It has been a while since we last talked about one of my favourite games on the blog. Despite not having hit the table with it since 2023, BPRE28mm is still probably one of my favourite games to play, a gold standard that breaks my usual aversion to hyper-competitive head-to-head experiences. Its a game that I have collected all the bits for, with both expansion packs in my collection. I even played it at work on a Thursday lunchtime, introducing my Corporate Regular Opponents to a game he turned out to be pretty good at.
But it has been a while since we last played it. Work got busy, game time outside of it was limited, and so I found myself drawn to other games, ones where more of my friends were playing and were able to enjoy as a social event (such as Necromunda and Old World). One thing I like about BPRE28mm is that both players need to stay focused on the board, with little downtime and lots of decision-making and risk-taking right up until the final moment. Not always the most relaxing thing!
However, this hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it, or keeping up with it. It was great to see it reach into the final expansion pack, Spearhead, adding two extra factions and their associated warfighters – Scorch is now joined by the troops of the Awbari National Directorate of Intelligence (giving them some more options that provide some interesting tweaks to gameplay, including fighters that can be mortally wounded before being removed), while the Hongbin gain Qasra’s SPEAR Brigade, the second phase of their involvement in the region as elite Special Forces teams enter Awbari. Alongside these units (and some additional warfighters for the exisiting factions), there is also the larger Spearhead tasking (taking place on 39″ x 26″ rather than Night Raid’s 26″ x 26″) and the Spearhead Campaign that combines Phaseline taskings (the largest and most in-depth style of mission) and Spearhead taskings, all in a campaign with persistent battlespaces rolled up at the start and then slowly fall apart as you are fighting through mission by mission, hypersonic missiles and artillery ripping structures apart.
There is a significant amount of content I’ve yet to even play from the three books (Core, Phaseline and Spearhead) that I haven’t yet dug into. But it has been occupying my mind. Waiting.
Cut to now. Work is starting to calm down; I am getting my evenings and weekends back, and it’s time for the Dastardly Regular Opponent to have a big birthday. For this event, he decides to have a game day, renting out the scout hut for the day and gathering friends from near and far. Although ostensibly a Necromunda day (it is the game he has been spending a considerable amount of the year playing), there was very early on talk about general skirmish gaming. As the Creative Regular Opponent was unable to attend and bring Infinity with him (a game I will be covering soon on this blog), it fell to me to provide the Alternative Skirmish Gaming, in the form of BPRE28mm.
Before all of that however, there was some painting to be done. Although I detailed my painting of the original set in a post on this blog, this still left four boxes of figures to be finished off. The grand plan was originally to get everything done, but eventually this shifted to the slightly more logical plan of painting up all the figures for the core two factions. This would provide a wide selection of capabilities from across the rulebooks (letting us use the CQB weapons and grenade launchers from Phaseline and the extended MG rules from Spearhead), which would help to show off what the game can do. It would also make things a little easier, as I already had all the paint schemes written down and good to go.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about being a moron! I mentioned in my original painting post my method of painting things black. There is a lot of black on the models with armour, helmets, weapons and more. If I were sensible, I would spray the models grey, or at the very least give them a zenithal highlight with black undercoat and then spray white on top – this is how I am doing my models now, and I’m pretty happy with the results. However, I was trying to have these match the figures I painted back in 2023, which meant I had to use the original method – black undercoat, paint grey on the black bits, then black contrast over the top. The effect is still great, but it definitely ended up taking more time than intended.#
The second part of being a moron? Washes. A big part of the paint schemes (and my whole style) is liquid talent – Agrax Earthshade. I lather most of my models in it to improve their look, giving them an overall cohesive appearance before finishing off with the highlights. However, haven’t been painting a great deal this year, which has meant many of my paints have been sitting for a while. Since they’re GW paints, I am slowly working through a graveyard of dried-out pots to clear some space, while also keeping an eye on any that have separated. This unfortunately includes my latest bottle of Agrax, which I failed to shake up before proceeding to douse it over the four Mutasibi sappers I had painted up. This was less than ideal, especially as I was doing it the night before game day. After having a brief moment considering my next step, I realised that once done, I could simply hit it with a matt varnish over the top to flatten it down, something I did after the event.
The good news was that my paint schemes were pretty simple and I was able to get all of the Scorch, Hongbin and Aayari Guard painted and ready for game day. It was fun returning to the models; I was reminded how well-designed they are, with a good mix of fine detail but still a high level of paint-ability. This is something that isn’t always there in figures of modern-day operators, as you can occasionally, with releases, find yourself spiralling down in all the fine detail. Out of the new guys, I do particularly like the Scorch Automatic Rifleman Heavy and the Recce Raiders, two cool tweaks on the existing figures and a chance to get some other colours into the paint scheme.
Game day comes along and the two usual problems for these days appear – the first was that the Dastardly Regular Opponent invited us to gather on another York Race Day (the hut is a stone’s throw from the racecourse, which means we need to deal with the extra traffic from the day) and the other was that the organisation was the usual “turn up and play”. Luckily we had enough players to split, breaking down to a big 4-player Necromunda game featuring birthday presents, the D100 boy running new Necromunda for the pair of friends from across the Pennines and then myself introducing BPRE28mm to one of the York gamers. While we originally intended to run a full-length Phaseline game (hence the setup above and also partially to show it all off), we switched to playing a pair of Night Raid scenarios using each half – not technically an intended layout, but one that still worked pretty well for introducing the game.
How do I know it went well for introducing? Well, we had an absolute barn burner of a first game. After a quick walk-through of the rules with a couple of figures aside, game one saw the Ayari attempting to get an S-Vest inside a target structure to detonate. This required the Awabari team to target the Ayari Mutasib, as removing all of them from the board would physically prevent me from any chance of winning. I ran an entirely Ayari force, giving me a literal pile of Shurta to throw at the problem, as well as a good selection of the Mutasib in both their forms. While my PKM team was able to deliver some truly devastating fire into the Scorch position (and removed at least one of the Assaulters), Scorch was able to drop a Scoria on a chunk of my force, as well as whittling down my Mutasibs through intermediate actions. The game came down to a single turn – if I could push my remaining two Sappers in, I would win the game. However, my force was running low (only the PKM and its assistant, and they were not in a position to cover the angle), so I planned to rush one across to draw fire with the other, then hit the building. Alas, the dice were against me, but it was definitely a tense ending.
We then managed to fit in a very short game before breaking for lunch, where a well-placed Scorch MG rolled up my flank after my enabler popped a door open to cross a gap, leaving the rest of his cadre to get shot up. Not my finest moment!
After lunch, I grabbed the pair of guys from Manchester to come play, ably assisted by the Corporate Regular Opponent. Seeing as one of them spends most of his time handling my inept tactical decision-making in WarDogs/Hunt Showdown/Ready or Not and more, I was excited to see his take on this game. Unfortunately, the first two games did not go well – we were still using the half-phaseline board from the morning game, which meant several starting points had direct line of sight across the board. On the plus side, this was an excellent chance to drill into them just how destructive this game can be, with turn 1 GL shots and Scoira deployments causing us to reset the board. On the negative side, it reminded us to set up the game properly.
On the third attempt, though, we reassembled everything and used one of the intended layouts for the night raid, leading to an incredibly close game. One of the Manchester lot went to set up Dreadfleet for the day-ending game, leaving the Corporate Regular Opponent to play the Ayari Guard as I split Scorch with my fellow tactical shooter player. This game was a nail-biter to the end – the Hongbin Grenade Launchers were able to lock down angles with ease, forcing Scorch to be very careful where they were at the end of each turn before rushing forward into the next location. In some ways, it was harder to play with the team split in half, having to plan turns carefully to keep the force moving. The whole time felt like we were on a knife edge, where one wrong move could make everything collapse. The ending was right out of the books, with literally only three figures on the board: a Hongbin Grenadier and a Mutasib against a Scorch Advisor. Trying to avoid the Grenadier’s arc, I unfortunately moved my Advisor a little too close, letting the Mutasib sprint round the corner and clack off. After that game, part of me was ready to stand outside the portacabin door with a cigarette just to calm down the nerves. And I don’t even smoke!
After that, the group played Dreadfleet to finish off the day, but I had to admit my mind was still thinking about Awbari. Still thinking about the could-haves, should-haves, and the angles and force options and intervention cards that could have come in handy. Still thinking about how adding the two new factions would open up more possibilities or how playing across the length of a Phaseline board would change things up.
So, as a return to BPRE28mm, I feel like this was a great jump in. I’ve already organised a full Night Raid session with my friend over in York for our first monthly session at the Scout Hut, and even the Corporate Regular Opponent has said he might be up for playing some more. The plan is to play a Spearhead campaign in the near future, letting us play around with the Degradation mechanics (including the Sarin attack card waiting to be deployed to ruin everything). I’ve already started reading through the rules to familiarise myself with it, and I’m excited to see it on the board.
Before all of that, though, I have some more painting to do – both SPEAR and Nitto need to get painted, which means I need to work out some new paint schemes. I think getting these guys done is the next big step and should lead to some different games.
Speaking of different games, there is another more recent release from Echelon that I should probably take a look at…
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