A new battle report on Games Night, a miniature gaming channel founded by prolific Twitch streamers and YouTubers Yogscast, shows what WW2 might have looked like if the warring forces were made out of Lego. The new Lego Bolt Action battle report is as adorable as it is catastrophically destructive.
If you’ve not heard of it yet, Bolt Action is one of the best WW2 games available to play on the tabletop. It’s a miniature wargame produced by UK firm Warlord Games, which also makes a range of 28mm scale miniatures representing the different nations and stages of the war.
There are plenty of Games Night videos showing the game as it’s usually played, but this time, the team has cracked out a pile of new Lego sets to build their forces and their battlefield. While the full version of the battle report is reserved for channel members, you can watch the edited version right here:
Lewis Brindley fields the Soviet union. His forces consist of five T34 tanks and two infantry squads, one with a heavy machine gun team. The machine gun nest starts the game emplaced in a Lego manor building at the north of the field, which is one of the objectives for both forces.
Pyrion Flax takes the Germans, fielding two Panzer IVs, a military truck, and infantry. As well as wresting control of the Manor, he’s after the air strip at the south of the board. He also has a nasty surprise in store – a hidden Tiger tank with an ace commander, disguised among the bocage. Destroying the elite tanker is another objective for the Soviets.
The battlefield and forces start out as pristine Lego builds, but of course half the fun of building something great in Lego is tearing it apart. And over the course of the battle that’s exactly what Brindley and Flax do. Tanks knock over trees, the manor is blasted with holes, and by the end of the game the field is littered with the smoking wrecks of tanks and fallen plastic soldiers.
Lego doesn’t make any official military kits, and the Lego alternative kits for WW2 tanks made by other manufacturers tend to be larger scale than the ones in this video. It looks like the Games Night team has followed some user-created building instructions to make their miniatures and battlefield – we’ll let you know if we hunt down the designs!
With how expensive Lego sets can be, we’re not convinced that this approach would be any cheaper than building and painting miniatures for a Bolt Action army. But it certainly looks like a lot of fun!
If you fancy playing something set in WW2 that doesn’t require any construction before you get started, check out our guide to the best WW2 board games.