How a few friends rolling dice and pushing little plastic soldiers around a table turned into something much bigger.
I’ve always had a love for tabletop games and wargaming. It started with strategy board games like Risk and Axis & Allies, which eventually led me down the rabbit hole of Warhammer 40,000, and when I say I got into Warhammer, I mean I went full throttle.
Unfortunately, over time, I became increasingly discouraged by the direction the game was heading. Between the business model and what I felt was a move away from the strategic elements that originally drew me in, I eventually lost interest.
I still dabbled in wargaming here and there, playing a few American Civil War and naval rulesets, but nothing really stuck. For years, I didn’t have a main tabletop game to call my own, and I was genuinely starting to think that maybe wargaming just wasn’t going to be a big part of my life anymore.
Then one day, my friend Dom invited me over to try a World War II tabletop game called Bolt Action.
Now, I had heard of Bolt Action before. In fact, I vaguely remembered hearing some negative things about it a few years earlier. Don’t ask me what those things were because I honestly can’t remember. But I figured I’d give it a fair shot.
And I’m glad I did. I absolutely loved it.
The order dice system, the way units interact with terrain, the strategic decisions, and just the overall feeling of commanding a World War II army immediately clicked with me. It had so much of what I had been missing from tabletop wargaming.
I jumped straight into collecting a British army, and I haven’t really looked back since.
From Four Players to Something More
I can’t really take credit for starting our little Bolt Action obsession. That belongs to Dom and Tom, who already had their armies and were the ones who convinced me to give the game a try.
Eventually, we managed to convince Dom’s dad, George, to join us.
Now, George was hesitant. Very hesitant.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about introducing George to a new game, it’s that you just need to get him through those first few matches. Once he starts figuring things out, he’s hooked. Sure enough, a few games later, George was all in. These days, he’s fielding a pretty nasty Soviet army and giving the rest of us plenty of problems to deal with.
For a while, it was just the four of us playing together, learning the game, building our armies, and having a great time.
But eventually, you get tired of playing the same three people over and over again.
Don’t get me wrong, we loved our games, but we knew Bolt Action was too good of a game to keep to ourselves. We wanted to meet more players, see different armies, experience different playstyles, and hopefully find a larger community.
So we started looking around Orange County.
And to our surprise, there really wasn’t much of an organized local presence that we could find. There were scattered conversations online, a few players here and there, but nothing that seemed to bring everyone together.
Luckily, we stumbled across a Combat Patrol tournament being hosted at Brookhurst Hobbies, one of the few local stores carrying Warlord Games products.
The tournament was being organized by Dan and Alex, two veterans of the Bolt Action scene who had already been putting in the work to grow the local community.
We figured this was our chance.
The Tournament That Changed Everything
Dom, Tom, and I went into that first tournament with a pretty competitive mindset.
We had plenty of experience with other tabletop games, and by that point, we’d played a ton of Bolt Action amongst ourselves. Naturally, we assumed we were walking into a room full of equally experienced players ready to throw down.
There was definitely a little intensity going into it.
But once we arrived, we quickly realized that a lot of the people there were either relatively new to Bolt Action or were simply looking to enjoy some casual games and meet other players.
And that completely changed our mentality.
Instead of worrying so much about winning, we started focusing on making sure we were having a good time and, more importantly, that the person sitting across from us was having just as much fun.
It ended up being a fantastic experience.
We met a ton of people who were just discovering the game, many coming from other tabletop systems, and everyone seemed genuinely excited to be there.
I think that tournament really solidified what kind of community we wanted to help build.
There were already people putting in the effort, players eager to get involved, and a shared enthusiasm for the game. What seemed to be missing was something to bring everyone together and keep that momentum going.
And that’s really where OC Bolt Action was born.
Not as some grand organization with a master plan, but as a way to bring together people who loved the same hobby and wanted more opportunities to play.
Sundays at Brookhurst Hobbies
Fast forward a bit, and we’ve now got a group of players regularly getting together at Brookhurst Hobbies on Sundays.
We usually start around noon and, before you know it, it’s 8 PM and we’re still there rolling dice, talking strategy, admiring each other’s armies, and generally having a great time.
One of my favorite things about the club is how many personalities we’ve gotten to know along the way.
We’ve got Dave, who has earned himself the nickname Field Artillery Officer David because of his seemingly supernatural ability to blast everyone off the table with artillery.
There’s Nason, who’s been experimenting with his army, figuring out what works, and has gotten to the point where he’s now kicking some serious ass.
Cody is an excellent player who always brings a strong game, and we’ve met so many others like Ethan, Ike, and plenty more who have helped make our weekends something to look forward to.
And then there’s Dom.
Dom and I have something of a running rivalry, although I’m not entirely sure you can call it a rivalry when one guy is kicking the other’s ass most of the time.
To his credit, he’s probably the strongest player amongst us. He approaches every game with a sharp strategic mind and always seems to be thinking three moves ahead.
He also likes to believe he’s mentoring me.
Although, considering some of the decisions I make during our games, I’m not entirely sure he’d want to take credit for my development.
That said, I do have to remind him of the time he conceded on turn two after my artillery barrage and rocket battery absolutely leveled his army.
I’ll be holding onto that one for a while.
Beyond the games themselves, Dom and I have also spent a lot of time building terrain, working on our armies, and sharing photos and updates with the community.
I’d like to think seeing all that terrain and freshly painted miniatures helped motivate people to keep working on their own armies and get out to play. But realistically, these guys were probably already excited enough. We just gave each other more excuses to keep buying and painting little soldiers.
And that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of all this.
People who were complete strangers not that long ago are now friends I look forward to seeing every weekend.
There’s More Than One Way to Play Bolt Action
Something I’ve come to appreciate about Bolt Action is just how many different ways there are to enjoy it. You’ve got competitive games, casual pickup games, and my personal favorite: historical scenarios and campaigns.
I absolutely love scenario-driven wargaming.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about being placed into a situation where you don’t get to control every aspect of your army. You’re given a set of units, a battlefield, and an objective, and you’ve got to figure out how to make it work.
To me, that’s where some of the best strategic thinking happens.
Dan and Alex have been doing an awesome job encouraging this style of play through their monthly North African campaign.
Rather than allowing everyone to bring whatever optimized list they want, the campaign encourages armies consisting of infantry, vehicles, and weapons that would have actually appeared in the early-to-mid-war North African theater.
The terrain is different, the equipment available is different, and suddenly the strategies you’ve grown comfortable using on a European battlefield don’t necessarily translate.
You have to adapt.
They’ve also been organizing two scenarios per event day, including battles inspired by the Second Battle of El Alamein and Kasserine Pass, with custom missions and historically appropriate army restrictions.
It’s been great seeing people embrace that approach and discover an entirely different side of the game.
And I think that’s one of Bolt Action’s greatest strengths.
You can show up with a competitive army and test your skills against another player, or you can recreate a historical battle and see how things unfold under a completely different set of circumstances.
Both can be incredibly fun, and I want OC Bolt Action to be a place where everyone can enjoy whichever style of play interests them.
Taking OC Bolt Action to Las Vegas
Recently, a few of us had the opportunity to attend the Las Vegas Open for one of Warlord Games’ major West Coast Bolt Action tournaments.
It was a great experience and definitely opened our eyes to the wider competitive scene.
There’s clearly plenty of interest in competitive Bolt Action, and it was exciting to see so many people coming together to play. At the same time, we walked away feeling that there were aspects of the tournament structure that could be improved.
Bolt Action is a fantastic game, but we believe a good competitive format should give players and their armies a fair opportunity to reach their potential. Some of the things we experienced made us question whether the current formats always accomplish that.
Rather than just complain about it, a few of us have started discussing and working on our own competitive ruleset and tournament structure.
Will it be the definitive way to play competitive Bolt Action? Probably not for everyone. But we’d love to develop something that works well for our community and creates fair, enjoyable games.
What really stood out to us at LVO, though, were the people.
We met fantastic players from all over, including some from Southern California who we were able to invite to join us at OC Bolt Action.
We also had the opportunity to speak with some wonderful representatives from Warlord Games, including Shawn Bagley, Jason Coffey, and Steven Valdez.
They were incredibly supportive of what we’re trying to accomplish with OC Bolt Action, and just as importantly, they were supportive of the players and community as a whole.
It’s always encouraging to meet people who genuinely care about the hobby and want to see it succeed.
Experiences like that make us even more excited about what we could eventually build here in Orange County.
Building a Home for OC Bolt Action
As the community continued to grow, we started running into another problem.
Information about Bolt Action is scattered everywhere.
You’ve got Reddit, Facebook groups, Discord servers, and websites and blogs that look like they haven’t been updated since the 90s. And while we primarily use Discord to communicate with our members, we realized that not everyone uses Discord, and we didn’t want that to be a barrier to getting involved.
We needed somewhere that anyone could visit to see what OC Bolt Action was doing, find upcoming events, read about our games, and hopefully discover something that would get them interested in the hobby.
The goal is pretty simple: create a central home for our community where we can share our experiences, promote events, and provide useful resources for Bolt Action players.
That means blog posts like this one, coverage of our games and campaigns, event information, and whatever else we think might be useful or interesting to the community.
But there’s another part of the website that I’m particularly excited about.
Our Army List Builder
As our club started getting more involved in historical scenarios and campaigns, we ran into a limitation with the existing army-building tools.
Warlord Games has a great official army builder that does what it needs to do, but we wanted more flexibility for the kinds of games we were organizing.
Specifically, we wanted the ability to create custom platoons, units, rules, and scenarios.
So I decided to build our own army list builder, using the functionality of Warlord’s official tool as a foundation while expanding it to support our club’s needs.
Our builder now offers much of the functionality you’d expect from an army-building tool, along with the ability to customize platoons, create special units and rules, and put together lists for scenarios that wouldn’t normally be supported.
For a club that loves historical and scenario-driven games, that’s a pretty big deal. And while we originally built it to support our own games, it’s available for anyone who wants to use it.
Whether you’re putting together a standard army list or planning some elaborate historical scenario with your friends, we hope it’s a useful addition to your hobby.
So, What’s Next?
As proud as I am of what we’ve built so far, I genuinely feel like we’re just getting started. Our immediate goal is simple: get more people playing Bolt Action.
George has been spearheading an upcoming Demo Day aimed at introducing the game to players from Dicehammer, his previous Warhammer 40K club.
A few of those guys have already expressed interest, particularly those who enjoy World War II history, and we’re hoping we can convince a few of them to give Bolt Action a proper shot.
After all, that’s how I got into the game.
One friend invited me over, I gave it a try, and now here I am writing an entire blog post about a club we’ve built around it.
Funny how that works.
As the club grows, we’d love to establish a more consistent calendar of tournaments, campaigns, and seasonal events.
One community that’s been a huge inspiration to us is Chicago Dice. They’ve done an incredible job organizing seasonal games, tournaments, and, my personal favorite, campaigns. Seeing what they’ve accomplished makes us excited about what could be possible here in Orange County.
We’d love to reach a point where we’ve got enough active players to run larger events, give our members more opportunities to compete and showcase their armies, and build something that people outside our immediate area recognize.
And who knows? Maybe one day we’ll be giving some of those established British Bolt Action clubs a run for their money.
We’d also love to continue building a relationship with Warlord Games and hopefully earn their support as our community grows.
At the end of the day, we’re all working toward the same thing: getting more people excited about Bolt Action.
The more successful the game becomes, the more opportunities we all have to enjoy it.
If You’re Thinking About Trying Bolt Action, Do It.
Seriously.
Whether you’re coming from Warhammer 40K, another tabletop wargame, or you’ve never played a miniature wargame in your life, I genuinely think Bolt Action has something to offer.
The order dice mechanic keeps things dynamic and unpredictable, army building is full of flavor, and the way terrain interacts with the battlefield makes every game feel different.
And I mean actual terrain. Hills, buildings, forests, roads, rivers, and all the other things that make a battlefield interesting.
Not just a collection of standardized terrain templates that every competitive table seems to revolve around.
There’s so much room for creativity, both in how you build your army and how you approach the game.
More importantly, there’s a great group of people here who would be happy to teach you.
You don’t need to show up with a perfectly painted army, years of experience, or an encyclopedic knowledge of World War II military equipment.
Just come out, roll some dice, and have fun.
That’s really what OC Bolt Action is about.
Here’s to What’s Ahead
When I think back to where this all started, it’s pretty funny.
A few years ago, I was genuinely worried that my days of regularly playing tabletop wargames were behind me.
Now, most Sundays, I find myself spending an entire afternoon at a hobby store surrounded by friends, beautiful miniature armies, and tables full of terrain.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I want to thank Dom and Tom for getting me into Bolt Action in the first place, George for jumping in and helping us introduce the game to more people, and Dan and Alex for all the work they’ve put into organizing events and growing the local scene.
And of course, thank you to Dave, Ethan, Cody, Ike, Nason, and everyone else who’s been coming out, bringing their armies, helping each other learn, and making this community what it is.
I also want to thank the people at Warlord Games and the wider Bolt Action community who’ve encouraged us along the way.
But what makes me happiest isn’t the website, the events, or even the prospect of running larger tournaments someday.
It’s being able to sit across the table from someone who was a complete stranger not too long ago, share some laughs, admire the work they’ve put into their army, and play a great game together.
Maybe you win. Maybe you lose. Maybe your entire army gets obliterated by an artillery barrage before you even get a chance to do anything.
Sorry, Dom.
But if you can finish the day, grab a drink with your opponent, and call them a friend, I think you’ve gotten everything you could possibly want out of this hobby.
That’s the kind of community I want OC Bolt Action to be.
So if you’re in Orange County and have been thinking about trying Bolt Action, come join us. We’re usually at Brookhurst Hobbies on Sundays, starting around noon.
And if you’re already part of the club, thank you for making all of this possible.
Here’s to many more games, campaigns, friendships, and probably a few more questionable tactical decisions on my part.
