"Bolt Action Rules" Topic

I was looking at a convention coming up and last year they had a big Bolt Action Tournament. Not familiar with these rules, but I have a lot of familiarity with many other rule sets as I've been doing wwii miniatures for about 50 years.

Before I go tromping off to a convention to play Bolt Action, can you give me some idea of what the rules are like. Little hint here… no interest in playing Flames of War Type Rules.

Is this skirmish game, 1 fig = 1 soldier? How long is turn in real time. CoHow is armored combat resoloved? (I've seen everything from highly simplistic to those based on actual armor thickness and penetration). How long does a turn represent? Anything you can tell me before I go out and post for some exensive rules.

This is what I recall:

It is a small scale game (a figure is a man) that uses order dice and activation dice. You have 5 or 6 orders to choose from, and you give each unit an order per turn. Each unit has an activation chit. All of the activation chits in the game are put into a bag and drawn at random, so you never know what the next unit to activate will be. It has a point system for tournament players. Infantry move 6" or run 12" per turn. All firing is based on a d6. A rifleman may have 1 d6 while someone with an automatic weapon of some kind will have multiple d6s depending on what type of weapon is being fired. There are savings throws based on cover. I don't know if there is a time scale or not, and ranges are not linear. It is a set of rules that allows you to move WWII figures around a table and play a game.

It can get bogged down with too many units or players. Some workarounds are to activate two units with a chit pull, or to break up a large board into smaller actions, so a 3 v 3 game may end up being 3 1v1 games until you crossover into another part of the game board.

This might be helpful:

link

Found a review here which seems to answer most questions:
link

Bolt Action is a skirmish game 1 fig = 1 man. A third edition just was issued so you would need to know which edition the tournament is taking. There's no distance or time scale. It's ranges are more based upon player perception than equivalence to a range scale (i.e., a rifle shoots further than a SMG or pistol and the distance is usually within the table's dimensions). Everything is based on D6. Some players compare it to Warhammer 40K for World War II. It's a English set of rules written in a somewhat chatty English style. Activation is by squad, support weapon, or vehicle. All combat is by rolling D6 and usually a squad fires all at once at the same target so you could be rolling a bunch of dice. Armor combat is roll to hit then roll to penetrate and then boom or not boom. And nearly all play I've seen is using 28mm miniatures. My advice is to look up Bolt Action 3rd Edition learn to play videos on YouTube and then make your mind up whether or not to spend any money on it.

Bolt Action is written by Rick Priestley, author of the original 40k Rogue Trader rules, and Alessio Cavatore, author of the 40k 5th and 6th edition rules and numerous Codexes. Certainly, anyone used to 40k will not find it hard at all to pick up Bolt Action. This is also why the game is oriented around a Points System and Tournament play.

As mentioned it is a tournament style game rather than a strictly historical based one. The advantage it has is that it is very well known and reasonably easy to learn. I have recently picked up a copy of second edition rules and some figures. It is likely for my own enjoyment I will run scenarios using Fistful of Lead for our group but at larger gatherings I my use BA for it's universal appeal.

And there is a new 3rd edition out now.

And my understanding is that the 3rd edition of the rules makes some fairly significant changes, especially in the way a tournament player builds his force.

Jim

I have played many game systems -- Bolt Action is OK, easy to play given its W40K heritage, but I'm not a fan of points-driven games that use special rules to make each army unique. I prefer mission driven game systems and like the NUTS WW2 system most – here's why, a review from No Dice No Glory:

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YouTube link

TMP link

My one experience of playing BA was in a convention participation game.

The first red flag occurred when the organiser briefed us that this was going to be more Hollywood than history. I can't say I hadn't been warned.

I set up my German MG42 team to cover the road in a small village. US paratroopers were crossing the road and in my turn I said I wanted to fire the MG42 at them. To my surprise I was told I couldn't. Why? It was out of range.

We were playing in 28mm on a 6x4 table and the range of the MG was 24" (!). I said I thought that probably represented about 40yds and the range of the MG42 would extend far beyond that. Yes, the game organiser agreed, but that would make the game too difficult and wouldn't be fun.

I told him, being shot at is never fun, that's why you develop tactics to deal with it. Some call BA Warhammer 1940K and at times it's easy to see why. That doesn't work for me, but there are many for whom it does.