they alongside third or
fourth ukrainian front because it changed his name at some point during the
campaign invade the balkans and drive the germans out of there and they are
actually part of the the Allied forces that throw back Spring Awakening near Budapest.
(02:27):
So the southern end of that battle line is the Bulgarian army and the Yugoslav army.
Cool. So it's a characterful army. I don't know much about Bulgaria historically
in terms of World War II and know probably even less about them in terms of bolt action.
So, yeah, looking forward to hearing about them over the next however many minutes.
Are they only found in the armies
(02:49):
of italy and access book or have they had the romanian treatment
where you can also play them as allies from a campaign book they
haven't but to be fair unlike romania they didn't change equipment so one of
the things the germans found very surprising when they were trying to relieve
budapest was a regiment of panzer force coming the other way in bulgarian colors
(03:10):
so they just kept the same equipment and carried on going,
So actually, if you want to play allied Bulgarians, you just take the same list
as you would for the Axis side, basically, is what we're saying.
Right. So, jumping into that then, what are their national characteristics?
I suppose it's always a good place to start with a bolt-action army.
They have two. The classic Axis support, and the one that is the main reason
(03:36):
you play Bulgaria, which is anti-partisan tactics. Hmm.
This is probably one of the, in some ways, it's one of the strongest national
characteristics out there in that it completely changes your opponent's game plan.
What it does is it prevents any opponent from either outflanking or forward deploying against you.
(03:56):
So no snipers, no spotters, but it doesn't stop you doing the same.
Nice. Okay. So is it one you get quite a lot of use out of, would you say?
Depends very much on the pack. pack i kind of
regret not taking them to the wtc because that
was a pack that was very bulgarian friendly
because i think five out of six missions had forward deploy
(04:17):
and even that one had outflank so.
There was always going to be use in whatever mission i
was going to be playing and frankly if the faq had.
Come out before the wtc list were in.
I would have been all over it what was included in the faq alan.
That would have made you take them had it been released
before this submission for for wtc it's going
(04:37):
to sound really silly because what bulgaria got in the wtc
in the faq was practically nothing in that
we got a truck with a machine gun we got a
flamethrower and we got the utility car really
basic things most armies take for granted but for bulgaria
they were game changer yeah well no and i can understand that because you've
got the offensive power with obviously the flamethrower and we've
(04:59):
often heard on on this podcast and others that the prior
to the faq that the lack of an mg on a truck whilst it
you know whilst it's 15 points and it might not sound a lot it changes
the delivery system into something that can actually do you
have has a role to play as you're delivering that item to
wherever it is it's going on the battlefield yeah very much
so bulgaria as a nation lacked very strongly from
(05:21):
any ability to push you relied very
strongly on the ability to shoot your opponent off the board and
then try and sneak an objective late but having truck-borne infantry
makes a massive difference to that nice so what
sort of builds can you do with the bulgarians there's realistically
two builds you've got right
now beau did a piece on bulgaria a long time ago after i played manuel at not
(05:49):
the london gt a couple of years ago and i drew against manuel's chinese and
he was frothing so much at beau that but Bo had to do a video on it because
it was like, well, who plays Bulgaria?
He's of the view that you can do a tank, but pseudo tank bill.
Don't see it because bulgarian armor
is terrible you can only get anything remotely normal in the theater selector
(06:13):
so if you're playing generic platoons not an option so what you rely very heavily
on is the classic leaf blower build so artillery and snipers and skirmish infantry to.
Basically kill your opponent and then counter-attack what
you can do now after the faq queue is
you can go more down the skirmish route because you've got
(06:35):
that mobility you didn't previously have so to
me my standard build is based around regular
infantry bulgaria only has three infantry choices
one of which is veteran
cavalry that can't charge okay they
don't have a panzerfaust they have to be mounted
(06:56):
so you can't even use them as a veteran infantry squad i
have never used it but i am
in the process of converting up a five-man squad
as a try and sneak on an objective late unit
because you do at least get recce and it is that
five veterans with recce will go on your threaten your
opponent's home objective yeah it's a
(07:18):
way to counter that lack of ability you also get the inexperienced squad which
i do use because you can take them as shirkers and at the end of the day four
points a model it's a great backfield defender yeah i guess and then the rest
is what just regulars effectively it's regulars and there was another.
(07:38):
There was another twist with the bulgarian infantry squads
which kind of sums up bulgaria as a nation which is you have to pay for everything
a little bit more so you've had your standard infantry squad comes with rifles
apart from the nco who comes with a pistol and you don't get a reduction for
that either and the only upgrade you can give him is an smg,
(07:59):
so this means you end up having to pay for an smg to have any real range capability whatsoever yeah.
And it's kind of a theme you see through the bulgarian army they
get some nice stuff but you always have to pay a bit more than the equivalent in
another nation and you mentioned they don't get panzerfaust but in the original
book they do the only infantry squad that gets a panzerfaust is the regular
(08:23):
squad and they can take one and that has been faq down to five points like everyone
else right okay so for me standard infantry squad seven guys one smg one panzerfaust 78 points,
so i see what you mean in terms of you know just kind of
the skirmish bill or the leafblower bill because you don't have
access to tough fighters you have other than your cavalry but your
cavalry can't assault can they so no so yeah you're not going to build a bulgarian
(08:47):
you know assault army because you don't get tough fighters through smgs and
you don't get your tough fighters through your your cavalry i mean you could
argue that you only need three or four infantry options but these These three
are not the most amazing options you're being presented with.
The regular squad is a solid skirmish squad. The shirkers are a solid bat line
(09:07):
holder, but you do lack a push squad. Yeah.
Okay. My big question then, if the infantry's not that great,
is what do you usually take as your access to support then? Do you pad out your
infantry or do you take something nasty?
It depends what I want to do with the army. And a lot of that will depend on the theater pack.
I will never take an infantry squad unless i was
(09:30):
for some madness taking a tank platoon and i have tried a
bulgarian tank platoon it was actually a lot of fun but it's
a good way to get that fourth infantry squad into a tank platoon yeah so
for me access support normally falls into an
extra artillery piece a third sniper
if i'm playing double platoon because three snipers is a
(09:50):
very strong build when your opponents can't forward deploy with theirs yeah
or sometimes they put the classic big tank so for three good men as you know
i took a stew 42 because if you haven't got a push squad a push assault gun
is a reasonable way of allowing your skirmish infantry to advance,
nice when you run your bulgarian tank platoon which tanks are you running in that.
(10:15):
The pause there is very telling the problem
with bulgaria and tanks is if you don't have
access to the theater selector tanks you're limited to
four tanks and there is not
for any other army in the game a good tank there there's
the somua su-35 in the french it's all
right nine plus armor but it lacks that whole machine
(10:38):
gun so you're only ever going to get one gun firing yeah and
it's got the one-man turret rules one man turret yeah it's the
reno 35 which got nerfed in an faq about a
couple of years ago just as i was starting bulgarians otherwise i
would have owned a lot of those so i'm glad they nerfed it before i bought
them because that used to have a light
and low velocity anti-tank gun and the whole mg
(10:58):
and now it's just got both in the turret right okay yeah
then you get the semi-venti 47 32
from the italians and i own two of
these and i've had some some good mileage out of him it's a seven plus
open top to salt gun which has a
light anti-tank gun and you can get a pintle mmg and
because it's open top who cares about the pintle yeah true that
(11:21):
comes to 100 points regular so it's actually a solid choice and
is it one of those comically small italian tanks that one no it's roughly around
the same sort of size as the m13 is a little bit smaller but not crazy small
so i'd probably use a couple of those or if i wanted it's a bit of armor the
somua and then i had it with the last choice which is the cv33.
(11:43):
Which is a comically small italian tank it's a
little tankette the italians used in early war it's a
two-man vehicle it appears in a lot of the other army lists but no one ever
takes it because there's always something better for them to take and again
as is always typical the bulgarians get the worst version of it which is the
(12:03):
single mmg version for 60 points okay For 10 more points, the Italians can do a double MMG.
It's a 7-plus tankette, fully enclosed, and realistically, it's invisible behind your average wall.
It's that low slung. Right, okay.
So it's remarkably hard to kill and at
(12:24):
the same time your opponent generally sits there going well what's
the point it's only got a machine gun it's only a tankette
and what it does is by the
end of the game it's normally parked next to your opponent's artillery machine gunning
it because they've ignored it for that long or not been able
to see it for that long that it's just yeah advanced off the board and
got in the back line or you could use it to rush an objective and
contested turn six i guess yeah happened at
(12:47):
three good men my opponent's home objective objective had a cv
parked on at the end of the game he hadn't realized
that vehicles could contest and that got me
the draw yeah and being tracked it's actually quite
fast over the rubble as well so it is
actually a solid choice the greeks can have it but for some reason
theirs is open topped okay yeah no one
(13:09):
else takes it i'm hungry hungry can take it and they can
take the double mmg g version but you take a srini or
a nimrod instead for me the problem with the cv33 in the bulgarian list is you
don't really have any anti-tank elsewhere in the army and so just looking at
someone who doesn't play bulgaria i'm thinking if i was picking a tank i'd be
(13:29):
picking something with an anti-tank gun on it just because i don't know how
else i'm going to deal with you stewart's.
Well funny you should say that
because that comes to the other weird thing in the
bulgarian list they have a unique
gun that no other nation has it's called
the skoda hybrid gun it has the
(13:50):
option of having an anti-tank barrel or a light howitzer barrel
so it's either a light anti-tank gun or a light howitzer and again
we hit that classic situation of it's
like something else someone else has like a 25 pounder except
it costs five points more and you need to have an advance order to
choose whatever which barrel is loaded then to change
(14:10):
it yeah so it's for me
it's either it should be the same points as a 25 pounder or it's 50 points and
you can have either or and you can swap during the game yeah yeah it's interesting
but it does mean you get like anti-tank guns or how it says depending what your
opponent has yeah yeah so So, I think I'm right in saying this.
(14:31):
When you start the game, you declare what barrel it is equipped with,
for want of a better phrase.
And then if you need to change it during the game, you have to give it an advance order.
So, it switches in the turn it's got the advance order, and obviously you can't fire on that order.
Exactly. Okay. Well, you can fire on the advance order, just a minus one to hit.
I think you probably can now, but when I first started reading this,
(14:54):
I was at the view on advance order artillery couldn't fire. But that was a hard
lesson I've learned this year.
Yes, you're right. Sorry, Johnny, you're right. What's quite nice about that,
actually, is if they're not in your arc, so if that Stuart does rush down your
flank and you've been shooting light howitzers at the infantry in front of you,
you're going to advance anyway.
And so, actually, it is a little bit irrelevant in that specific one situation.
(15:20):
I've only played Stuart's Skirkers once with the Bulgarians,
and that was actually a Stuart tank platoon.
And that was at Battle of Britain against Martin Knowles last year.
I wasn't taking the hybrids then. I actually had BDM howitzers.
And my Axis support was a Hetzer because it was 1250 points.
And I fought him to a sandstill. It really was the last dice of the game. He edged it.
(15:41):
That was three Stuarts and four Gurkha squads. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the generic options or the options that you get if you were building a generic
platoon, they're not exactly jumping out at me, Alan, at this stage and making
me want to go and buy Bulgarians.
But you said the theater selectors changes things theater selector and there's
one because it's only in singular sorry theater selector singular my my mistake
(16:04):
apologies what it is is like all of the.
Eastern european powers so not like the finns or the italians they've
added in tanks from german service so that's
where the panzer comes in the panzer 3n 35
and 38 t's so you get some half half.
Decent tanks in at that point but you very
(16:26):
rarely see a tournament which allows you to go double
theater selector so you're never
going to have those 238ts which is you
know the equivalent of the old panzer 3 the old crusader
kind of level although could you not you still
get the access support rule though so you could yeah so
you could do it through the access support rule but you're not taking
(16:48):
an additional artillery piece for example if you
do that okay that's the the big dilemma is
the access support choice for a bulgarian army is so vital
because it's that second unit and
until very recently i was i firmly of
the view that a single platoon bulgarian army just wasn't worth it
because you kind of need two guns you need two
(17:08):
snipers and a second armored vehicle is
really helpful the faq made me
rethink it for three good men and i had an okay tournament
two wins one draw two losses and both
my losses weren't particularly they were 50
50 games that just swung at a point so i think
there is a place for them now and if you do get to
(17:29):
have theater selectors you actually get an armor car choice because you don't
have an armor car choice in the standard platoon okay yeah that's funny okay
i was just looking at that because i was thinking if i was building this theater
selector i'd go for a panzer four a daca panzer three and then a 2-2-2 as my arm of the car.
Especially with the FAQ making it close top.
(17:51):
Yeah, and if that's at a single platoon event like the Welsh Open was last year,
having the three pieces of arm, I think it's going to be pretty intimidating, really. Yeah.
Definitely. I've been basing myself around double medium howitzer build for
a long time. It's what I took to the Welsh Open last year with a Panzer IV.
And I think I won three, lost two.
(18:15):
But it was an okay build but you just felt that you wanted that second sniper
all the time because that's where you really have an edge.
Yeah. It's funny because I never play snipers so I don't think I'd miss the
extra sniper. I think I'd just revel in the extra armour.
That's fair what i would point out and because
(18:36):
everyone says forward deploying oh it doesn't matter you
surprised how much it does so if
you think about your average artillery piece if there's a
first wave the spot is normally on the table what is
not the table spot is coming on your snipers already sat
there waiting for them to arrive yeah you can stop people's artillery before
it even has a chance to fire similarly at snipers you always have an edge in
(18:59):
the sniper the other thing that's hilarious if there's prelim bombardment well
all their spotters are actually now viable targets for prelim bombardment yeah.
So in a game of sectors all the teams that normally wouldn't be anywhere near
the quarter are getting bombarded yeah or having to be in reserve which you
don't really want to be no yeah.
(19:20):
Interesting and i think alan you and i
we've spoken about bulgarians when we were sort of sorting out
our list for three good men and also you know when we
were in granada it's it is absolutely worth
emphasizing the reason why you take bulgaria over
say hungary for example that we looked at in an earlier episode
is because of that special rule in
(19:41):
the sense and that is a unique special no i think i'm right
in saying no other nation gets to deny the forward deploying in
the the way the bulgarians do no no one does not even in the theater selector
okay and the same for outflanks and so on and
if you can shut down i know it's situational because
some armies won't bother with you know outflanking for
example and maybe won't bother with reserves or just
(20:02):
bring everything on if it's a first wave mission and if they haven't built
a list that has forward deployers and spotters and
snipers and so on it won't matter to them but most
people do do one of those those two or three things most people
either have forward deployers they're using spotters for their artillery pieces
or their reserving slash outflanking so to
take that away from your opponent it's a
(20:23):
very different it's a very different feel
of a national rule whereas most national rules
buff your own army this one very much is detracting and taking away from your
opponent and making them play in a different way that's completely it and if
your opponent hasn't taken any of the things you stop well they're still playing
the game you want to play anyway way one of the things that i've learned and
(20:44):
that last game at three good men very much proved it.
My opponent let bulgaria get in his head and started
playing in a different way than he wanted to play even though actually all he
had was a sniper and two uh multi-spotters he got so in his head and we were
playing no man's land so it was just two points so i got three up beginning
of the game with my artillery just dug in all my infantry hiding his veteran
(21:07):
infantry was stuck stuck behind a river.
I know he never got back in the game because Bulgaria got in his head and you'll
find that will happen once or twice at every tournament.
And then you'll get that one game when you're playing the army who just might as well give up now.
When I played Manuel at the London GT, he was playing forward-deploying inexperienced Chinese.
(21:28):
We played key positions.
He spent so long trying to make sure his teams weren't actually in line of sight
to the three snipers I fielded.
We actually ran out of time. But what happened was his three big units of Chinese
infantry then lost their NCOs.
So they were with one pin and a leadership six.
(21:49):
Yeah if you're if you're building if you're bringing the list which
is you know soviets for deploying scouts and at
teams or you know japanese for deploying
scouts and at guys and all that sort of thing that is
going to make you think differently whereas for example
the the the game of three good men the opponent
you're playing didn't really have much for deploying going on and
(22:10):
it actually really didn't make much difference to that you know
how they were going to deploy and and play the game but like
you said it got in their head that i can't do this and i'm
fixated on the fact i can't do this even i probably didn't want.
To do it and if i can't do it it doesn't make much difference to me yeah completely
and again it was a great example of where
that cd 33 just strolled into his back line and his
(22:32):
troops were moving away from it because they couldn't hurt it because he was light
on at it was only one machine gun i was chucking a
pin and killing two people at most each turn but it was a tank he couldn't
hurt okay so if i
did want to play bulgarians and i wanted to get in people's heads
and play mind games before we've even rolled a single dice what would
i what would i do what what models are out there who would you recommend
(22:53):
where would i go for you know infantry vehicles and
so on well infantry there's really only one choice in
this great escape games they have a metal range of it i actually
got into it during their kickstarter so i've been there since sort
of day one with the bulgarians yeah there isn't
a full range because they don't have a flamethrower because no one
needed a flamethrower until last last month so my
(23:15):
flamethrower is actually a bad squiddo soviet one that i painted
up in bulgarian colors because frankly they're close
enough vehicle wise all their
vehicles have argued they're borrowed from everyone else so
my cvs are mad bobs my somuas blitzkrieg they're just standard tanks and everything
so actually it's really easy to get hold of them i'm going to be converting
(23:36):
the cavalry out of the classic u.s civil war and a squad of bersaglieri that
i got got sent when Tough Cut came out.
I was just thinking about conversion projects. What helmets are they wearing, the Bulgarians?
They are their own unique helmet, but it's halfway housed between a Stalham and the Soviet helmet.
(23:58):
They've got a kind of big pointed, it's not a point, but it's kind of beveled
into sort of a sharpish edge.
But fundamentally, a Russian helmet looks okay. Okay.
Well, it could be captured, I suppose.
Yeah brilliant a
little bit like the adrian helmets with like the ridge down the
middle not not so pronounced but that kind of
(24:21):
idea right okay and their
artillery you know medium howitzer where are
you getting that from my two are the warlord
105s because they got those from the germans my two heavies
are for mad bob french schneiders right okay
my hybrid guns i ordered loaded
from paint and glue miniatures because they
(24:44):
do both barrels so i actually have two of
them and of each barrel so i swap barrels so
my opponent knows what's currently loaded nice that's very
cool yeah the question i'm dying to ask is
do you run a panzer shrek because that's what we haven't discussed yet
oh no i don't never run a panzer shrek
i have never run a panzer shrek despite having no anti-armor because
(25:06):
it's 80 points i do regularly run anti-tank rifles rifles i
quite often will take two yeah that's going to
probably drop out of my list now the flamethrower is an option because it
fitted in that niche i mean i've also run light mortars for.
Them that's quite an effective build because there's nothing
to shoot them because you've got three snipers and they don't have anything to pick
on that light mortar yeah i prefer the anti-tank
(25:27):
rifle to the the faust it's just
it's half the price and sort of equal threat
i would would say interesting they feel like the the
thinking man's army because you're you're
limited as to what you can take so you're not you're not
turning up with a bunch of units that are you know well costed and efficient
you've got a national special rule that will counter and just well stop altogether
(25:52):
certain tactics from your opponent so there's a lot going on and and it's not
like you could just turn up and just dump units on the board and go right deal
with that I've got a load of,
you know, well-costed assault units or veteran-stubborn units or big tanks or
whatever. So, yeah, they feel...
Well, they are different, obviously, but they feel like they take quite a lot
of work, I think, to make work.
(26:13):
But when they do work, they are surprisingly effective.
That's pretty much it, yeah. From a tournament point of view,
I've had two fourth place finishes.
That was not the London GT and not four steps back. In both cases,
that was after losing the top table game in the final.
So I've got close to a tournament podium or win with both of them.
(26:34):
So i've lost to i lost to
sheffy at not four steps back was it not three
steps back because i've got close twice with with bulgarians and
i lost to rich rich c at not
london gt with his gherkas and that to be
fair was quite a new mistake on my part in that i
got twitchy gherkas deployed a load of stuff in my deployment zone
(26:56):
that i shouldn't have done right because it was the first time i played
a big gherka platoon like he has but after
the prelim obama when i lost three units we were quits for the rest of
the game wow yeah yeah that's impressive
well thank you very much for joining us alan
that has been genuinely very interesting to learn about the bulgarians who
i don't think i've ever played and so
(27:17):
this was very insightful so hopefully i
stand a chance next time i face you yeah i'm
kind of unique in england i believe there's one scott and
one welshman who also play bulgarians so it's very
much a niche army in the british isles and there's one day in as
well we would say look out for the bulgarians at
future events but the chances are statistically you're not going to come across
(27:38):
them but when you do be prepared you should be prepared now to be fair with
all that top shelf advice if you do play bulgarians though please do share some
photos on the facebook so we can have a look at them as ever thank you for listening
ta-ta for now ta-ta for now ta-ta for now as well.
Music.
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Johnny. And I'm Phil.
And in today's episode, we're joined by a very special guest,
a teammate for numerous events.
He was our teammate at World Open War 2023.
He was our teammate at WTC 2024. And most recently, he was our third good man at Three Good Men 2024.
(00:32):
So please welcome to the podcast, Alan. Hi, Alan.
Thank you, and hello to everyone out there. Alan's on to talk to us about Bulgaria
and specifically why you should consider playing them in bolt action.
So firstly, Alan, could you summarise Bulgaria's history in the war for us?
Because I imagine theme's a big reason to play Bulgaria. Very much so.
(00:53):
Bulgaria sits in a very strange place in World War II.
It really wasn't really an Axis power, even though it signed the Tripartite Pact.
They only declared war on the
u.s and britain as a sort of
token gesture to get equipment from the germans and
they refused due to popular opinion back home
(01:15):
to declare war on the soviet union i mean it's
probably a good point that until mid-war bulgaria
was ruled by a czar so they were still a monarchy and you can tell by the name
very similar to the old russian republics So largely their war early on was
allowing the Germans to invade Greece through them and then occupying Greece
(01:37):
in exchange for a lot of the territory they'd lost many years before.
So they're quite an unusual part in that.
And the biggest campaign before the Soviets actually invade them and declare
war on them in, I think, 1943, is fighting the Tito's partisans in the Balkans.
So it's a very unusual army for that, which...
Kind of then leads into what makes them special and am
(01:59):
i right alan in saying that they also fought against the germans
at the end of the war they did after the they flipped
sides they alongside third or
fourth ukrainian front because it changed his name at some point during the
campaign invade the balkans and drive the germans out of there and they are
actually part of the the Allied forces that throw back Spring Awakening near Budapest.
(02:27):
So the southern end of that battle line is the Bulgarian army and the Yugoslav army.
Cool. So it's a characterful army. I don't know much about Bulgaria historically
in terms of World War II and know probably even less about them in terms of bolt action.
So, yeah, looking forward to hearing about them over the next however many minutes.
Are they only found in the armies
(02:49):
of italy and access book or have they had the romanian treatment
where you can also play them as allies from a campaign book they
haven't but to be fair unlike romania they didn't change equipment so one of
the things the germans found very surprising when they were trying to relieve
budapest was a regiment of panzer force coming the other way in bulgarian colors
(03:10):
so they just kept the same equipment and carried on going,
So actually, if you want to play allied Bulgarians, you just take the same list
as you would for the Axis side, basically, is what we're saying.
Right. So, jumping into that then, what are their national characteristics?
I suppose it's always a good place to start with a bolt-action army.
They have two. The classic Axis support, and the one that is the main reason
(03:36):
you play Bulgaria, which is anti-partisan tactics. Hmm.
This is probably one of the, in some ways, it's one of the strongest national
characteristics out there in that it completely changes your opponent's game plan.
What it does is it prevents any opponent from either outflanking or forward deploying against you.
(03:56):
So no snipers, no spotters, but it doesn't stop you doing the same.
Nice. Okay. So is it one you get quite a lot of use out of, would you say?
Depends very much on the pack. pack i kind of
regret not taking them to the wtc because that
was a pack that was very bulgarian friendly
because i think five out of six missions had forward deploy
(04:17):
and even that one had outflank so.
There was always going to be use in whatever mission i
was going to be playing and frankly if the faq had.
Come out before the wtc list were in.
I would have been all over it what was included in the faq alan.
That would have made you take them had it been released
before this submission for for wtc it's going
(04:37):
to sound really silly because what bulgaria got in the wtc
in the faq was practically nothing in that
we got a truck with a machine gun we got a
flamethrower and we got the utility car really
basic things most armies take for granted but for bulgaria
they were game changer yeah well no and i can understand that because you've
got the offensive power with obviously the flamethrower and we've
(04:59):
often heard on on this podcast and others that the prior
to the faq that the lack of an mg on a truck whilst it
you know whilst it's 15 points and it might not sound a lot it changes
the delivery system into something that can actually do you
have has a role to play as you're delivering that item to
wherever it is it's going on the battlefield yeah very much
so bulgaria as a nation lacked very strongly from
(05:21):
any ability to push you relied very
strongly on the ability to shoot your opponent off the board and
then try and sneak an objective late but having truck-borne infantry
makes a massive difference to that nice so what
sort of builds can you do with the bulgarians there's realistically
two builds you've got right
now beau did a piece on bulgaria a long time ago after i played manuel at not
(05:49):
the london gt a couple of years ago and i drew against manuel's chinese and
he was frothing so much at beau that but Bo had to do a video on it because
it was like, well, who plays Bulgaria?
He's of the view that you can do a tank, but pseudo tank bill.
Don't see it because bulgarian armor
is terrible you can only get anything remotely normal in the theater selector
(06:13):
so if you're playing generic platoons not an option so what you rely very heavily
on is the classic leaf blower build so artillery and snipers and skirmish infantry to.
Basically kill your opponent and then counter-attack what
you can do now after the faq queue is
you can go more down the skirmish route because you've got
(06:35):
that mobility you didn't previously have so to
me my standard build is based around regular
infantry bulgaria only has three infantry choices
one of which is veteran
cavalry that can't charge okay they
don't have a panzerfaust they have to be mounted
(06:56):
so you can't even use them as a veteran infantry squad i
have never used it but i am
in the process of converting up a five-man squad
as a try and sneak on an objective late unit
because you do at least get recce and it is that
five veterans with recce will go on your threaten your
opponent's home objective yeah it's a
(07:18):
way to counter that lack of ability you also get the inexperienced squad which
i do use because you can take them as shirkers and at the end of the day four
points a model it's a great backfield defender yeah i guess and then the rest
is what just regulars effectively it's regulars and there was another.
(07:38):
There was another twist with the bulgarian infantry squads
which kind of sums up bulgaria as a nation which is you have to pay for everything
a little bit more so you've had your standard infantry squad comes with rifles
apart from the nco who comes with a pistol and you don't get a reduction for
that either and the only upgrade you can give him is an smg,
(07:59):
so this means you end up having to pay for an smg to have any real range capability whatsoever yeah.
And it's kind of a theme you see through the bulgarian army they
get some nice stuff but you always have to pay a bit more than the equivalent in
another nation and you mentioned they don't get panzerfaust but in the original
book they do the only infantry squad that gets a panzerfaust is the regular
(08:23):
squad and they can take one and that has been faq down to five points like everyone
else right okay so for me standard infantry squad seven guys one smg one panzerfaust 78 points,
so i see what you mean in terms of you know just kind of
the skirmish bill or the leafblower bill because you don't have
access to tough fighters you have other than your cavalry but your
cavalry can't assault can they so no so yeah you're not going to build a bulgarian
(08:47):
you know assault army because you don't get tough fighters through smgs and
you don't get your tough fighters through your your cavalry i mean you could
argue that you only need three or four infantry options but these These three
are not the most amazing options you're being presented with.
The regular squad is a solid skirmish squad. The shirkers are a solid bat line
(09:07):
holder, but you do lack a push squad. Yeah.
Okay. My big question then, if the infantry's not that great,
is what do you usually take as your access to support then? Do you pad out your
infantry or do you take something nasty?
It depends what I want to do with the army. And a lot of that will depend on the theater pack.
I will never take an infantry squad unless i was
(09:30):
for some madness taking a tank platoon and i have tried a
bulgarian tank platoon it was actually a lot of fun but it's
a good way to get that fourth infantry squad into a tank platoon yeah so
for me access support normally falls into an
extra artillery piece a third sniper
if i'm playing double platoon because three snipers is a
(09:50):
very strong build when your opponents can't forward deploy with theirs yeah
or sometimes they put the classic big tank so for three good men as you know
i took a stew 42 because if you haven't got a push squad a push assault gun
is a reasonable way of allowing your skirmish infantry to advance,
nice when you run your bulgarian tank platoon which tanks are you running in that.
(10:15):
The pause there is very telling the problem
with bulgaria and tanks is if you don't have
access to the theater selector tanks you're limited to
four tanks and there is not
for any other army in the game a good tank there there's
the somua su-35 in the french it's all
right nine plus armor but it lacks that whole machine
(10:38):
gun so you're only ever going to get one gun firing yeah and
it's got the one-man turret rules one man turret yeah it's the
reno 35 which got nerfed in an faq about a
couple of years ago just as i was starting bulgarians otherwise i
would have owned a lot of those so i'm glad they nerfed it before i bought
them because that used to have a light
and low velocity anti-tank gun and the whole mg
(10:58):
and now it's just got both in the turret right okay yeah
then you get the semi-venti 47 32
from the italians and i own two of
these and i've had some some good mileage out of him it's a seven plus
open top to salt gun which has a
light anti-tank gun and you can get a pintle mmg and
because it's open top who cares about the pintle yeah true that
(11:21):
comes to 100 points regular so it's actually a solid choice and
is it one of those comically small italian tanks that one no it's roughly around
the same sort of size as the m13 is a little bit smaller but not crazy small
so i'd probably use a couple of those or if i wanted it's a bit of armor the
somua and then i had it with the last choice which is the cv33.
(11:43):
Which is a comically small italian tank it's a
little tankette the italians used in early war it's a
two-man vehicle it appears in a lot of the other army lists but no one ever
takes it because there's always something better for them to take and again
as is always typical the bulgarians get the worst version of it which is the
(12:03):
single mmg version for 60 points okay For 10 more points, the Italians can do a double MMG.
It's a 7-plus tankette, fully enclosed, and realistically, it's invisible behind your average wall.
It's that low slung. Right, okay.
So it's remarkably hard to kill and at
(12:24):
the same time your opponent generally sits there going well what's
the point it's only got a machine gun it's only a tankette
and what it does is by the
end of the game it's normally parked next to your opponent's artillery machine gunning
it because they've ignored it for that long or not been able
to see it for that long that it's just yeah advanced off the board and
got in the back line or you could use it to rush an objective and
contested turn six i guess yeah happened at
(12:47):
three good men my opponent's home objective objective had a cv
parked on at the end of the game he hadn't realized
that vehicles could contest and that got me
the draw yeah and being tracked it's actually quite
fast over the rubble as well so it is
actually a solid choice the greeks can have it but for some reason
theirs is open topped okay yeah no one
(13:09):
else takes it i'm hungry hungry can take it and they can
take the double mmg g version but you take a srini or
a nimrod instead for me the problem with the cv33 in the bulgarian list is you
don't really have any anti-tank elsewhere in the army and so just looking at
someone who doesn't play bulgaria i'm thinking if i was picking a tank i'd be
(13:29):
picking something with an anti-tank gun on it just because i don't know how
else i'm going to deal with you stewart's.
Well funny you should say that
because that comes to the other weird thing in the
bulgarian list they have a unique
gun that no other nation has it's called
the skoda hybrid gun it has the
(13:50):
option of having an anti-tank barrel or a light howitzer barrel
so it's either a light anti-tank gun or a light howitzer and again
we hit that classic situation of it's
like something else someone else has like a 25 pounder except
it costs five points more and you need to have an advance order to
choose whatever which barrel is loaded then to change
(14:10):
it yeah so it's for me
it's either it should be the same points as a 25 pounder or it's 50 points and
you can have either or and you can swap during the game yeah yeah it's interesting
but it does mean you get like anti-tank guns or how it says depending what your
opponent has yeah yeah so So, I think I'm right in saying this.
(14:31):
When you start the game, you declare what barrel it is equipped with,
for want of a better phrase.
And then if you need to change it during the game, you have to give it an advance order.
So, it switches in the turn it's got the advance order, and obviously you can't fire on that order.
Exactly. Okay. Well, you can fire on the advance order, just a minus one to hit.
I think you probably can now, but when I first started reading this,
(14:54):
I was at the view on advance order artillery couldn't fire. But that was a hard
lesson I've learned this year.
Yes, you're right. Sorry, Johnny, you're right. What's quite nice about that,
actually, is if they're not in your arc, so if that Stuart does rush down your
flank and you've been shooting light howitzers at the infantry in front of you,
you're going to advance anyway.
And so, actually, it is a little bit irrelevant in that specific one situation.
(15:20):
I've only played Stuart's Skirkers once with the Bulgarians,
and that was actually a Stuart tank platoon.
And that was at Battle of Britain against Martin Knowles last year.
I wasn't taking the hybrids then. I actually had BDM howitzers.
And my Axis support was a Hetzer because it was 1250 points.
And I fought him to a sandstill. It really was the last dice of the game. He edged it.
(15:41):
That was three Stuarts and four Gurkha squads. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the generic options or the options that you get if you were building a generic
platoon, they're not exactly jumping out at me, Alan, at this stage and making
me want to go and buy Bulgarians.
But you said the theater selectors changes things theater selector and there's
one because it's only in singular sorry theater selector singular my my mistake
(16:04):
apologies what it is is like all of the.
Eastern european powers so not like the finns or the italians they've
added in tanks from german service so that's
where the panzer comes in the panzer 3n 35
and 38 t's so you get some half half.
Decent tanks in at that point but you very
(16:26):
rarely see a tournament which allows you to go double
theater selector so you're never
going to have those 238ts which is you
know the equivalent of the old panzer 3 the old crusader
kind of level although could you not you still
get the access support rule though so you could yeah so
you could do it through the access support rule but you're not taking
(16:48):
an additional artillery piece for example if you
do that okay that's the the big dilemma is
the access support choice for a bulgarian army is so vital
because it's that second unit and
until very recently i was i firmly of
the view that a single platoon bulgarian army just wasn't worth it
because you kind of need two guns you need two
(17:08):
snipers and a second armored vehicle is
really helpful the faq made me
rethink it for three good men and i had an okay tournament
two wins one draw two losses and both
my losses weren't particularly they were 50
50 games that just swung at a point so i think
there is a place for them now and if you do get to
(17:29):
have theater selectors you actually get an armor car choice because you don't
have an armor car choice in the standard platoon okay yeah that's funny okay
i was just looking at that because i was thinking if i was building this theater
selector i'd go for a panzer four a daca panzer three and then a 2-2-2 as my arm of the car.
Especially with the FAQ making it close top.
(17:51):
Yeah, and if that's at a single platoon event like the Welsh Open was last year,
having the three pieces of arm, I think it's going to be pretty intimidating, really. Yeah.
Definitely. I've been basing myself around double medium howitzer build for
a long time. It's what I took to the Welsh Open last year with a Panzer IV.
And I think I won three, lost two.
(18:15):
But it was an okay build but you just felt that you wanted that second sniper
all the time because that's where you really have an edge.
Yeah. It's funny because I never play snipers so I don't think I'd miss the
extra sniper. I think I'd just revel in the extra armour.
That's fair what i would point out and because
(18:36):
everyone says forward deploying oh it doesn't matter you
surprised how much it does so if
you think about your average artillery piece if there's a
first wave the spot is normally on the table what is
not the table spot is coming on your snipers already sat
there waiting for them to arrive yeah you can stop people's artillery before
it even has a chance to fire similarly at snipers you always have an edge in
(18:59):
the sniper the other thing that's hilarious if there's prelim bombardment well
all their spotters are actually now viable targets for prelim bombardment yeah.
So in a game of sectors all the teams that normally wouldn't be anywhere near
the quarter are getting bombarded yeah or having to be in reserve which you
don't really want to be no yeah.
(19:20):
Interesting and i think alan you and i
we've spoken about bulgarians when we were sort of sorting out
our list for three good men and also you know when we
were in granada it's it is absolutely worth
emphasizing the reason why you take bulgaria over
say hungary for example that we looked at in an earlier episode
is because of that special rule in
(19:41):
the sense and that is a unique special no i think i'm right
in saying no other nation gets to deny the forward deploying in
the the way the bulgarians do no no one does not even in the theater selector
okay and the same for outflanks and so on and
if you can shut down i know it's situational because
some armies won't bother with you know outflanking for
example and maybe won't bother with reserves or just
(20:02):
bring everything on if it's a first wave mission and if they haven't built
a list that has forward deployers and spotters and
snipers and so on it won't matter to them but most
people do do one of those those two or three things most people
either have forward deployers they're using spotters for their artillery pieces
or their reserving slash outflanking so to
take that away from your opponent it's a
(20:23):
very different it's a very different feel
of a national rule whereas most national rules
buff your own army this one very much is detracting and taking away from your
opponent and making them play in a different way that's completely it and if
your opponent hasn't taken any of the things you stop well they're still playing
the game you want to play anyway way one of the things that i've learned and
(20:44):
that last game at three good men very much proved it.
My opponent let bulgaria get in his head and started
playing in a different way than he wanted to play even though actually all he
had was a sniper and two uh multi-spotters he got so in his head and we were
playing no man's land so it was just two points so i got three up beginning
of the game with my artillery just dug in all my infantry hiding his veteran
(21:07):
infantry was stuck stuck behind a river.
I know he never got back in the game because Bulgaria got in his head and you'll
find that will happen once or twice at every tournament.
And then you'll get that one game when you're playing the army who just might as well give up now.
When I played Manuel at the London GT, he was playing forward-deploying inexperienced Chinese.
(21:28):
We played key positions.
He spent so long trying to make sure his teams weren't actually in line of sight
to the three snipers I fielded.
We actually ran out of time. But what happened was his three big units of Chinese
infantry then lost their NCOs.
So they were with one pin and a leadership six.
(21:49):
Yeah if you're if you're building if you're bringing the list which
is you know soviets for deploying scouts and at
teams or you know japanese for deploying
scouts and at guys and all that sort of thing that is
going to make you think differently whereas for example
the the the game of three good men the opponent
you're playing didn't really have much for deploying going on and
(22:10):
it actually really didn't make much difference to that you know
how they were going to deploy and and play the game but like
you said it got in their head that i can't do this and i'm
fixated on the fact i can't do this even i probably didn't want.
To do it and if i can't do it it doesn't make much difference to me yeah completely
and again it was a great example of where
that cd 33 just strolled into his back line and his
(22:32):
troops were moving away from it because they couldn't hurt it because he was light
on at it was only one machine gun i was chucking a
pin and killing two people at most each turn but it was a tank he couldn't
hurt okay so if i
did want to play bulgarians and i wanted to get in people's heads
and play mind games before we've even rolled a single dice what would
i what would i do what what models are out there who would you recommend
(22:53):
where would i go for you know infantry vehicles and
so on well infantry there's really only one choice in
this great escape games they have a metal range of it i actually
got into it during their kickstarter so i've been there since sort
of day one with the bulgarians yeah there isn't
a full range because they don't have a flamethrower because no one
needed a flamethrower until last last month so my
(23:15):
flamethrower is actually a bad squiddo soviet one that i painted
up in bulgarian colors because frankly they're close
enough vehicle wise all their
vehicles have argued they're borrowed from everyone else so
my cvs are mad bobs my somuas blitzkrieg they're just standard tanks and everything
so actually it's really easy to get hold of them i'm going to be converting
(23:36):
the cavalry out of the classic u.s civil war and a squad of bersaglieri that
i got got sent when Tough Cut came out.
I was just thinking about conversion projects. What helmets are they wearing, the Bulgarians?
They are their own unique helmet, but it's halfway housed between a Stalham and the Soviet helmet.
(23:58):
They've got a kind of big pointed, it's not a point, but it's kind of beveled
into sort of a sharpish edge.
But fundamentally, a Russian helmet looks okay. Okay.
Well, it could be captured, I suppose.
Yeah brilliant a
little bit like the adrian helmets with like the ridge down the
middle not not so pronounced but that kind of
(24:21):
idea right okay and their
artillery you know medium howitzer where are
you getting that from my two are the warlord
105s because they got those from the germans my two heavies
are for mad bob french schneiders right okay
my hybrid guns i ordered loaded
from paint and glue miniatures because they
(24:44):
do both barrels so i actually have two of
them and of each barrel so i swap barrels so
my opponent knows what's currently loaded nice that's very
cool yeah the question i'm dying to ask is
do you run a panzer shrek because that's what we haven't discussed yet
oh no i don't never run a panzer shrek
i have never run a panzer shrek despite having no anti-armor because
(25:06):
it's 80 points i do regularly run anti-tank rifles rifles i
quite often will take two yeah that's going to
probably drop out of my list now the flamethrower is an option because it
fitted in that niche i mean i've also run light mortars for.
Them that's quite an effective build because there's nothing
to shoot them because you've got three snipers and they don't have anything to pick
on that light mortar yeah i prefer the anti-tank
(25:27):
rifle to the the faust it's just
it's half the price and sort of equal threat
i would would say interesting they feel like the the
thinking man's army because you're you're
limited as to what you can take so you're not you're not
turning up with a bunch of units that are you know well costed and efficient
you've got a national special rule that will counter and just well stop altogether
(25:52):
certain tactics from your opponent so there's a lot going on and and it's not
like you could just turn up and just dump units on the board and go right deal
with that I've got a load of,
you know, well-costed assault units or veteran-stubborn units or big tanks or
whatever. So, yeah, they feel...
Well, they are different, obviously, but they feel like they take quite a lot
of work, I think, to make work.
(26:13):
But when they do work, they are surprisingly effective.
That's pretty much it, yeah. From a tournament point of view,
I've had two fourth place finishes.
That was not the London GT and not four steps back. In both cases,
that was after losing the top table game in the final.
So I've got close to a tournament podium or win with both of them.
(26:34):
So i've lost to i lost to
sheffy at not four steps back was it not three
steps back because i've got close twice with with bulgarians and
i lost to rich rich c at not
london gt with his gherkas and that to be
fair was quite a new mistake on my part in that i
got twitchy gherkas deployed a load of stuff in my deployment zone
(26:56):
that i shouldn't have done right because it was the first time i played
a big gherka platoon like he has but after
the prelim obama when i lost three units we were quits for the rest of
the game wow yeah yeah that's impressive
well thank you very much for joining us alan
that has been genuinely very interesting to learn about the bulgarians who
i don't think i've ever played and so
(27:17):
this was very insightful so hopefully i
stand a chance next time i face you yeah i'm
kind of unique in england i believe there's one scott and
one welshman who also play bulgarians so it's very
much a niche army in the british isles and there's one day in as
well we would say look out for the bulgarians at
future events but the chances are statistically you're not going to come across
(27:38):
them but when you do be prepared you should be prepared now to be fair with
all that top shelf advice if you do play bulgarians though please do share some
photos on the facebook so we can have a look at them as ever thank you for listening
ta-ta for now ta-ta for now ta-ta for now as well.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.