[Mike]

I don’t think Bolt Action is a “fantasy” game or a historic simulation.  Some authors imagine they are creating a game that is “historically” accurate, the truth is none of them are.  Historical wargaming is gaming and it is about a fun game with some “historical flavor”.   How they balance “fun” with “historical flavor” often becomes the subject of discussion with players arguing for or against a rule.

Eventually, I have come to realize that as long as the game is fun, it is better not to sweat the details.  However, for people that like a rule set except some particular mechanic, you can always test your own “house rules”.  So, if you think the bazooka or panzerfaust rules should have been written differently, they write them differently.  There is no rule against changing the rules.  If over time your thoughts align with others they often show up in future editions.  I have noticed that is especially true with Black Powder and its supplements.

[Mike]

Does the new special miniature, Josef “Sepp” Allerberger come with any special rules?  It would be “cool” to design special “hero” profiles for every special casting with their own point cost just for fun.  Players could agree to use them or not.  Any easy option is to allow you to buy a “single model” sniper unit at a reduced cost.

[Mike]

There are two kinds of games… competitive gaming and uncompetitive gaming.  My experience is that competitive gaming while it may offer some enjoyment produces all sorts of “gamey” actions.  Uncompetitive gaming tries to be philosophical about the situation.  Ideally, the idea of “controlling” objectives infers some sort of strategic value represented by the objective.  For competitive gaming, the rules are the rules.  Strict interpretation of them is the only way to play.  I prefer uncompetitive gaming.  You don’t need a defined winner or loser, but simply an “outcome”.  Ideally, when a game ends, you assess how each side did relative to the “context” of the engagement, less so, on the absolute technical points.  So, while points can help influence the decision of the outcome, more importantly is the situation on the board relative to the “back story”.

[Mike]

Generally speaking, I find that control of objectives brings out the worse with respect to “gamey” behaviors.  Often a game will be going along just fine and then on the last move crazy *!@#! starts to occur.  Perhaps a rule that the player with the most points within 3″ of an objective at the end of the game “owns” the objective.  It would prevent the last second dash of a 2-man unit to contest an objective with 15 model “veteran” and armed to the teeth unit already holding it.  Alternatively, all units contesting an objective at the end of a game conduct repeated assaults until only one side is left.  Armor units which fail to destroy the opponent will back away 6″.

[Mike]

I did not take your comment as “attacking” me, simply misunderstanding me.  So, no worries, I took no offense.  I was simply noting that I don’t find tanks as intimidating as they were before.  Many players thought the new rules would lead to many armor platoons and moving the game away from being infantry based.  While we are seeing some armor platoons show up in our games, they are far less “commanding” than we first thought they would be.

[Mike]

I did not say, I do not like V3 or that I did not agree with the changes to tank MMG fire (I do for the reasons you mentioned), just that they are less intimidating.  In V2, tanks could control a part of the battlefield as no one wanted to contest ground against a tank with 2 or more MMGs.  Now, a large infantry unit can seize an objective an absorb the tank fire for two or more turns.  I am looking forward to playing a game in more open terrain (we have been gaming the Pacific as part of our Fall campaign).  I do not play in tournaments, so my observation was purely one of comparing V2 to V3 in how the game plays.  I do wish they had preserved the “reinforced platoon” as an option, especially for smaller point games. Regarding assaults, we feel that if the defender fires at an assaulting unit prior to the assault, then combat should be simultaneous even if the defending unit is in cover, but we play the rules as written.

[Mike]

The one thing that has been noticeable is that assaults are not as good of an idea as they once were.  Unless you need to gamble on a decisive result, advancing to point blank range and using shooting is more efficient.  The negative benefit of assaulting is compounded when the defender is in cover.  Still some armies like the Japanese with big squads and “fanatic” can still pull off the assault.  In our recent, games my 15-man Japanese squads assaulting my opponents 10-man squads continue to crush them though the Japanese squad can be pretty wrecked afterwards.  Also, you tend to see more heavy weapon and artillery platoons, tanks are a bit “nerfed” with their reduced machine gun fire. Anyway, these are our impressions.

[Mike]

A major and oft repeated criticism of Warlord I hear from gamers is that the rules should be either included in the rulebook or available as updated PDFs from the website.

Unit profiles ultimately end up in the army builder software packages that almost everyone I know uses, so there is no reason to buy a book for a unit profile.  The problem is units that don’t have profiles.

I would rather see army books focus on the armies themselves rather than unit profiles. How the army changed, when certain units became available (without the profiles) simply showing when they showed up and where.

Campaign books focused on the campaigns with scenarios to simulate features of the campaign and discuss any special rules that apply to the army because of unique aspects of the campaign.

Instead, I tend to shy away from buying many of the books because of how they are done.

I think Warlord leaves a lot of money on the table.  I do think their new subscription army builder software will be “home run” and at some point, incorporating more “value” into the software will be more important, than trying to extract some marginal revenue from selling a few books.

[Mike]

Try browsing BoardGameGeek Edition Quick Reference Sheet Bolt Action dated Oct 7, 2024

[Mike]

It would be useful if Bolt Action produced a software program where players could introduce their own stats for a unit’s profile, and it would generate a cost.  So, if you wanted to use some of the V2 books like Case Blue for the Italians, you could simply run their profile through the program to get the “cost” for the unit.

[Mike]

I used this one for now… I have not checked it, but it worked well in our game.

Bolt Action Third Edition – Quick Reference Sheet v0.7

 

[Mike]

Steve T: Perhaps, it might make you feel better that to think you are allocating “kills” between the cover/ground and the soldiers.  Those are mighty dead bricks.  But it also means a more pins and quicker calculations with fewer modifiers for each phase.  What we are finding a bit cumbersome is that in fact there are more modifiers than one might think that are associated with special units that you have to remember.  I hope some of the missing parts are addressed in FAQs or similar updates rather than in the army books.

[Mike]

The Sea Peoples Hail Ceasar Warlord Supplement Biblical and Classical armies provides for Baggage Wagons with a base profile of 3/3/1/0/4+/6 and Special Stubborn rule.  I think that is a good starting point.

I don’t see them “attacking”.  So, you may opt not to let them attack and move at the wagon rate (same as infantry).  Now, you have to decide what their purpose was… if they were used as firing platforms, I would substitute a small missile Range profile onto the profile above (use the missile unit’s Short-Range and Long-Range profile).  Consider the unit in cover plus stubborn for morale purposes which combined with wagon 6 stamina makes it hard to destroy.

That produces a profile for a missile manned war wagon of…

3/3/2/0 or 2 (depending on weapon)/4+/6 plus the unit is always considered in cover and gets the Stubborn special rule.  Also, the unit cannot initiate an attack or countercharge.

[Mike]

While I don’t game, Epic scale, I have gamed with different base configurations.  You and your opponent need to agree what constitutes the way to display a given formation.  In the past, three “stand” units displayed a square formation as a “triange”, while two “stand” units displayed it with one stand facing forward and one backward.  Given the importance of frontage in Black Powder, I would have the triangle face oriented so the enemy most like to strike it, would contact one of its faces, not its “points”.

[Mike]

Like Big Al says, Hail Ceasar is pretty agnostic when comes to basing or castings, the most important thing is a consistent unit “footprint” (with frontage being more important than depth), since the rules work off of tiny, small, standard and large size units largely based on the “unit’s frontage”.  But with that in mind, while I prefer painting 28s, one of the advantages of smaller scale miniatures is that things can be scaled down to play larger games on smaller surfaces.  So, if that is your goal, then doing what you suggest makes sense.  Al’s suggestion of simply converting every to centimeters would work well as would your thoughts about halving everything.

I have also seen 15mm games played where each unit is a single base, with standard units being 8 castings (4 across and 2 deep) and small units a single base of 4 castings (2 by 2) and large units a single based of 12 castings (6 by 2) with pike units and warbands having a third rank.  Looks great when trying to do really big battles.  Since I watched and did not play in the game, I am not sure how they modified distances, but I think it was somehow done to keep it proportional.  All you would have to do is create a modified QRS as Al suggested.

If you don’t mind painting lots and lots of little men, you could play full size Hail Ceasar with just a lot more figures on a base.  Quite visually spectacular, but while I love painting, I find big units to repetitive.  Even if you don’t maintain proportionality with Hail Ceasar’s recommended basing system relative to movement and fire ranges, the rules can still work pretty well.

[Author]

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