Units used

Sadly, as of writing, no Starter Army Box exists for Norway, but Great Escape Games has a lovely metal range of infantry and support teams. Great Escape a couple box sets that make this slightly easier, but as everything is metal models you pay a bit of a premium.

This “starter army” uses metal models including:

• x2 Norwegian Infantry Platoon (Summer Uniform) – 48 models – Metal
• Norwegian M29 HMG Team (Summer Uniform) – Metal
• Norwegian Mortar Team (Summer Uniform) – Metal
• Norwegian Sniper Team (Summer Uniform) – Metal
• x2 Volkswagen Type 82E Staff Car (Company B) – Resin

The How’s Life With No AT List

Breakdown

(x) denotes a vehicle-mounted weapons.

Notes and Analysis

Stepping well outside of the Big Five, I wanted to take a swing at a “starter army” for Norway. Expanding outside of Warlord Games, this list uses the characterful Summer Uniform range from Great Escape Games.

Norway is not a beginner-friendly nation to play in Bolt Action, additionally even with the limited number of equipment options they had historically, Warlord gives you even less to play with. However, I’ve found that with their Army Special Rules combined with what the force limitations result in a Norwegian platoon that can be very dangerous to play against. And let’s not forget, as many of the players like to say; Bolt Action is an infantry game, Norway is an Infantry Army. So, crack open your Armies of France and the Allies and skip straight to pg65 for the Norwegian Army List.

First of you got your Army Special Rules – Communication Breakdown, Fieldcraft, and Infiltration (there’s also another hidden option that all practical purposes is an Army Special Rule, but we will get to that later).

Communication Breakdown: In a nutshell, if the first Order Die of the game isn’t yours, your opponent can decide to draw a new Order Die. Not all that important and every game I’ve played the rule has never been used.

Fieldcraft: If you are Hidden you can start the game in Ambush and all Norwegian infantry units treat Rough Ground and Obstacles as Open Ground for movement purposes on Turn 1.

Infiltration: when Outflanking, Norwegian units ignore the -1 modifier to the Order Test to arrive.

These last two rules are where we make the list dangerous. The first couple turns of a game are all about positioning. We use Fieldcraft and Infiltration to bound straight through to where we want to be with our big infantry blocks then, make the enemy come to you.

Here also is the secret fourth Army Special Rule. For Norway all of your Infantry squads and teams can have skis for free. That’s your HQ units, squads, mortars, and MMG teams. This almost never matters because the table would need have “snow and winter conditions” that affect movement for the skis to even be useful. But that one time you play on a winter table with big snow drifts as patches of Rough Ground, you get to glide across the table and witness the total shock and horror of your opponent (exaggerated, but you get the idea).

Now the hard part, you get no AT. I mean this literally. The highest Armor Pen weapon you get is for your Medium Mortar. The Light Howitzer has the No Anti-Tank Round rule so when you fire AT from it, it only has a +1 Pen. Though this does give you a 10pt discount for it (40pts instead of 50pts). Apart from these you can take AT Grenades, but only on your elite Norwegian Royal Guard Veteran Infantry. I always give the ATG to these squads because I have no other choice, but this does present a lesser used opportunity. It is uncommon, to say the least, that a player tries to close assault a Tank with infantry in order to kill it (much less have that as the plan). So, we use our better movement abilities to get on the objective early, lure the enemy Tank to come in to push you off, then counter charge and destroy the big expensive model. I’ve had success at this at tournaments oddly enough because it is anathema do behave in this way with any other army in the game.

I’ve waffled on enough, and you, dear comrade, probably understand the general idea by now. So, as a final comment, you have my highest praise for even considering to play what is objectively the most difficult force to play in the game. I wish you the best of luck, and may the dice gods smile upon you.

– Matt