"Bolt Action revisited, thoughts and review" Topic

Johan was more than happy to play another game of Bolt Action so that I could get a hands on experience. The previous article on the subject with my first impression of the rules ended up being very popular, so I hope that this slightly more informative and informed article will provide equal interest. It's a long post and it's not as structured as my normal reviews – more like a "train of thoughts". I probably didn't cover every aspect of the game either, for instance close combat didn't come into play in our demo, but that was described in my previous post about Bolt Action.

link

Thanks for the summary. Doesn't look like a system I would enjoy.

Thanks for posting.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly

Thank you again. (And thanks for posting the Polish Home Army; I'll be doing them in 20mm!).

"Personally I'm always on the lookout for something new and innovative in a wargame, design concepts which make me think 'ah that's a cool way to resolve such a situation'."

Maybe check out Chain of Command, coming Aug 21 from Too Fat Lardies. Good news is you'll be able to use your same BA forces.

Great report and love the Polish freedom fighters…

We have been playing BA for about 6 month now. We really enjoy the rules and the fast play of teh game system. Our WED night group has about 2.5 hoyrs of play time and we have always finihed all of our BA games in that time span.

There are some game quirks that take getting used too…still have not learned to like the "lose an assualt you lose your squad!" rule but it works with this game system and makes you think twice before commiting 1 of your 2 or 3 combat squads.

SFC Retired

At the moment ,I don't think its a game I will play as yet. There appears to be a very long errata and having already bought the rules I don't fancy going through each rule and altering it . I think I will just place it on the back burner and see if a second or reprint is done incorporating the Errata.

I have not played, but someone at our FLGS said he broke the game simply arming a ton of troops with submachine guns, assaulting, and killing everything. Sounds dubious to me, but the comment that SFC Retired mentioned about lose an assault and your whole squad dies lends some credance to the anecdote.

SMG's according to Johan who ran the demo, are superb for assaulting into close combat as they give you a bonus on the "to hit" roll. And from the previous demo I did hear the guys talk that if you lose the close combat after 1 round of fighting everyone in the losing unit is removed from the table.

Yup. 10 guys assault a single chap in combat. The amount of pinning level are ignored once combat is commenced. If the single guy amazingly survives and kills one of the attackers the attackers would be removed. Personally this is a bit much I believe as I like more granularity in my games in terms of outcomes (but if played as the designers intended it is actually fine too if you don't), so we house ruled it in 2 ways;

1. You only remove the whole unit if the single model is the one attacking.
2. If not attacking, or in subsequent turns (a draw will not remove either side) then you can only remove the attacking unit if it DOESN'T outnumber the defending unit by more than 2:1. So in the above example the lone guy would not 'break' the 9 remaining.

SMGs do give a close combat bonus which is only right IMO. However as mentioned the pins put on a unit would be ignored once in combat. This in my opinion is a bit daft as the defending unit should be effected by the amount of fire they have received. So again we have house ruled that the unit rolls a test as if they were attempting to do an action. If passed then they ignore as usual, if failed they will be at -1 to hit in combat for each pin (just like with shooting). Bear in mind this isn't the RAW, but our house adaptations for what we like.

Ark3nubis – The assaulting unit does have to pass the order test before it can move and assault. The pins do affect that roll, IIRC.

Some of the strange rule interactions and the sometimes whacky interpretations of equipment, etc. are what have soured me to BA. It will always have a place in my heart because it got me in to 28mm WWII skirmish, but I think I'm looking for something a bit more "refined"…

Hi Neal, yes, that is as per any other action, however the TARGET unit can be pinned to all-and-sundry but they have their pins removed once the attacking unit makes contact. All it would prevent is shooting prior to contact (if they can shoot).

We have house rules quite a bit more than just the above for BA. We like the core system, and the general feel of play, but I agree. US rifles for instance have a range of 24", but the BAR has a range of 30". These should be the same. I am not a fan of the 6" or 12" moves, and SMGs firing 12", whereas rifles fire 24". It is this shooting relative to movement stats that I am not that comfortable with. We have ameded this in two ways: all non SMG, Pistol, Panzerfaust etc can fire unlimited range, but will only cause pins on the target. This is at -1 to hit in addition to other modifiers and provided the unit is stationary. As for SMGs, we don't pay the points but have them, at 9". Again, this is what we want from the game, but not to everyone's taste of course.

sorry missed "defending"

I'm not a BA apologist but I want to talk about this comment.

"…10 guys assault a single chap in combat. The amount of pinning level are ignored once combat is commenced. If the single guy amazingly survives and kills one of the attackers the attackers would be removed…"

I went back a re-read BA rules on this situation. The attackers get to go first and get to roll 10 dice to wound (the hits are automatic in hth).

If the lone defender survived he would get a single die back, another automatic hit just rolling to get a wound.

If a lone defender can both survive 10 hits AND cause more wounds (basically the 10 man squad would have to roll zero successful wounds on him), I figure he ought to win.

"Winning" isn't the issue. :)

The other 9 guys just disappear. They don't retreat and the sergeant yells at them: "Come on guys! It's just one dude! We can take 'em!" and they try again…

They are removed from the game…

Yes you're right Privateer, and I wondered how long before the 'he out to win' query would take to emerge :)

The issue is as NealSmith mentioned though, the remaining 9 guys (unless they were maybe troops with the 'Shirkers' ability or something) wouldn't just give up. They did indeed not count as winning, but they would (especially if they are on attack orders, and by orders I mean the army's general attacking orders, not BA's orders) would be very unlikely to just throw in the towel just because one of there's died, and especially if they can see there's only one dude their facing.

Certainly a few medals awarded to chaps who took scores of the enemy prisoner single handed…

Perhaps thats what the BA assault rule could be visualised as. One particuarly scary gent, taking others prisoner.

I dont play the rules, not my bag, but given the 'Comic Book' approach to the game, in the style of 'Warlord' and 'Victor', that ending to an assault seems in keeping.

Does appear to be Warhammer 20C.

Pretty much in ANY set of rules (that I've played in my nearly 40 years of gaming, is the "If you roll like , you lose. No matter how sound your tactics are". It is, after all, a game. In CrossFire, my favorite set of rules, of any period, you loose ALL of your stands in hand 2 hand or "Close Combat" as it's called, if you lose the attack(die roll). You can however attack with so many advantages that you CANNOT lose. Usually by attacking with 3 or 4 stands(about 30 or 40 men)against a single stand(about 10 men). In CrossFire each stand represents a Squad & 3-4 Squads, a Platoon. We actually use stands to represent a "fire team" of about 3,4 men, so in our way of looking at it its about 12 guys to 4. And as said before, roll pure crap & BANG. Everybody dies. I've yet to play BA, I own it & we are gonna play a game this or next weekend. I'm looking forward to it. I'll try to post something after our first game. Notice, I called it a game:)
Peter

"…The other 9 guys just disappear…"

as the lone defender chucks a grenade, shoots from his position and stabs the last guy dead (as represented by the 9 other guys going poof!).

If you don't like that mechanic, I can understand.
To me it's a reasonable trade-off from the drawn-out, nearly game long hth stuff I've seen in other games.

I am not a fan of the 6" or 12" moves, and SMGs firing 12", whereas rifles fire 24".

This is same as Warhammer 40,000 and I suspect that's deliberate. Good marketing and all that.

Hmm 10 guys not managing one hit, while one guy does: very long odds! Pretty unfair observation as any game using dice can be pulled apart if you ignore the probabilities.

As for the move distances and ranges yes those are proven measures for a 6 by 4 table, objective based game to finish in around 6 turns allowing for tactical fire and movement. I can't see the problem with that, unless you want to play real scale (tiny moves, huge ranges) and revert to trench warfare ;)

unless you want to play real scale (tiny moves, huge ranges) and revert to trench warfare ;)

IABSM effectively has unlimited ranges, especially for MGs, and that doesn't become static warfare

Force on Force and Chain of Command also has unlimited range as does from memory Infinity.

BGK has rifle range out to 30 inches and things like Panzer IVs can fire out to 70 inches.

But all of these games have reaction/overwatch mechanisms.

Does Bolt Action have overwatch/reaction fire?

Any game that is based on a setting where the protagonists have rapid firing firearms should have such a mechanism, especially where troops are represented 1:1.

Obviously at higher levels of command (batallion/brigade/division) infinite range is not quite realistic as terrain scale is a lot smaller.

Lack of proper overwatch/reaction fire + short ranges of the big faults of FOW and 40K since 3rd edition (though incidentally none of these has a defined ground scale).

> Does Bolt Action have overwatch/reaction fire?

Yes.

For the 10 to 1 scenario.
I calculated the chance of a single guy beating 10 guys to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5%. That is with a 1 in 6 chance of hitting and the 10 guys having a attack each. If the hit chance is higher or the number of attacks goes up (someone would have an SMG…) then it gets even worse.

But what if that one man is a veteran Gurkha with "tough as boots" ;)

Most of the time (about 5-6 times now) we have had a lone guy get attacked, but nearly every time there's only up to 3 or 4 in range. I don't think we've ever had the full squad (who takes a full squad anyways) manage to get on one guy. The 10 to 1 scenario above was to illustrate the point, and obviously happens far less than say 3 Vs 5, or 8 Vs 4 or whatever.

Yes BA has a Reaction mechanic, two if you like. For evey unit in your army you get an orders dice, so does you opponent. In a turn, one dice gets pulled, and the player corresponding to the relevant colour move a unit. They then pull another dice, again the relevant player moves a unit. As the dice are totally random, you can argue that you get a chance to 'React' before your opponent gets to move the rest of their force.

Also there's the Ambush order you can give a unit, and very much the old 40K 'Overwatch' rule for a comparison, so yes, there is plenty of action/reaction in the game, hence part of the reason it is very popular.

Thanks much for the review. I'm still painting IP minis for my first game.

I will probably drop the FUBAR rules but otherwise I like the rules as they stand.

Fubar's great fun…my mate's Germans shot their own officer a couple of games back!