Points System – how does it work?

[Robert]

My specific interest is World War One. This question relates to the tanks and other vehicles that do not appear in the Bolt Action rules or supplements. Several do: the Renault FT17; Minerva armoured car; and the AMD Laffly armoured car to name a few. It’s very straightforward to lift their Cost and other stats over. Other armoured cars, such as the Rolls Royce, Austin, Lanchester, etc are easy to fit out based on these stats.

There are, however, the various marks of British heavy tanks, Whippet, Schneider, St Chamond, A7V that do not feature or have a direct equivalent in the rules or supplements. Before embarking on a discussion about any specific vehicle, I would be interested to learn about the general impact of vehicle costs versus weapons/damage value, etc on your decision-making when picking a force. I don’t have enough experience of Bolt Action to understand how the various stats work with cost and with the ‘performance’ of the vehicle on-table. Particularly around the lower end of the spectrum – the tankettes, light tanks, etc in early WW2.

Robert

[akaean]

There was an unofficial pdf called
“Bolt Action Vehicle Design System”

Floating about, it does a pretty good job of covering how to cost vehicles. And you can follow that guide to come up with costs for WWI vehicles pretty easily, provided you have an idea of the armor thickness, speed and gun loadout.

If you can find that PDF I would recommend giving it a read as its a pretty good way to figure out how to price Great War vehicles.

[Robert]

Thank you very much, akaean. I found the resource here. The Download option requires a Scribd subscription but the contents can be reviewed by scrolling down the web page, without any need to download the document.

The Vehicle Design System is well thought out and has face validity, based on the analyses that I have done FWIIW. It would still be helpful to get any perspectives from players who are experienced with the use of tankettes and light tanks versus AT rifles and light AT guns please. In World War 1, tanks used on firm ground (as happened frequently in the 1918) were basically impervious to small arms fire. AT rifles had little effect and there were too few light AT guns to have a meaningful AT presence.

The problems faced by defenders are illustrated in this After Action Report here. I used the opportunity to include translated German descriptions of what it was like to face French tanks without any significant AT support.

The big killer of tanks, by far, was field artillery. This would be the equivalent of the Bolt Action light howitzer in the main. The French and Americans had liberal numbers of 37mm infantry guns, which had AT capability, but I have not seen any evidence yet that they were used against tanks, given that the Germans had so few of them in any one action. The ‘what if’ capability of Bolt Action mitigates this lack of information, so no problem there from a game perspective.

Robert

[akaean]

Well, with anything, you are definitely going to have to play test points with your friends to make sure you have an accurate depiction of how much something is worth . Bolt Action is a game at the end of the day, which means-unlike real war- it needs to be “fair” and “fun”.

As you noted one of the things that devalues tanks in Bolt Action is access to Anti Tank Assets. Where there are fewer AT assets, tanks must be more expensive because their armor becomes more reliable. Only way to know for sure is play testing. I would play a few games, with the Vehicle Design System points. If the tanks feel overpowered, hike up the price, test again, and try again until the tank hits a sweet spot in terms of points.

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