Love it or hate it, building, painting, and customizing your army is a huge part of the appeal of miniature wargames, a creative hobby that lets you put your own distinctive mark onto your collection of models. Publisher Slitherine Games has given Wargamer an exclusive early look at how the upcoming videogame adaptation of WW2 wargame Bolt Action will translate that hobby experience into a digital form, with the game’s bespoke Army Customization System.
If you’re a long time strategy game fan – and also a tabletop wargamer – your benchmark for this will probably be the Warhammer 40k game Dawn of War, which allows players to specify the color scheme and iconography for each faction in broad brush strokes. The customization system coming in Bolt Action is much, much more in depth.
By default, units have historically appropriate uniforms and gear. But you can customize every individual squad type, with slots for:
- Faces
- Skin tones
- Headgear
- Uniforms
- Gear and accessories
It’s not quite granular enough to let you modify individual squad members. But the range of gear is broad: helmet variants, field caps, bare heads, national headgear, historically inspired uniforms, seasonal clothing, backpacks, entrenching tools, ammo pouches, canteens, and so on.
You can save up to five presets for each unit type in an army. Then when you field a platoon in battle, you can give each squad in your platoon whichever preset you think fits. So if you want to make an American army from the Battle of the Bulge, you might make a preset for riflemen with extremely battered and depleted gear (and no cold-weather clothing) to represent the theatre veterans, and another for your new recruits with factory fresh kit.
Vehicles get similar customization options. You can pick a factory base coat, add camouflage patterns, and seasonal whitewashes. Slitherine promises an extensive library of division emblems, tactical unit numbers, and national insignia inspired by period designs. The studio gives the German Balkenkreuz as an example, and I have to assume that – like the tabletop game – there won’t be any Swastikas here.
Unlike the tabletop game, which often splits out variants on common tank chassis to separate unit entries, here they’re consolidated into options for a single hull. That’ll include main gun options, turret variants, and specialized weapon loadouts; if you want to turn a Sherman into a Zippo, you’ll just swap the main gun for a flamethrower.
The range of these cosmetics is intentionally limited, with curated historical uniform variants and camo patterns, to preserve the vibes – you won’t have the freedom of a color wheel. If you’re particularly determined to paint your troops in lurid colors and use anime memes for your insignia, you’ll have to do it with mods.
Slitherine sells a lot of post-launch content for its games, mostly faction DLC, but this system isn’t going to be monetized – every uniform, helmet, gear accessory, camo scheme, and decal is included in the base game. Slitherine even promises free updates after launch. Some cosmetic options will be gated behind faction-specific milestones in single-player campaigns and multiplayer matches, which may annoy players who want to get stuck right in, but certainly appeals to my lizard brain.
While a videogame doesn’t give you as much freedom to customize your army as you have with physical miniatures, it’s a lot quicker and a lot cheaper. And the experience can feel surprisingly similar, something I discovered while testing the advanced kitbashing features in Hero Forge.
If you’re a fan of strategy games or have a carefully customized army you’d love to show off, come and hang out in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
