April 25, 2024 • 23 mins
In this celebratory episode of Tabletop Tommies, hosts Jonny and Phil commemorate a noteworthy achievement - delivering a weekly Bolt Action podcast for an entire year. They delve into the growth and popularity of the game, their journey into podcasting, and the future of the show.
Starting with initial skepticism about content sustainability, the duo reminisce about being wrong. They share tales of special guests who enriched the podcast with diverse topics and express their gratitude for their contributions. With the backing of thousands of downloads and positive feedback from a global audience, our hosts reveal their enthusiasm for the coming year and tease possible future content.
Sharing what motivated them to start the podcast, Jonny and Phil highlight their shared aspiration for concise, topic-centered content. They look forward to the podcast's future, pledging to continue creating engaging content for the Bolt Action community, and inviting listeners to contribute future topics.
The episode also includes a reminiscence of memorable personal Bolt Action achievements, a gratitude note to Patreon members, and a discourse on their interactions with international players. Plans for their budding YouTube channel and efforts to improve content quality, alongside discussions about transitioning some podcast content to YouTube are also shared.
As we near the release of Version 3 (V3) of the Bolt Action game, the hosts discuss their hopes, concerns, and anticipation for it. The episode concludes with a sincere appreciation to all listeners for their continued support and an eagerness to unveil fresh, captivating content in line with V3's release.
If you aren't already listening to us on YouTube but want to get subscribed for our upcoming V3 video content, you can find our channel here.
If you are buying a new army for V3, please do use these links to 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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny. And I'm Phil. And this is a very special episode today.
We've only gone and jolly well done it, haven't we? We've done 52 episodes in 52 weeks.
We haven't missed a single week this year. Every Thursday we've released a brand new episode.
And so all that said, this episode is going to be a little bit looser than our usual affair.
(00:28):
Fair we're going to be talking less about a very specific bolt
action topic and more generally about the state of the game the
state of the podcast you can think of this as a bit of a state of
the union address and we're going to be looking forward to the
things we expect and hope to see over the
coming year as well as some announcements about what you
can expect from the podcast and our content generally going
(00:49):
forward so phil this year has been quite a busy one for you
in terms of bolt action and your hobby generally and
also your very first full year well
our very first full year podcasting so
how has the year been for you yeah i genuinely didn't
expect we would do 52 episodes in 52 weeks when
you first asked me back in april last year
(01:11):
very very very early april things like the first weekend in april about doing
a podcast i was like yeah what have we got to talk about and how long is it
going to last turns out we have done 52 episodes and we've got more you know
many many more already planned and in our heads let alone anything that that
comes up to add into the mix.
So yeah, if you'd said a year ago, I'd be sat here 52 episodes in and however many episodes.
(01:35):
Thousands and thousands of downloads i wouldn't have expected it at
all so it's been fantastic in that sense yeah absolutely i do remember
that conversation where we discussed would we even have something
to talk about after the sort of the 10th episode and
i was inclined to agree with you that i didn't think there
was going to be that much content but i thought we might as well try
when we were talking about how often to put out an episode and we
(01:55):
thought well we'll start weekly and then when it dries up a bit so 10
episodes in we'll go to a monthly format like the other
the bolt action podcast but yeah there's still i feel
we haven't covered everything we wanted to cover in v2
already and now it is quite
interesting now that we've got v3 on the horizon that is a little bit of a spanner
but also quite an exciting time for the podcast yeah because we said we wanted
(02:17):
to do an armies on parade for every major well every bolt action faction which
we're almost there there's another four or five off the top of my head that
we that we haven't done yet which which we will commit to doing.
And we've got some guests in mind as well to come on and talk about some of
the more obscure nations.
But obviously at some point with the recent announcement, we are going to turn our attention to V3.
(02:38):
And when we can start talking about it and start sharing things,
then we absolutely will be. Yeah, absolutely.
I guess so, Phil. The big question is, have you enjoyed doing the podcast this
year? Yeah, no, I definitely have.
It's been varied, certainly from my perspective, what we've been discussing.
I don't feel like we've just kind of gone into a routine, we've mixed it up.
We've had, you know, like the armies on parades sort of series and episodes.
(03:01):
We've had a lot of guests who we'll talk about later.
We've looked at rules interpretations. We've looked at some of the custom missions that you've designed.
I really enjoyed the episode on alternative ways to play bolt action in terms
of the, you know, having a look at the different systems and looking at,
you know, World War One and Vietnam.
Modern warfare as well and also the one
(03:23):
on when we talked about starting a brand new army because it made me
stop and think about what do i consider when i
start a new bolt action army and then try
and sort of break that down into a number of
points to then discuss on the pod so i think those two
episodes which which weren't kind of like you know formulaic in
the sense of here's an army let's talk about the units how would
you play that army but actually it was a lot more open in the
(03:46):
sense of well how can you take the ba system and
apply it to different you know different in historical time periods or
how would you go about building a brand new army so yeah
and what about yourself johnny yeah i did worry that when
we committed to doing a weekly podcast it would become a bit
formulaic especially when we were doing the armies off series i thought if we
keep doing this and we get all the armies done in one hit by the end of it we're
(04:08):
probably going to be bored of it ourselves never mind anyone listening to it
and so i absolutely agree the dropping in other thoughts here and there and
as stuff's come up like when we talk about machine gun teams.
It's really nice to sort of have to sit down and think
about these things and sort of decide what you
think on it I think that's been a really nice opportunity for
(04:29):
me to sort of think about the game more in a slightly different way and I think
there's been some great opportunities like talking to Alex Smith about case
blue that he wrote I think was an opportunity I wouldn't have got without the
podcast to speak directly to the author and for him to give us sort of at least
half an hour of his time where we can really sort of
look into why he made the decisions he made effectively
i think and i think that's been really enjoyable and
(04:52):
an opportunity we wouldn't have got otherwise and i i really enjoyed that
conversation with alex to find more generally about how do
you go about writing for warlords games and what
the process is you know obviously alex is has a full-time job he's
not a games designer you know he has a full-time job
and on top of that he was working evenings and weekends for a
year he said you know putting together case blue from
(05:13):
his initial research and obviously a lot of the research that
went into starling grad fed into the case blue campaign book so
i found that really interesting just to hear what what goes on
and what's involved yeah so that was a bit of a highlight really were
there any other highlights you can think of over the last year yeah so when
we had john ross and liam chambers on after the wtc so to yeah not just to reflect
on the weekend in granada and how it went but to hear from john as the the usa
(05:36):
rep and usa one captain but also liam who hasn't been playing balls action very
long obviously came along as part of it was one.
Of the three England teams did really well individually and as
a team and to get his reflection on how he
how he got there how he found it and and you know maybe to give some sort of
ideas and you know a bit of a encouragement to players who might be listening
(05:57):
out there just actually yeah I fancy this and I want to have a go yeah the guests
really have been the highlight I think just getting a different perspective
on the game is always incredibly useful and just
interesting isn't it and so all of the guests that we've had on so big thank you to.
In order of appearance our very
first guest we had mark vance who sold out his welsh open
(06:19):
tickets in i think about three days this year
yeah and that's absolutely testament to mark and his
team of tos to the reputation the
event has and also the venue as well firestorm games which we've
mentioned on several occasions over the last 52 episodes
yeah and obviously we had mike on our wtc captain
talked to us about soviets we had alex to talk about japanese
(06:39):
brad of the cast dice podcast that was a real treat getting
someone on from the other side of the world to talk to
us about all of his missions you find in the bolt action alliance
pack alex smith as we've already said case blue what
a treat that was we had barry who does his own podcast about bushido rash's
fan boys he was talking to us about whether bolt action truly is a competitive
game which is quite an interesting conversation now i think back to it russell
(07:01):
t of world up more friend of the podcast as you said john ross and liam for
wtc aaron yeah aaron was a good guest as well to talk to us about.
Playing bolt action and winning tournaments in three different countries
and then of course we had our other wtc teammate alan
to talk to us about bulgarians and of course josh most
recently to talk to us about frozen in the chosen on the
(07:22):
8th and 9th of june if you're into bolt action career um so yeah
huge thanks to all of those guys for making the time to
talk to us and i thoroughly enjoyed everyone yeah as
i said at the start we've got some ideas for some guests coming up to
do with the armies on parade but also you know when we start talking about
some tournaments that we'll be going to coming up and reviewing them and obviously
looking ahead to v3 as well yeah so obviously those are
(07:43):
all the highlights we've talked about how much we've enjoyed it this year but why
did you start the podcast in the first place phil other than the fact that you
asked me to i wanted to or i enjoy listening to short focused podcasts when
i'm painting for example or if i'm in the car and driving i used to really enjoy
the sounds of battle podcast because
(08:03):
every episode had a focus.
It wasn't, you know, like two and a half, three hours long, generally speaking.
It was something I could either put on if I was driving, or it's something I
could sit down for half an hour if I'm painting and just have on in the background.
And with, obviously, Sounds of Battle no longer recording, I felt there was
a bit of a niche for someone to come in, or a pair, in this case,
(08:24):
to come in and talk about, you know, a particular topic per episode. Yeah.
No more than i think you know our longest episode is about an hour and
a half when we get into real detail of some of the armies off but generally speaking
you know 45 minutes or so so it's a question of
i wanted to listen to this sort of stuff no one else was doing it so why
don't we do it and hopefully that will encourage other people to to
(08:44):
jump on and you know and start their own i mean
for me it's been fairly easy because you're the one who does all the editing
and all the technical side of things whereas i'm maybe doing more
of the the stuff of social media and having to think about also what we're
talking about you know having to think about what's
coming up and making you know making inquiries to
get on guests and all that kind of stuff so yeah i guess the hard work
(09:05):
on a weekly basis is is what you're doing behind the scenes to do all the technical
side and what about yourself johnny why did you initially have have the idea
of starting the podcast well for me it was exactly as you've said there phil
i think there is definitely a space when i'm painting i have to have something
on in the background just to sort of distract me from.
Especially when it starts to get a bit tedious around sort of the 10th to
(09:26):
20th infirmary yeah that's because you're batch painting
that's what it is that's the mistake quantity of
a quality quantity has a quality of its own comrade and so yeah i think there
aren't a lot of bolt action podcasts compared to sort of other niches like sort
of 40k and so i did kind of run out of bolt action podcasts and so i was hoping
(09:47):
that by starting a podcast we'd inspire some other
people to start podcasts about
bald action so that I'd have something to listen to while I'm painting.
That hasn't happened yet, but I'm hoping that it does in the coming year.
And I think, yeah, for me it was very much, I wanted it to be as short as possible, but no shorter.
So avoid any unnecessary waffle. A bit like YouTube, where.
(10:10):
Each video on YouTube is about a specific thing. You don't open the video on
YouTube and then suddenly you're hit with 20 minutes of something completely
unrelated to the title of the YouTube video.
So that was very much the philosophy that we would just have episodes where
people are, if you're only interested in one thing, that's fine.
Come and join us for that week.
And this was again, why I thought the weekly schedule was quite a nice schedule
(10:32):
for us where you might not care about Italians.
And I'm not expecting everyone to listen to every single episode.
So you missed that episode.
But then when your army comes up that you are interested in you might join us
for that one and so i think the weekly short sharp burst was really good for
that but yeah it's very much just trying to get other people to start a podcast
ultimately so that i've got something to listen to,
(10:53):
something i something i didn't expect and it might just be just me not thinking it through was,
the number of people who contacted us through facebook for example or through
the email asking us for opinions or advice or suggestions not necessarily in
terms of here's a list can you give me some feedback on on the list but more
about i'm interested in running an event or these are the kind of events that
(11:16):
often occur where where i live i want to try something different,
what do you think about this idea and it's been really interesting to engage
with a number of people over not just a one-off sort of conversation but over
a period of time and also it should be been really weird has been going to events
in the uk and people recognizing me because of my voice.
Hmm so i start playing a game against an opponent they're like are
(11:39):
you and then they might see the dice tray for example it's like
yeah yeah yeah and it's you know you're getting picked up
because of the voice i remember when we were at the um the warlords open day when
we were in the q a session with with john and paul and
we both asked the question and at the end there was a few people that
sort of turned around and had a look where we were we were standing and came over and had
a chat because they'd heard the voice and they was in the podcast and
then they heard us in the room asking the question that was a bit weird if
(12:01):
i'm honest but it was a nice weird oh yeah it's
for me i really like talking about the game i like whenever
people are asking us questions about stuff then i do
enjoy talking to everyone about like oh here's an interesting
thing you've not thought of before yeah and i think actually jumping
back to your sort of the surprises of people reaching out
speaking to brad at cast dice and the other podcasts
(12:23):
that's actually been a really nice sort of little
surprise that sort of building that community and that's
been really nice to sort of collaborate where we can and so
if you are considering starting a ball action podcast please do reach out to us
and we're more than happy to talk you through how to
set it up all the little technical things you might not have thought
about because i mean we came into this with zero podcasting experience
(12:44):
and i imagine that probably shows across the 52 episodes as you listen across
them i imagine it's almost like a detailed log of our progression in terms of
like are we getting better at podcasting i don't know i'll leave that open to
the listeners i guess Yes, hopefully we are.
So before we ever think about what's coming up, any more highlights from you
(13:06):
personally in terms of the year with Bolt Action that you want to just quickly share?
So last year was a big tournament year for me. I did all of the two-day weekends
that I could attend, barring any clashes.
And just going around to every tournament you've seen the same faces
all the time that was a real highlight and i think
it gave us quite a bit to talk about just sort of passively with
(13:28):
rules come up and so if you get to see more and
more stuff it was tough though i mean that i realized
at the end that year that was probably three too many tournaments
for me i think on a regular basis and i think playing
internationally as well was a big highlight so getting the opportunity to
play world open war which actually i think that was before we
even started the podcast i was already signed up to do world open war
(13:48):
so that wasn't off the back of the podcast and wtc
also wasn't off the back of the podcast that was through our connection to
mike smith who captained the team but those were
highlights unrelated to the podcast and getting to play against those
international players was a real treat and just
sort of playing ball action at the highest echelons always is
a lot of fun what about you phil yeah i mean the same
(14:10):
for me in terms of obviously wow and wtc fantastic
to get the opportunity and to go and really enjoyed
meeting people from overseas and playing against them and performing as
well in terms of more locally a couple of events i went to just to just to give
a sort of shout out to one was in cardiff in january a dice too far which was
just a really fun thematic one day event run by the south wales warlord group
(14:33):
and the other one was through the newbury gaming club and they ran an event
last may which i ended up going to about
two days notice, they put a shout out in the local Facebook group I'm in for any players.
And I went along to that, got talking to the TO, and it was their first event.
And they decided, Nick, that he wanted to put on an event more regularly.
So he asked me to sort of jump on board and assist, which is kind of like the
(14:54):
admin background behind the scenes.
And what was really nice with that, it was effectively like a fundraising event
for a local primary school, and it was very chilled out, very relaxed.
But it shows that, you know, one week you can be playing.
You know like you said at the highest echelons in terms of internationally and
then yeah the next week you're packing up your stuff in your car to go and help
run the little like 16 man event in the local primary school to raise money
(15:17):
for you know good cause so that wouldn't have happened i'm not necessarily without
the podcast but the opportunity to to get more involved in bolt action.
Arguably wouldn't have happened without the podcast and people recognizing
tabletop zombies and so on yeah and i do have to
give a shout out as well to all the people who've backed us in some way either
by buying some merch or backing us on patreon obviously
(15:38):
it's not a huge cost to run the podcast but there is some
financial implications and so any way
people are willing to help us just sort of keep this cost
neutral is always greatly appreciated and
so shouting out specifically our longest serving patreon
members so craig matt pete seth ryan
and ug huge thank you you d for backing
(16:00):
us on patreon and obviously you'll be hearing from us
very soon when it comes to receiving your one
year what's everyone for one year thank you material thank
you yeah your your one year material thank you
so we've talked about that why we want to
start the podcast but what are you hoping to achieve with the
podcast in the next year phil so obviously we've recently
(16:21):
started with the youtube channel not just in terms of releasing
the previous episodes but you've been been putting out your series on
building your soviets as well as a couple of recent videos
one on the v3 launch and one on on
wow and england team qualifies we will definitely be doing more on youtube obviously
you've got to finish off your soviets and i'm looking forward to seeing how
how they progress no pressure you've got at the time of recording less than
(16:44):
two weeks to get them all done well that hasn't been publicly broadcast that
deadline that's coming out in i think next.
Week's video it has now and the lists
are in so it doesn't matter anyway obviously v3 is going to be huge in terms
of the game and also we will be absolutely making a lot of content for that
both on the podcast as an episode but also on youtube in a video format so again
(17:08):
like i said earlier as soon as we can we will be putting out content on v3.
And it was mentioned a long time ago about
putting out battle reports and we actually it was
nearly a year ago now wasn't it that we sort of did some work in my house
at building that massive gaming table and getting the the area
ready for recording and hopefully that will come come through in the next few
(17:29):
months so i certainly will be turning my attention more towards youtube videos
and putting together some content and battle reports along with what you've
been doing more recently and what about yourself johnny so yeah obviously i've
been doing a little bit of youtube work on the.
Side the youtube is very similar to the podcast where neither of
us have a background in it and so the the soviet build has
been very much a bit of a test bed for me as well
(17:51):
as i thought people might be interested in seeing me building some soviets
from scratch and that does seem to be the case so thank you if
you are subscribed over and over there to follow the build but it
is very much sort of getting our finger in learning all
the skills we need so that we can get to that point where we can make interesting
battle reports because ultimately i think that is a goal for
me as well with the youtube also the youtube
(18:12):
i think is a great place for sort of
our rules and misplayed rules sections yeah and tactics as well and tutorials
and all that kind of stuff which don't translate in an audio format where you're
listening to two people talking back and forth sometimes you need those visual
aids and visual cues yeah and so i think we probably still will have some sort
of rules clarifications etc on the podcast but i can.
(18:35):
Imagine a place where as we get more into youtube
we transition a lot of that content and a
lot of sort of our custom mission content over to the
youtube side and so we are going to start
sort of drifting that way and give more focus to
the youtube in order to make that possible there are going to be some changes
with the podcast and what can listeners expect from us in the
(18:55):
future phil so what that means in terms of the schedule is we
will be moving away from weekly releases on a thursday our
next episode will be in two weeks time on a
sunday where we'll be reviewing our
experiences at the welsh nationals and we'll be
moving to episodes not on a weekly basis to
allow us time to focus on youtube but also make sure that we are putting that
(19:16):
content on the pod you can definitely expect us to finish off the armies on
parade series which will be china romania and italy a couple of major events
coming up in the uk that we'll be attending over over the next few months,
and that will bring us up nicely to September,
which will be in time for the launch of V3.
Yeah, I imagine as Warlord release more and more tidbits about V3,
(19:37):
you'll be wanting to join us for our thoughts on that, and also just to make
sure you're not missing out on anything, because I can't imagine that once the pre-orders go live,
Warlord are just going to go radio silent again.
I imagine they'll slowly release more and more little snippets to whet the appetite.
Yeah, so the recent article said that we can expect to hear from them,
(19:59):
ramping it back up again in July, which obviously is when the pre-orders go live.
So, yeah, expect to hear stuff from Warlord and expect to hear us reflecting
what we're getting to hear from Warlord.
Yeah, I suppose on that note, Phil, what are you hoping from V3?
What I want is the same pace of play that we currently get from V2,
because once you get yeah there's not a huge amount of rules and the game is fairly intuitive.
(20:24):
So i don't find that i'm spending a lot of time flicking back
and forth checking the rule so i want to keep that pace of play there are
obviously some certain things which do need addressing it'd be
that point cost be that certain units or certain types
of units that we don't see it'll be nice to be able to to see
them again and more of the same but
refined find what i
(20:46):
don't want to see is a complete change and rip it all up and move to something
else and from what warlord has said already in terms of the press release and
in terms of the the article on the website last week it doesn't sound like that's
going to be the case which is good yeah in my perspective i totally agree the
core system i'd like to remain very similar the
thing that i don't think is going to happen but i would like is to get
(21:07):
rid of templates because i think they add unnecessary faff to a
game i would quite like a sort of a dice hits mechanic
like we hadn't v1 but with a little bit extra sort
of moderation so you're not getting 12 hits on a single fella and
i think there is a place for that but because in their preview they
said they mentioned templates specifically yeah i
don't think we're going to get that and so for anyone who is similar
(21:28):
to me doesn't like templates unfortunately it looks like we're sticking with
them in terms of other parts of the game i'd like machine guns to get a special
rule because the other team weapons have a special rule i would like that special
rule not to be just an extra pin because I don't think that's enticing enough
and I don't think it's particularly interesting either so I'm rather hoping
it's something like a suppressing fire mode or or indirect fire something interesting.
(21:51):
Just to give people a reason to play them, just because they're quirky as much as anything.
And in terms of, I think, the big tidy up are things like points costs.
I think maybe you bring your vehicles down a little bit. You maybe increase
the cost of a machine gun on a vehicle, or you give it a special rule where
it's an extra minus one to hit.
Basically, I don't want to see these battle wagons where you've got five machine
guns on a light tank being the optimum tank.
(22:13):
I'd quite like your Shermans to be a good value for money purchase and your
DACA stewards to be fine, but not, not really anything to write home about.
And again, similar for your infantry choices. I'd like all the infantry choices
to be fairly comparable to each other where yes, they'll play in different ways.
So you choose the one based on your play style, but there isn't an obvious choice
(22:35):
where if I'm playing Brits, then obviously I have to take to her because I want to be competitive.
And so those are the big things from my perspective. of so really
for me just a massive thank you to everybody who's listened who's
liked shared and subscribed who supported us who's sent
us a message who's maybe coming along said hello when they've seen us at
events and shows and so on it's been great doing this it's been great to have
(22:56):
that interaction with people and it's been great to hear from people who who've
been enjoying it if there's anything you'd like us to look at and talk about
which we haven't mentioned we've we've got planned drop us a message or drop
us an email yeah thank you to everyone who's listened throughout out of the air.
Thank you to everyone who's supported us in any other way you've supported us, such as Patreon.
And if you haven't checked us out on YouTube yet, please do check us out and
(23:17):
get subscribed over there, as obviously our future How to Play V3 and Rules
Queries will probably be featured more prominently there than on the podcast,
due to the visual medium.
And, as ever, thank you for listening. Ta-ta for now. Ta-ta for two weeks.
Music.
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny. And I'm Phil. And this is a very special episode today.
We've only gone and jolly well done it, haven't we? We've done 52 episodes in 52 weeks.
We haven't missed a single week this year. Every Thursday we've released a brand new episode.
And so all that said, this episode is going to be a little bit looser than our usual affair.
(00:28):
Fair we're going to be talking less about a very specific bolt
action topic and more generally about the state of the game the
state of the podcast you can think of this as a bit of a state of
the union address and we're going to be looking forward to the
things we expect and hope to see over the
coming year as well as some announcements about what you
can expect from the podcast and our content generally going
(00:49):
forward so phil this year has been quite a busy one for you
in terms of bolt action and your hobby generally and
also your very first full year well
our very first full year podcasting so
how has the year been for you yeah i genuinely didn't
expect we would do 52 episodes in 52 weeks when
you first asked me back in april last year
(01:11):
very very very early april things like the first weekend in april about doing
a podcast i was like yeah what have we got to talk about and how long is it
going to last turns out we have done 52 episodes and we've got more you know
many many more already planned and in our heads let alone anything that that
comes up to add into the mix.
So yeah, if you'd said a year ago, I'd be sat here 52 episodes in and however many episodes.
(01:35):
Thousands and thousands of downloads i wouldn't have expected it at
all so it's been fantastic in that sense yeah absolutely i do remember
that conversation where we discussed would we even have something
to talk about after the sort of the 10th episode and
i was inclined to agree with you that i didn't think there
was going to be that much content but i thought we might as well try
when we were talking about how often to put out an episode and we
(01:55):
thought well we'll start weekly and then when it dries up a bit so 10
episodes in we'll go to a monthly format like the other
the bolt action podcast but yeah there's still i feel
we haven't covered everything we wanted to cover in v2
already and now it is quite
interesting now that we've got v3 on the horizon that is a little bit of a spanner
but also quite an exciting time for the podcast yeah because we said we wanted
(02:17):
to do an armies on parade for every major well every bolt action faction which
we're almost there there's another four or five off the top of my head that
we that we haven't done yet which which we will commit to doing.
And we've got some guests in mind as well to come on and talk about some of
the more obscure nations.
But obviously at some point with the recent announcement, we are going to turn our attention to V3.
(02:38):
And when we can start talking about it and start sharing things,
then we absolutely will be. Yeah, absolutely.
I guess so, Phil. The big question is, have you enjoyed doing the podcast this
year? Yeah, no, I definitely have.
It's been varied, certainly from my perspective, what we've been discussing.
I don't feel like we've just kind of gone into a routine, we've mixed it up.
We've had, you know, like the armies on parades sort of series and episodes.
(03:01):
We've had a lot of guests who we'll talk about later.
We've looked at rules interpretations. We've looked at some of the custom missions that you've designed.
I really enjoyed the episode on alternative ways to play bolt action in terms
of the, you know, having a look at the different systems and looking at,
you know, World War One and Vietnam.
Modern warfare as well and also the one
(03:23):
on when we talked about starting a brand new army because it made me
stop and think about what do i consider when i
start a new bolt action army and then try
and sort of break that down into a number of
points to then discuss on the pod so i think those two
episodes which which weren't kind of like you know formulaic in
the sense of here's an army let's talk about the units how would
you play that army but actually it was a lot more open in the
(03:46):
sense of well how can you take the ba system and
apply it to different you know different in historical time periods or
how would you go about building a brand new army so yeah
and what about yourself johnny yeah i did worry that when
we committed to doing a weekly podcast it would become a bit
formulaic especially when we were doing the armies off series i thought if we
keep doing this and we get all the armies done in one hit by the end of it we're
(04:08):
probably going to be bored of it ourselves never mind anyone listening to it
and so i absolutely agree the dropping in other thoughts here and there and
as stuff's come up like when we talk about machine gun teams.
It's really nice to sort of have to sit down and think
about these things and sort of decide what you
think on it I think that's been a really nice opportunity for
(04:29):
me to sort of think about the game more in a slightly different way and I think
there's been some great opportunities like talking to Alex Smith about case
blue that he wrote I think was an opportunity I wouldn't have got without the
podcast to speak directly to the author and for him to give us sort of at least
half an hour of his time where we can really sort of
look into why he made the decisions he made effectively
i think and i think that's been really enjoyable and
(04:52):
an opportunity we wouldn't have got otherwise and i i really enjoyed that
conversation with alex to find more generally about how do
you go about writing for warlords games and what
the process is you know obviously alex is has a full-time job he's
not a games designer you know he has a full-time job
and on top of that he was working evenings and weekends for a
year he said you know putting together case blue from
(05:13):
his initial research and obviously a lot of the research that
went into starling grad fed into the case blue campaign book so
i found that really interesting just to hear what what goes on
and what's involved yeah so that was a bit of a highlight really were
there any other highlights you can think of over the last year yeah so when
we had john ross and liam chambers on after the wtc so to yeah not just to reflect
on the weekend in granada and how it went but to hear from john as the the usa
(05:36):
rep and usa one captain but also liam who hasn't been playing balls action very
long obviously came along as part of it was one.
Of the three England teams did really well individually and as
a team and to get his reflection on how he
how he got there how he found it and and you know maybe to give some sort of
ideas and you know a bit of a encouragement to players who might be listening
(05:57):
out there just actually yeah I fancy this and I want to have a go yeah the guests
really have been the highlight I think just getting a different perspective
on the game is always incredibly useful and just
interesting isn't it and so all of the guests that we've had on so big thank you to.
In order of appearance our very
first guest we had mark vance who sold out his welsh open
(06:19):
tickets in i think about three days this year
yeah and that's absolutely testament to mark and his
team of tos to the reputation the
event has and also the venue as well firestorm games which we've
mentioned on several occasions over the last 52 episodes
yeah and obviously we had mike on our wtc captain
talked to us about soviets we had alex to talk about japanese
(06:39):
brad of the cast dice podcast that was a real treat getting
someone on from the other side of the world to talk to
us about all of his missions you find in the bolt action alliance
pack alex smith as we've already said case blue what
a treat that was we had barry who does his own podcast about bushido rash's
fan boys he was talking to us about whether bolt action truly is a competitive
game which is quite an interesting conversation now i think back to it russell
(07:01):
t of world up more friend of the podcast as you said john ross and liam for
wtc aaron yeah aaron was a good guest as well to talk to us about.
Playing bolt action and winning tournaments in three different countries
and then of course we had our other wtc teammate alan
to talk to us about bulgarians and of course josh most
recently to talk to us about frozen in the chosen on the
(07:22):
8th and 9th of june if you're into bolt action career um so yeah
huge thanks to all of those guys for making the time to
talk to us and i thoroughly enjoyed everyone yeah as
i said at the start we've got some ideas for some guests coming up to
do with the armies on parade but also you know when we start talking about
some tournaments that we'll be going to coming up and reviewing them and obviously
looking ahead to v3 as well yeah so obviously those are
(07:43):
all the highlights we've talked about how much we've enjoyed it this year but why
did you start the podcast in the first place phil other than the fact that you
asked me to i wanted to or i enjoy listening to short focused podcasts when
i'm painting for example or if i'm in the car and driving i used to really enjoy
the sounds of battle podcast because
(08:03):
every episode had a focus.
It wasn't, you know, like two and a half, three hours long, generally speaking.
It was something I could either put on if I was driving, or it's something I
could sit down for half an hour if I'm painting and just have on in the background.
And with, obviously, Sounds of Battle no longer recording, I felt there was
a bit of a niche for someone to come in, or a pair, in this case,
(08:24):
to come in and talk about, you know, a particular topic per episode. Yeah.
No more than i think you know our longest episode is about an hour and
a half when we get into real detail of some of the armies off but generally speaking
you know 45 minutes or so so it's a question of
i wanted to listen to this sort of stuff no one else was doing it so why
don't we do it and hopefully that will encourage other people to to
(08:44):
jump on and you know and start their own i mean
for me it's been fairly easy because you're the one who does all the editing
and all the technical side of things whereas i'm maybe doing more
of the the stuff of social media and having to think about also what we're
talking about you know having to think about what's
coming up and making you know making inquiries to
get on guests and all that kind of stuff so yeah i guess the hard work
(09:05):
on a weekly basis is is what you're doing behind the scenes to do all the technical
side and what about yourself johnny why did you initially have have the idea
of starting the podcast well for me it was exactly as you've said there phil
i think there is definitely a space when i'm painting i have to have something
on in the background just to sort of distract me from.
Especially when it starts to get a bit tedious around sort of the 10th to
(09:26):
20th infirmary yeah that's because you're batch painting
that's what it is that's the mistake quantity of
a quality quantity has a quality of its own comrade and so yeah i think there
aren't a lot of bolt action podcasts compared to sort of other niches like sort
of 40k and so i did kind of run out of bolt action podcasts and so i was hoping
(09:47):
that by starting a podcast we'd inspire some other
people to start podcasts about
bald action so that I'd have something to listen to while I'm painting.
That hasn't happened yet, but I'm hoping that it does in the coming year.
And I think, yeah, for me it was very much, I wanted it to be as short as possible, but no shorter.
So avoid any unnecessary waffle. A bit like YouTube, where.
(10:10):
Each video on YouTube is about a specific thing. You don't open the video on
YouTube and then suddenly you're hit with 20 minutes of something completely
unrelated to the title of the YouTube video.
So that was very much the philosophy that we would just have episodes where
people are, if you're only interested in one thing, that's fine.
Come and join us for that week.
And this was again, why I thought the weekly schedule was quite a nice schedule
(10:32):
for us where you might not care about Italians.
And I'm not expecting everyone to listen to every single episode.
So you missed that episode.
But then when your army comes up that you are interested in you might join us
for that one and so i think the weekly short sharp burst was really good for
that but yeah it's very much just trying to get other people to start a podcast
ultimately so that i've got something to listen to,
(10:53):
something i something i didn't expect and it might just be just me not thinking it through was,
the number of people who contacted us through facebook for example or through
the email asking us for opinions or advice or suggestions not necessarily in
terms of here's a list can you give me some feedback on on the list but more
about i'm interested in running an event or these are the kind of events that
(11:16):
often occur where where i live i want to try something different,
what do you think about this idea and it's been really interesting to engage
with a number of people over not just a one-off sort of conversation but over
a period of time and also it should be been really weird has been going to events
in the uk and people recognizing me because of my voice.
Hmm so i start playing a game against an opponent they're like are
(11:39):
you and then they might see the dice tray for example it's like
yeah yeah yeah and it's you know you're getting picked up
because of the voice i remember when we were at the um the warlords open day when
we were in the q a session with with john and paul and
we both asked the question and at the end there was a few people that
sort of turned around and had a look where we were we were standing and came over and had
a chat because they'd heard the voice and they was in the podcast and
then they heard us in the room asking the question that was a bit weird if
(12:01):
i'm honest but it was a nice weird oh yeah it's
for me i really like talking about the game i like whenever
people are asking us questions about stuff then i do
enjoy talking to everyone about like oh here's an interesting
thing you've not thought of before yeah and i think actually jumping
back to your sort of the surprises of people reaching out
speaking to brad at cast dice and the other podcasts
(12:23):
that's actually been a really nice sort of little
surprise that sort of building that community and that's
been really nice to sort of collaborate where we can and so
if you are considering starting a ball action podcast please do reach out to us
and we're more than happy to talk you through how to
set it up all the little technical things you might not have thought
about because i mean we came into this with zero podcasting experience
(12:44):
and i imagine that probably shows across the 52 episodes as you listen across
them i imagine it's almost like a detailed log of our progression in terms of
like are we getting better at podcasting i don't know i'll leave that open to
the listeners i guess Yes, hopefully we are.
So before we ever think about what's coming up, any more highlights from you
(13:06):
personally in terms of the year with Bolt Action that you want to just quickly share?
So last year was a big tournament year for me. I did all of the two-day weekends
that I could attend, barring any clashes.
And just going around to every tournament you've seen the same faces
all the time that was a real highlight and i think
it gave us quite a bit to talk about just sort of passively with
(13:28):
rules come up and so if you get to see more and
more stuff it was tough though i mean that i realized
at the end that year that was probably three too many tournaments
for me i think on a regular basis and i think playing
internationally as well was a big highlight so getting the opportunity to
play world open war which actually i think that was before we
even started the podcast i was already signed up to do world open war
(13:48):
so that wasn't off the back of the podcast and wtc
also wasn't off the back of the podcast that was through our connection to
mike smith who captained the team but those were
highlights unrelated to the podcast and getting to play against those
international players was a real treat and just
sort of playing ball action at the highest echelons always is
a lot of fun what about you phil yeah i mean the same
(14:10):
for me in terms of obviously wow and wtc fantastic
to get the opportunity and to go and really enjoyed
meeting people from overseas and playing against them and performing as
well in terms of more locally a couple of events i went to just to just to give
a sort of shout out to one was in cardiff in january a dice too far which was
just a really fun thematic one day event run by the south wales warlord group
(14:33):
and the other one was through the newbury gaming club and they ran an event
last may which i ended up going to about
two days notice, they put a shout out in the local Facebook group I'm in for any players.
And I went along to that, got talking to the TO, and it was their first event.
And they decided, Nick, that he wanted to put on an event more regularly.
So he asked me to sort of jump on board and assist, which is kind of like the
(14:54):
admin background behind the scenes.
And what was really nice with that, it was effectively like a fundraising event
for a local primary school, and it was very chilled out, very relaxed.
But it shows that, you know, one week you can be playing.
You know like you said at the highest echelons in terms of internationally and
then yeah the next week you're packing up your stuff in your car to go and help
run the little like 16 man event in the local primary school to raise money
(15:17):
for you know good cause so that wouldn't have happened i'm not necessarily without
the podcast but the opportunity to to get more involved in bolt action.
Arguably wouldn't have happened without the podcast and people recognizing
tabletop zombies and so on yeah and i do have to
give a shout out as well to all the people who've backed us in some way either
by buying some merch or backing us on patreon obviously
(15:38):
it's not a huge cost to run the podcast but there is some
financial implications and so any way
people are willing to help us just sort of keep this cost
neutral is always greatly appreciated and
so shouting out specifically our longest serving patreon
members so craig matt pete seth ryan
and ug huge thank you you d for backing
(16:00):
us on patreon and obviously you'll be hearing from us
very soon when it comes to receiving your one
year what's everyone for one year thank you material thank
you yeah your your one year material thank you
so we've talked about that why we want to
start the podcast but what are you hoping to achieve with the
podcast in the next year phil so obviously we've recently
(16:21):
started with the youtube channel not just in terms of releasing
the previous episodes but you've been been putting out your series on
building your soviets as well as a couple of recent videos
one on the v3 launch and one on on
wow and england team qualifies we will definitely be doing more on youtube obviously
you've got to finish off your soviets and i'm looking forward to seeing how
how they progress no pressure you've got at the time of recording less than
(16:44):
two weeks to get them all done well that hasn't been publicly broadcast that
deadline that's coming out in i think next.
Week's video it has now and the lists
are in so it doesn't matter anyway obviously v3 is going to be huge in terms
of the game and also we will be absolutely making a lot of content for that
both on the podcast as an episode but also on youtube in a video format so again
(17:08):
like i said earlier as soon as we can we will be putting out content on v3.
And it was mentioned a long time ago about
putting out battle reports and we actually it was
nearly a year ago now wasn't it that we sort of did some work in my house
at building that massive gaming table and getting the the area
ready for recording and hopefully that will come come through in the next few
(17:29):
months so i certainly will be turning my attention more towards youtube videos
and putting together some content and battle reports along with what you've
been doing more recently and what about yourself johnny so yeah obviously i've
been doing a little bit of youtube work on the.
Side the youtube is very similar to the podcast where neither of
us have a background in it and so the the soviet build has
been very much a bit of a test bed for me as well
(17:51):
as i thought people might be interested in seeing me building some soviets
from scratch and that does seem to be the case so thank you if
you are subscribed over and over there to follow the build but it
is very much sort of getting our finger in learning all
the skills we need so that we can get to that point where we can make interesting
battle reports because ultimately i think that is a goal for
me as well with the youtube also the youtube
(18:12):
i think is a great place for sort of
our rules and misplayed rules sections yeah and tactics as well and tutorials
and all that kind of stuff which don't translate in an audio format where you're
listening to two people talking back and forth sometimes you need those visual
aids and visual cues yeah and so i think we probably still will have some sort
of rules clarifications etc on the podcast but i can.
(18:35):
Imagine a place where as we get more into youtube
we transition a lot of that content and a
lot of sort of our custom mission content over to the
youtube side and so we are going to start
sort of drifting that way and give more focus to
the youtube in order to make that possible there are going to be some changes
with the podcast and what can listeners expect from us in the
(18:55):
future phil so what that means in terms of the schedule is we
will be moving away from weekly releases on a thursday our
next episode will be in two weeks time on a
sunday where we'll be reviewing our
experiences at the welsh nationals and we'll be
moving to episodes not on a weekly basis to
allow us time to focus on youtube but also make sure that we are putting that
(19:16):
content on the pod you can definitely expect us to finish off the armies on
parade series which will be china romania and italy a couple of major events
coming up in the uk that we'll be attending over over the next few months,
and that will bring us up nicely to September,
which will be in time for the launch of V3.
Yeah, I imagine as Warlord release more and more tidbits about V3,
(19:37):
you'll be wanting to join us for our thoughts on that, and also just to make
sure you're not missing out on anything, because I can't imagine that once the pre-orders go live,
Warlord are just going to go radio silent again.
I imagine they'll slowly release more and more little snippets to whet the appetite.
Yeah, so the recent article said that we can expect to hear from them,
(19:59):
ramping it back up again in July, which obviously is when the pre-orders go live.
So, yeah, expect to hear stuff from Warlord and expect to hear us reflecting
what we're getting to hear from Warlord.
Yeah, I suppose on that note, Phil, what are you hoping from V3?
What I want is the same pace of play that we currently get from V2,
because once you get yeah there's not a huge amount of rules and the game is fairly intuitive.
(20:24):
So i don't find that i'm spending a lot of time flicking back
and forth checking the rule so i want to keep that pace of play there are
obviously some certain things which do need addressing it'd be
that point cost be that certain units or certain types
of units that we don't see it'll be nice to be able to to see
them again and more of the same but
refined find what i
(20:46):
don't want to see is a complete change and rip it all up and move to something
else and from what warlord has said already in terms of the press release and
in terms of the the article on the website last week it doesn't sound like that's
going to be the case which is good yeah in my perspective i totally agree the
core system i'd like to remain very similar the
thing that i don't think is going to happen but i would like is to get
(21:07):
rid of templates because i think they add unnecessary faff to a
game i would quite like a sort of a dice hits mechanic
like we hadn't v1 but with a little bit extra sort
of moderation so you're not getting 12 hits on a single fella and
i think there is a place for that but because in their preview they
said they mentioned templates specifically yeah i
don't think we're going to get that and so for anyone who is similar
(21:28):
to me doesn't like templates unfortunately it looks like we're sticking with
them in terms of other parts of the game i'd like machine guns to get a special
rule because the other team weapons have a special rule i would like that special
rule not to be just an extra pin because I don't think that's enticing enough
and I don't think it's particularly interesting either so I'm rather hoping
it's something like a suppressing fire mode or or indirect fire something interesting.
(21:51):
Just to give people a reason to play them, just because they're quirky as much as anything.
And in terms of, I think, the big tidy up are things like points costs.
I think maybe you bring your vehicles down a little bit. You maybe increase
the cost of a machine gun on a vehicle, or you give it a special rule where
it's an extra minus one to hit.
Basically, I don't want to see these battle wagons where you've got five machine
guns on a light tank being the optimum tank.
(22:13):
I'd quite like your Shermans to be a good value for money purchase and your
DACA stewards to be fine, but not, not really anything to write home about.
And again, similar for your infantry choices. I'd like all the infantry choices
to be fairly comparable to each other where yes, they'll play in different ways.
So you choose the one based on your play style, but there isn't an obvious choice
(22:35):
where if I'm playing Brits, then obviously I have to take to her because I want to be competitive.
And so those are the big things from my perspective. of so really
for me just a massive thank you to everybody who's listened who's
liked shared and subscribed who supported us who's sent
us a message who's maybe coming along said hello when they've seen us at
events and shows and so on it's been great doing this it's been great to have
(22:56):
that interaction with people and it's been great to hear from people who who've
been enjoying it if there's anything you'd like us to look at and talk about
which we haven't mentioned we've we've got planned drop us a message or drop
us an email yeah thank you to everyone who's listened throughout out of the air.
Thank you to everyone who's supported us in any other way you've supported us, such as Patreon.
And if you haven't checked us out on YouTube yet, please do check us out and
(23:17):
get subscribed over there, as obviously our future How to Play V3 and Rules
Queries will probably be featured more prominently there than on the podcast,
due to the visual medium.
And, as ever, thank you for listening. Ta-ta for now. Ta-ta for two weeks.
Music.
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