Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello,

Personally I'd say Bolt action would be the better of the two for what your after, Black powder tends to need quite a lot of models for a game and is a little less flexible with what forces can play against eachother.
I play Germans for Bolt action and regularly play againts other German players ( Just pretend its some sort of training exercise) and i also play against a player that uses Japanese with no trouble. I'd also say its cheaper than Black powder to get started you can buy the 1000 point starter boxes for around £70 and thats pretty much all you'll need apart from the order dice (you could however just use two sets of different colour normal dice)

Hope that helps and if you have any other questions I'm more than happy to try and awnser them for you.

Lewis

The Japanese are pretty good at close combat but not so good at shooting from my experince, they also get access to very cheap suicide Anti tank squads.
I would recomend looking at the starter sets here http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/bolt-action-starter-sets the ones that go for £80 those all have enough for 1000 points which is the upper limit that most people play at. You'll also need to pick up a rule book and eventually the Armies of whichever nation you choose. I'd also recomend taking a look at this site http://boltaction.easyarmy.com/ It's a very good list builder that shows all of the different Theater selectors aswell as the generic ones for all of the diffrent nations and it puts any special rules for individual squads in their entry.

Lewis

For the Japanese I'd recomend going quite infantry heavy with as many sub machine guns as you can get in a squad as it give them an extra attack in close combat which is where the Japanese are best. and maybe add a mortar or artillery peice for a bit of ranged support.