Hi guys,
I had my first game of Bolt Action last night pitting my American force against a German force. We went infantry heavy at 500 points a side and we got in two games in 4 hours and we both loved it.
The things we like:
1) Order Dice mechanic - is amazingly simple and keeps the pace flowing much more realistically than the you go I go mechanic of the likes of 40k. If you are unfamiliar with Bolt Action, for each unit in your army you get a coloured dice, yours and your opponents dice go into a bag and you draw a dice randomly. The owner of the drawn dice then gets to activate a unit. This continues until all the dice are used then you put all the dice back in the bag and the next turn starts.
Each unit can be told to advance (move and shoot), run (double more and assault or just double move), Fire (stand still and fire), Ambush (Overwatch), Down (Go to ground) and Rally (pass test and remove D3+1 pin markers).
It sounds too simple doesnt it? However, in game it is quite tense while you decide which unit to activate. Do you gamble you will get the next dice of do you really not want to activate yet to see what your opponent does? Either way its one of the best things in the game!
2) Simple weapon stats - All weapons fall into specific groups. That have the same range, dice and penetration. No paragraphs of rules or AP or blast markers which means no looking up every time you fire and you know exactly what each of you enemies weapons can do meaning you dont get caught out by not knowing your opponents army book inside out.
Basically you have:
small arms (can not hurt armour) - smgs (sub machine gun), pistols, rifles, assault rifles, light machine guns, medium machine guns.
Anti Tank (can hurt armour) - light AT (anti tank) gun, medium AT gun, heavy AT gun, bazooka, AT rifles and so on.
In the rule book every weapon from every army is listed in one small table. They are able to do this because as an example a Thompson machine gun is an SMG as is its German equivlant the Maschinenpistole 35. Both very different weapons in real life but both SMGs so they get the same stats. Simples.
3) Pinning - When your unit is hit by an enemy unit it receives a pin maker. This reduces the squads leadership by 1 for every pin marker. When a unit needs to take a test. For example if a unit has at least one pin on it then it must test before it is issued an order and is this is failed the unit instead goes down. Meaning they do nothing.
For example a squad of regular troops have a leadership of 9. They have 3 pin markers and we want to tell them to Fire. To issue the order we must roll under their leadership on 2D6 as we are pinned. So we have leadership 9 - 3 pins = 6 is required. Other modifiers an effect this like being within 6" of a command section (+1 or +2 etc to leadership) but pinning a unit is massive in this game and it plays well.
It is what wins and loses you the game.
4) Three leadership values for everything - Again a simple case of selecting if you want to take inexperianced (leadership 8), Regular (leadership 9) and veteran (leadership 10). All units have to be selected as one of the above with incremental points. The leadership values also dictate how easy or hard it is to wound said unit. So you can have few veteran units (and dice) or you can go nuts with loads of cheap inexperianced units (and dice). Most people will find a happy medium.
5) No damn tables to consult - to work out the to hit and to wound rolls. To hit a unit is very much like 2nd edition 40k. Its a basic roll of 3+ with modifiers such as over half range +1, soft cover +1 and hard cover +2. We found most shots were needing 5's to hit as we both hugged cover. Simple and clear.
The to wound roll is even easier! This goes off the infantry leadership. Inexperianced are hit on 3+, regular on 4+ and veterans on 5+.
For vehicles you roll to penetrate instead and this is easy as each vehicle is given an armour value. As an example: jeeps and trucks are +7, small tanks, +8, medium tanks +9 and heavy tanks +10. All weapons are given penetration values which is added to a D6 to work out penetration.
So rifles have no penetration values so to damage a Sherman medium tank we get a d6 for each hit and this value is compaired to the tanks armour value which is 9. You cant pen or glace it.
Same example only a bazooka team is firing which has a penetration value of 5 means we get D6+5 to penetrate. So a Sherman is glanced on a 4+ and 5+ is a pen.
6) Close Combat - is risky, bloody and decisive. There are combat phases. Much like 40k. However, there is no initiative so the attacker goes first. There is no rolling to hit so you simply roll one dice for each member of the squad unless there are any assualt weapons which add an extra dice. You then roll to wound like you would shooting. So 3,4 or 5 depending on the leadership of the troops being attacked. Models are removed and the defender attacks. Count the number of casulties each side and if its a draw (i.e equal number of casulties) then do another round until there is a winner. The loser is destroyed. Awesome.
7) No pre-measuring. Ever. So no procrastinating over endless placement. God that irritates this crap out of me in 40k. Just move your damn dudes! Aaaaaaaagh! Ahem. Sorry.
Things we didnt like:
1) Rulebook - As this is the first edition and we have to be realistic BUT with such heavy weights of the gaming world behind it I would of thought we would have something a bit easier to find specific rules. Its well written but finding rules specific to what you encounter is difficult. The summary at the back helps but endlessly searching for something really held up our games.
The problem with the rulebook is an easy fix. Having more than one place for a rule to be means endless flicking from section to section. Hopefully, this will be address in the 2nd edition.
2) Scenarios - Id like more ways to play the game. More ways to setup and more missions would be cool. I have to give 40k the edge here. Multiple deployment and missions make for more varied games and Id think the missions in the book would only keep us interested so many times.
3) The fact its not 40k.
Overall thoughts:
Bolt action is a triumph and even us hardcore 40k players found its approach simple yet incredably fun.
There is alot to be said for a simple game that demands such a high level of stratagy. I know some people wont understand it and claim it is too random. My counter to this is chaos. A battle is chaos. Its random. Its bloody and thanks to Bolt action its damn good fun to dip into.
Happy gaming,
Capt Tycho
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