What do YOU want to see in Bolt Action v3?

[Nanashi]

With 3rd Edition being seen as inevitable, what changes do you want to see in it?

Myself:
More “generic” platoon options besides Reinforced Platoon, Tank Platoon, and Generic Anti-Tank Gun Reinforced Platoon (which is buried in Battle of France of all places!).
Air Observer not being the utter mess it currently is.
France and Italy in core book (France really suffers for not being so since it means France is actually three+ separate factions when France, Vichy France, Free France, and Late War France really should just be theater selectors with special rules).
Negative faction traits being either part of balancing out more powerful than average traits, or limited to theater selections.
Rifle Grenades in core rulebook (every other campaign book has to blow space including them repeatedly and it’s weird for them to be France exclusive in normal play)
Infantry machine guns not being strictly worse than their vehicle based counterpart. Either buff them and/or drop their point cost.
Assault Rifles for late war Americans, at least as a Theater Selection based special rule for end-war (M2 Carbine is an intermediate cartridge firing select fire rifle. Only argument against it is .30 Carbine being very anemic for an intermediate cartridge, but 7.92×33mm Kurz isn’t a particularly good intermediate cartridge either.)

What about you?

[boomboom517]

All the French stuff you said, can see the argument for the M2 carbine. What I really want to see thought is the American advance rule for their rifles and automatic rifles being replace with a moral rule and the advance rule becoming a standard part of automatic and assault rifle and the introduction of a semiauto rifle that is basically a bolt action with the rule, the Germans, Americans, Russians and late war French (who had 2 models the Grand and their own domestic Mas 44 rifle forgotten weapons has a good video on it) all had semiauto rifles which provided a quantum leap in firepower. Would help to show the changes in warfare as well as provide some accuracy to early marines who were still using the Springfield.

[SteveT]

Some reduction in cost of MMG/HMG teams. Right now, bit too easy to lose them to snipers, etc.

Air observer – make blunders far rarer even if that means raising cost. Right now, you have to pray you don’t blow your own troops up.

Include in the main book all the bits that got added for terrain and obstacles  in other books.

Smoke. Make it easier to lay down.

Attempting to Fire those on Ambush at the end of the turn:make easier for Vets, harder for Inexp.

Overall make the rulebook tighter. Some small details are quite hard to find and occur in places you wouldn’t expect.

Add some limit on the number of Order Tokens a player can have as a standard rule, even if it 16 or 20 or whatever, just not 30! Numerous ways to do it, just I mean not allowing the most extreme cases.

No doubt Mr Harrison will soon be along to disagree with everything I have just said ;p

 

[Nat]

MMG /HMG – was thinking a “focused fire (team)” arc (2″ linear arc centered on the MG) which does D3 pins instead of 1

Support Teams – expanding the unit types to HQ team (main person + 0-2 infantry), Squads (as now) support teams (limited squad, every one has the rule like medics), support weapon teams (immune to snipers etc), support gun team (currently artillery – but called this so you can put heavy mortars etc in it)

Unit equipment / unit options – ala HQ runners – folded in to the core rules

Flamethrowers – change the fuel check to fail on the number of times its fired (vehicle with browsers can get a +X to the dice roll … in small bowser would give you a +1 so you always get at least two shots with it)

Battlefield equipment – ala minefields, trenches – folded in to the core rules

Consistancy in the campaign books… so we dont have two /three versions of the same thing – looking at priests, dragons teeth etc

[richard zamudio]

I am not sure this can be done, but  would like to have a rulebook where all rules relevant to a particular item are in the same place, not scattered across the entire rule book. And also eliminate the odd bits of “trivia” (which are really important!) in the random fashion they are currently located.

[Jacob Carter]

I’ve recently gotten into K47 and there’s a couple rulesets that are in that game I’d like to see ported over.

Reactions and suppressive fire:

Reactions are done whenever a unit is fired upon like going down, but require an order test to complete even if the unit is pinned.  I don’t remember them all but there’s one that allows a unit to attempt to run to cover and one that allows the unit to return fire before taking casualties.  These moments just add a little bit of flavor, to shooting actions, though I’d make it so only infantry can take these actions against weapons with multiple shots.

Suppressive fire is an action a unit with an MMG or 2 LMGs can take where a further -1 is applied to the roll but the target unit gets 1 pin automatically and could take a further pin from a hit, this was recently added to K47 after a lot of testing and would add a lot of utility to MMG teams and LMG heavy squads

And finally I’d also like to see a change for sniper (noticing a common theme here lol).  I think exceptional damage should be swapped with a pinning mechanic similar to HE; D2 pins for hit, D3 for kill, D3 + moral check (or something else damaging) for exceptional damage.  It’d be a better representation of snipers in WW2, since it’d have been difficult for them to always pick out leaders and most soldiers were trained to use vital squad weaponry like MGs if the main guy was killed.  Plus, it’d also represent the psychological factor of a sniper.

[boomboom517]

likes for the sniper part

[GeneralJimbo81]

Personally not sure Ed 3 required per se as think things could prob be corrected in an FAQ / Errata. 3rd Ed would then just be the base rule bits from errate in 1 book.

However I do see the following need some work:

MMGs – Give them a special rule that a crew man can take over the gun in the event of “exceptional damage” if Ld test is passed (factoring in pin markers of course). This could be used on other units potentially as well

Snipers – Like @JCarter s additional Pins idea. Though personally I’d keep “exceptional damage” to some extent (though this would be nerfed by my MMG idea above to some extent).

More, generally subsidiary, weapon options on allot of vehicles reflecting the much wider number of variants weapons fitted and field modifications etc actually seen on some of WW2s battlefields i.e.
Option for RR ACs to have MMG & CoAx Boys and in closed turret (like they predominately did in the RAF AC Companies in Iraq for e.g.) – I run this in friendly games using vehicle design rules also with pintle LMG as my 1st army was built to represent an Anglo Iraqi War British force (at least it was originally till I added tanks and it became more generically desert)
Huge range weapon options on LRDG trucks /SAS Jeeps – The variation here was almost from vehicle to vehicle and as it stands the options don’t necessarily even reflect the models Warlord sells.
MMG or LMG options on some transports (currently Brit trucks can have an MMG but were more commonly fitted with LMGs in reality),
Option to give most Tanks, ACs etc Pintle LMG, MMGs and / or even Twin LMGs (as Brits did like to fit on occasions).

[GeneralJimbo81]

Oh and Light Mortars – Allow them to be selected in 1-3 teams for a single slot but Order Die for each (bit like Soviets get for AT rifles). Though I also think their range needs to be increased. This would make them a more attractive option.

[Nanashi]

LMG teams also get that sometimes. That and outranging rifles would indeed make light mortar be good for more than an option to spend remaining points for an order dice+smoke. I’ve seen being able to pay extra to make one of the men accompanying an officer count as a spotter for any one indirect unit in a fanmade list of things for an update. That would help a lot of indirect units that can’t take spotters directly (light mortar, self propelled gun)

Actually: Speaking of things only taken because they use up the last few points and fill up order dice: How would you fix medics? Even in horde armies they’re kinda meh.

[SteveT]

On medics: make them too cheap and they will be in everyone’s army, so I think it would work better if they were able to roll to help any casualties, no matter from HE, etc.

 

 

[Nat]

RE snipers – if you make them any better you need to up the points… theres an argument for upping the points alread

RE medics – my view is: make them a team of 1 -4 (so you measure from any member of the unit).  And you you add  3 extra rules
Medical Orderly : +1 to the dice on frindly units for each additional member in the unit
Hippocratic oath:  Roll for enemy units if they are the closest unit + the unit ALWAYS has a moral /LD of 10 (so always stubborn & never suffers loss of NCO, veterancy is just on the to wound level)
Geneava Convention: Not allowed to attack anyone (inc manning vehicle weapons) OR contest objectives.  Non-Fanatic* units must take an order check at -1 per model (ie 1-4)  to target them!  (Soldier First rule would cancel this & Hippocratic Oath rules)

*nice easy way to show /allow the Japanese and both Soviets & Axis all shooting other peoples medics without using lots of words… it also allows anyone else to attempt to shoot them!

 

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Nat.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Nat.

[Nat]

@Generaljimbo81 – issue is if you start allowing lots of light mortars with their move and fire in lists you are removing one of Japanes key distinguishing factors (the grenadier squads)….better to give the light mortar as an option to the HQ (ie the LT allows you to take 0-1 light mortar then the mortar slot allows you to take 0-1 of light, medium or heavy mortar)

Dont forget some TLs have 0-2 mortar slots…. so in theory thats 6 light mortars your way!

[Duncan McEwen]

I like a lot of the ideas here.  however BA should try and stay a pretty fast game without having a ton of extra rolls and stuff.  That said, one thing I think would help a lot is adding artillery scatter.  It is just odd that a howitzer can miss and there is no handy explosion.  I am sure a one roll system could be worked out to not overly slow down the game.

Other things would be the addition of the rifle grenade (which I saw in k47).

incorporation of more basic rules in the core book.  (Obstacles, terrain, new common units, etc.)

Better organization of the rules would be a plus too.  maybe a classic war game numbering section and paragraph system.

I also second the call for SA rifles and BA rifles to be separate.

Towing rules should have classes or something instead of listing all the different things it can tow.  Maybe assign a weight class to units.

Adjust National Rules for different point levels.  Getting a free squad of infantry is very different in a 500 pt, 1000 pt, or 1500 pt game.  (As an example)

Ok, that is all I have for now.  Thanks!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Duncan McEwen.

[Nanashi]

For making semi-auto and BA rifles different, I suppose the easiest way to do that would be to decouple the two halves of the Assault keyword, making it into two keywords that don’t use the name of a only semi-related game mechanic (“Assault gives Tough Fighters which improves Assault, but also does other stuff not related to Assault”) like “self-loading” and “CQC”? Under this solution Americans would get “self-loading” (or whatever it’s called) for free, while Soviets, Germans, and limited numbers of French (plus Brazilians if they’re are ever added) units would have it as an upgrade option. Japan already gives precedent to “all infantry get this keyword for free”, while early war Marines might get a points discount for lacking it (limited to theater selector if that’s too cheesy).

As for new content, aside from finally updating China, perhaps “Armies of the Neutrals and South America” once all the “main” armies are updated. Sweden had enough totally unique vehicles to justify rules, Brazil actually sent forces to Europe, while Ecuador and Peru had their own totally unrelated conflict during WW2.

edit: Not sure how I missed it till now, but if a squad starts with a non-rifle weapon they shouldn’t have to waste points if they add a different weapon. For example adding a LMG to an SMG squad should cost 3 points less because each man already costs three more points.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Nanashi.

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