What do YOU want to see in Bolt Action v3?

[Ken Jacobsen]

I’d like to see a Rules Committee made up of players that are in no way associated with Warlord or any other gaming company. The motivation for rules updates, amendments, new army lists, etc., will be to make the game better, not $.

used by another rules system & works very well.

 

[Steiner]

I would change the roll of dice that you need to get a 6 and the roll again and get another 6 to hit. The mathematical probability is (1/6)*(1/6) =1/36 that is to say … 2,78%

This is almost impossible. I would make it a first roll of a 6 and then, the next one get a 4, 5 or 6.  This would be (1/6)*(1/2)= 1/12 that is to say 8,8%, a more reasonable chance. It is still very hard but a bit more likely.

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by Steiner.

[Steiner]

Another change I would implement is in the rulebook. I would put a lot of practical examples to better understand the rule. Something like when I asked about how to use the flamethrower ..

[Arty Gun]

One thing I would like to see that I didn’t notice is a change to HMGs. I recommend the range be extended from 36″ to 40″ to differentiate them a bit more, account for the longer ranges these weapons have in real life, and hopefully make them a viable option in V3.

I assume of course, they will do something to the points values for infantry LMGs/MMGs/HMGs to make them a reasonable choice when compared to vehicle mounted equivalents. I have the models, never use them in a standard 1000pt game.

[Kar98k]

One thing I would like to see that I didn’t notice is a change to HMGs. I recommend the range be extended from 36″ to 40″ to differentiate them a bit more

Like most, I am okay with the ranges. That is because ranges are for tabletop miniature gaming and not actual – the range of a medium AT gun is only 60 inches. What differentiates the HMG from a LMG is that the HMG has a Pen value.

As for changing the “Nigh Impossible Shots”, well, Steiner makes a good point, but don’t overlook the spirit/function of the game mechanic than percentage chance.

[Barry]

1. The rulebook is too wordy. Tighten it up; remove the verbose elements.

2. Rearrange the rulebook so related items are located together.

3. The vehicle rules are complicated and full of exceptions. They stand apart from the lean and tight infantry rules, which are more concise.

4. Give the rulebook an index.

5. Seek inspiration from OnePageRules’ online army builder. Its beautiful and easy to use. I find Bolt Action’s army listing and costing presentation long winded.

 

Cheers

[Sgt.saunders]

So I think the rules are great the way they are! I played Flames of War for 10 years and was captain of the Greek national team, then was a player in the German national team until Battlefront released V4. Now no one plays it and we’ve all switched to Bolt Action. So a bit of advice: The game really makes sense (there is no: why are they doing this because that’s completely nonsensical) and there are very few points of contention. There’s always one or two things that could be changed, but really nothing major. Never change a winning team!

Personally, I wouldn’t change the rules, just put out new army books where certain units have their own rules. e.g. Hermann Göring Division, or Grossdeutschland Division, i.e. special units with their own special rules. That would make things even more interesting. But like I said, that’s just my opinion!

Greetings to all players.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Sgt.saunders.

[Damond]

The rules are solid and don’t need to change. I would like to see a consolidated, easy to use full sized rulebook with 12pt font. Paging through multiple books and trying to remember where a rule is hidden can slow down play. I wonder if they meta is in a rut though. HE is king and people focus on pinning to oblivion. Maybe a change just to spice things up?

[Tc63]

Throwing my own ideas out there:

1. Number one is definitely reorganisation of the book. Or just a good rules summary. There’s been some good advancements in clear rules writing over the past few years, would be great to see the rule book be tightened up as such.

2. Give mg support teams additional pinning utility. Maybe by causing d3 pins when they score a hit, rather than just 1 pin.

3. Reduce the range or give a -1 to hit to all enclosed vehicle mgs. Probably the latter.

4. Team weapons could be split out:

Squad support weapons (ie LMGs in squads) don’t need a loader identified, but an infantryman in the squad other than nco must give up his own firing, or else the support weapon is fired at -1 to hit. Makes things easier to keep track of and suits more people’s miniature collections.

Platoon support weapon: could have an (x) amount to show minimum crew needed to make the weapon fire without a -1 to hit. So a howitzer could be (3), medium at gun (2), light at gun (2), mmg (2) etc.

5. MMGs and maybe some other team weapons could come with an integral spotter. Ie, the ubiquitous chap with binoculars that often makes up the third team member on a base. While this guy is alive, the MMG may ignore the usual -1 to hit at over half range. Potentially you could instead flip the ‘to hit’ range modifiers, so they end up with a -1 to hit under half range and maybe a further -1 at point blank range but above half range hit on a 3+ base. Would reinforce that they are a cumbersome but stable support weapon.

6. More reactions like in k47.

7. Sniper toned down but still useful. Make it so they only cause exceptional damage on any damage roll of 6. Effectively they get to skip the normal thing of having to roll a further 6. Keeps them deadly but not guaranteed to take out a whole mmg team after one hit.

8. As brought up elsewhere, split assault weapons different rules out.
Have ‘self loading’ which allows you to advance without -1 to hit and ‘CQB’ or something that either gives the same benefit as tough fighters or instead lets you roll 2 damage dice for that soldier in an assault.

9. Top tier Commanders could put extra order dice into the bag to help the odds of pulling out one of your dice to activate with. So captain could be +1 dice, major +2. Gives them some additional utility.

10. It may be an option somewhere, but allowing light mortars to be taken in officer command groups. Would bump them over the small squad limit but give them a bit more to do on the table. It’s part of some armies doctrine that a platoons light mortar sits in the hq element directly under the platoon sergeant, so sort of makes sense too.

11. Pistols, make it so they can shoot an assaulting unit even if within 6”, just adds a bit of interest to them.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Tc63.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Tc63.

[Dan]

-Adjust a bunch of point values of course. Mainly trying to bring machine guns more in-line with the rest of guns (Assault Rifle, Automatic Rifle, upgrading an lmg to 5 shots instead of 4 are all 5 points for 1 shot, but adding an LMG adds 2 shots for 20 points. Something to bring that more in-line.)
-Adjust Sniper in some way (I’d personally do d2 pins and +1 to wound, with a 6 or 7 to wound being automatic extraordinary damage without a second roll required)
-Give infantry machine guns suppressing fire (from K-47)
-Maybe add reactions from K-47, but I could go either way. There is something to be said for keeping complexity down.
-Change Fire and Maneuver to give all United States rifles the Assault keyword.
-Allow spotters to spot for any indirect fire weapon (though only spotting for 1 weapon per turn). Possibly allow Forward Observers to become spotters after they use their ability.
-Change the 1 result on Air Strike to “Your plane was shot down on the way, help will not arrive.” (Sometimes it feels like you’re spending 75 points for the enemy to get an airstrike. Once as the US I had two airstrikes resolve in Blue on Blue in the same game and I can say that really soured me.) Maybe a “Change the target to a random target within 12″ of the target” if you still want the chance of mishap, but your opponent choosing the target anywhere on the board is just a bummer.
-Consolidate all current data into their respective army books (you should be able to play everything in your army with just the core book and an army book.)
-Consolidate all terrain into the main rulebook.
-Full organizational rearrangement of the core rulebook. Separate the rules from the narrative bits and even repeat bits if they are relevant rather than, “See the rules for X on page Y.”
-Remove negative faction traits and make all faction traits scalable. Traits shouldn’t be more or less powerful depending on the points value of the army.
-Also make faction traits always usable. (Looking specifically at Italy and their biggest bonus being only in attack/defend game mode and only if they are defenders. Also looking at bonuses to preliminary bombardment when not a ton of basic missions call for preliminary bombardment.)
-Standardize costs across the board (a lot of these can be backwards-engineered but there are some weird irregulars that cost different points in different places.)
-Put a limit on HE hits equal to the number of models in target unit (an edge-case, but it’s weird that a heavy howitzer targeting a unit in a building hits 10 infantry in one hit or the sniper and spotter 5 times each.)
-Most controversial take I’d guess: My group has just put a solid 2, 4, 7, 11 hits on HE instead of 1″, 2″, 3″, 4″ and it has greatly increased game speed since there’s no ambiguity on who gets hit and we don’t spend the extra minute per action just spreading out our models to minimize blast hits. We don’t use the template and only roll for hits to see if the building goes down. If I could add any houserule to the main game this would be my second vote (after suppressing fire).
-Firing Down: Treat small arms fire from a second story down on an open-topped vehicle sorta like an assault without AT grenades. Normal hit rolls, experience level to wound, then count up wounds and roll to damage with that much PEN, but only allowing it to do superficial damage.

Also really like the takes above of:
-Give Shaped Chrges a 1″HE.
-Let pistols shoot at charges from within 6″.
-Give higher officers bonus dice to put in the bag that you can choose to discard when drawn to add more tactical bonuses of higher officers…
OR
…let higher officers take the Lieutenant spot.
-Give non-fanatics a -1 to hit medics.

But even all that said I’d buy a new book if 3e was exactly the same as 2e but they had actual organization to the rules. Maybe up the Cheat Sheet to 9 pages and make it denser for a lot more help at the table when someone makes an airstrike or brings bikers and you need to look up how those work. I’d also love just little individual packets for, “Here’s all the crunch of playing in a random desert scenario. Here’s all the crunch of playing in a random snow scenario, etc.” A clear separation of fluff/history and crunch in the rulebook would be a lifesaver though.

[coljacksimpson57]

Rules for shaped charge vs targets other than vehicles, such as artillery pieces, fixed weapon positions, infantry in buildings, etc.

[steparlanti]

more realistic rules:

melee as per warlords of erewhon, flamers hits as per melee vs vehicles ( based on target mpovement order), Flamers been hit with +2 bonus if they fire in this turn (high visibility while stopped to fire), order dice generated only by squads while teams are under HQ control, national rules general revision (stop stacking rules generating combos that unbalance the game).

good work warlord games 🙂

[Alan Doyle.]

A bit late to the party.

But, I would like to see things like bamboo spearmen limited to theatre selectors. Or else, limit them to 0-2 like in the theatre selector at the end of the japanese army book.

I went to my first competitive event and I had a game against an entire army of them. I managed a draw, but come on. An army of spearmen in a game that’s largely based on relatively modern warfare, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Also, if they update the army books, have a picture of all the vehicles, even if its Osprey artwork, a line drawing/schematic. Same for a lot of the towed weapons. I understand they don’t produce all the models. But face it, if they don’t produce it, add a picture.

Condensing of the rules to relative sections, no random sections that seem like background, but contain rules. I mean I was playing bolt action for a year, before I knew about the inexperienced mortor teams being unable to have spotters. Note, I’m only playing around two years now.

I really like bolt action, I’m a 40k refugee. I just think a bit of refinement of the rulebook and army books would make the game even greater. I like all the mechanics, especially random activation, I’d love to see the air observer being a more worthwhile purchase.

This would have the knock on effect of encouraging players to bye models for AA defence.

I play Germans and Soviets and I think panzerfausts should be more expensive and maybe 2/unit that can purchase them.

I have knocked out KVs, IS-2’s etc. And I have even said to my buddy’s. “Lad it cost me 10pts for those two panzerfausts”. Think about it, a 300 plus point tank knocked out by such a small investment.

A knee mortor is like what 20-30pts range. A panzerfaust is 5pts. They need to be at least 10pts or more. Like it’s a single shot heavy AT gun, with no pen modifier for long range. I always bring infantry to tank war, just for panzerfausts.

Also, I know its an infantry game. But balance the tanks/tank armament costs. Everybody loves bringing a nice battle tank to a game, like a panzer iv/stug iii or equivalent. Maybe, introduce a reasoning for making a tank veteran, like for example. Bring in a tank war ability on purchase, even a single use ability. Or maybe allow one tank to be like a tank ace for an extra point cost after paying the veteran premium. Maybe something like a plus one to hit buff.

Give HMGs a greater range than LMGs. Also allow them to cause maybe a flat 2 pins or d2 pins if they are veteran.

H.E is good. However, maybe alter it like allow it to reduce the affect of cover, maybe it would have to have its killing power toned down for this. But no way should a few lads hiding behind a bit of pebble dashed wall be impossible to hit/pin with H.E

To conclude, that’s just my tuppence worth. I really like bolt action, however, like anything, things can change. These are some changes I would like to see. Take them into account, don’t. Its not up to me, maybe changes like this would be difficult to balance, or perhaps, why fix what is not broken. I like warlords model of not forcing you to buy book after book, however, the inevitable eventually has to come.

Anyway that’s all for me.

Rgds,

A.J

[Jim]

I prefer a good cleanup of currently abused mechanics rather than any sweeping changes.  Example waiting to the end of the turn to give a fire order to a tank in order to fire the pintle mount without suffering the open top penalty is a bit too gamey.  If it fires the pintle mount it should remain open topped until it’s next activation, and not just the end of the turn.

[Alan Tibbetts]

Yes Jim, that would be great. A couple of examples
– Units within dense terrain need 50% of their figures in terrain to get cover. Units obscured by the same piece of terrain need more than 50% to get cover. (Both page 57, Cover).
– Recce units with dual direction steering can take a full Run in reverse, those without only get a full Advance. However, when it comes to Escape Reaction its an Advance or Run, forward or reverse, doesn’t seem to matter about dual-direction steering.
– Explain, exactly and fully, how flat roofs work, especially a story that is partially enclosed and partially a flat roof.  Are units on a flat roof abstracted as they are inside an enclosed space? Extra protection? Template or HE vs target in a building, can a unit be partially on the flat roof and partially inside the enclosed space on the same story?

[Author]

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