"15mm Bolt Action?" Topic

A combination of wanting to start a new theatre, lack of space, lack of budget for a full 28mm force and an obsession with the smaller scales I am going to be doing Bolt Action in 15mm. I will be using cm instead of inches and I am going to halve the table size. I will therefore be playing on a 3'x2' table.

I am interested to know if anyone else has done this?
Any thoughts?

I have the rules, have not played them but see no reason why this shouldn't work.

I played a few times:

I think the game would be better in 15mm than 28mm. Everything felt way to crowded and close in with the big figures.

You may wish to just give it a try with the basic 6 inch move etc. but with the smaller base size you can get with 15mm.

The line-of-sight issues with the game, may be made worse with 15mm. I suggest common sense house rules for that.

Yeah it Luke work. Although I'd still suggest using the standard ranges in the game even at 15mm as they still work. Saying that the smaller table u have will mean the switch to cm, it'll work either way amigo! And I second the LOS suggestion above.

I have played it in 15mm several times. It works well and the tanks scale nicely with the infantry in that size.
We did not change the movement or ranges only the model size.

We did the same as Privateer. Our 15mm figs are based for FOW. We have four or five figs on our medium bases and combine groups of bases to form squads. Works great. We found 15mm made the LOS issues LESS of an problem.

Mark

If yer in the UK (as I am) base your 15mm on the 5p coin. It looks miles better than a 20mm / 1p coin as it is a lout 16-17mm across, and will really help with scaling the units bunching up etc, especially if you do reduce to cm.

Played BA a few times now using 15mm FOW figures on a 4'x4' board. Worked really well, LOS works fine as long as the scenery is to scale…. Personally I felt using the ranges (in inches) from the rule book worked fine, again as long as there is enough scenery to obscure line of sight so the infantry don't get slaughtered from a tables length away! It's all personal preference but I've been on the hunt for some 15mm rules for a while and I won't be looking any further Geoff

We sometimes use Bolt Action for 20mm Burma/Malaya games where there's buckets of cover and have n't found it to be a problem. There are wider issues – relative uselessness of mortars among others – but it's OK.

I've been playing Bolt Action in 28mm. Loads of fun. But I have thought about playing it using 15mm miniatures. Seems that I'm far from alone. I'll be using a 4'x8' table. Maybe that means I should go with 2000pt. forces. Something to think about…

I have 15mm single based miniatures that I've used for Bolt Action. It works fine. I don't change anything about the rules, but I guess if I switched to centimetres, I could shrink the table quite a bit.

I would say keep using inches as well. At the 15 mm scale, for a skirmish game, you could say 12 inches is about 40 yards, so a 6 foot long table would be 240 yards, more than enough range for a rifle to shoot.
I'm really not sure the ground scale for BA, but inches would work more realistically.

I like the idea of using FOW-based miniatures but with Bolt Action rules.

I don't want to have to re-base. Any considerations to be given for using models that are not individually based?

Thanks!

I remember seeing some battle reports where people did exactly that. I think they just used markers on the base to make which figures were hit/out.

I'll be using the armour rules from Bolt Action with 15mm tanks at KEGSCON on the 28th. From the playtests, it worked quite well in simulating World of Tanks on the tabletop.

Any updates here?

I was thinking of 15mm Bolt Action with DOUBLE the ranges. Why? Because in real life rifle fire WILL kill you from across a field :) Have been looking at 10" equal to 100m or there about, something easy to remember. Would likely use range sticks with bands painted-on.

I have a 4x6 foam board. There are others so I can go 2 wide for 8x6 if I re-set the den. If I take it outside I can go 12x6.