Post by osiris on Aug 31, 2015 9:04:54 GMT -5
Ok, this is an interesting and remarkably cheap miniatures game!
The main rule book comes with enough basic rules to play the British, The Americans, The Germans, or the Soviet Union. Although there are detail army books with additional rules and units for each, plus there seems to be books for additional countries as well.
The game seems to be designed as a 25mm game, although nothing in the rules requires this, so you can play with any scale army, as long as your opponent does the same. Most people say that 1/56 scale models work remarkably well for this game, although I suppose technically those would be slightly larger than 25mm.
It is an infantry based game that shares some similarities with games like 40k. Although there are quite a few mechanical differences that make bolt action stand out.
First and foremost is the activation system. for each "unit" you have you add an order die to a bag, and your opponent does the same, dice are then drawn randomly from the bag to determine order of play. One unit at a time receives an order, either Fire, Move, "advance" (which is like move and fire, but slower than move, and with a penalty to hit rather than fire), Down (taking cover), Ambush (overwatch), or Rally (removing pin markers) After the unit is activated, the next random die is removed from the bag and play continues. Yes, technically your entire army could go before a single unit from your enemy, but it is extremely unlikely. However, you cannot depend on a "you go/I go" style either. as activations are random from remaining units.
Weapons follow the "did I hit" then "Did I hurt" mechanic (there are virtually no saves, only modifiers to hit or hurt)
All weapons have a fairly equal chance to hit, basically hitting on a 3+ with modifiers (+1 for point blank range, -1 for long range, -1 for inexperienced troops, -'s for cover, movement, etc...)
All weapons also have an equal chance of causing a wound, based on the skill of your target (similar to flames of war) needing a 3+/4+/or 5+ to hurt inexperienced/regulars/veterans respectively, again, there are modifiers to this roll based on cover, body armour, etc.
Finally all weapons have a "penetration rating" for use against "hard targets" (basically anything with vehicle armour) In order to hurt an armoured target, you often need a 7+ or highers on a d6.... which means if you dont have a penetration bonus, you simply can't roll that high. you add your penetration rating to a die roll to see if you penetrated the armour of the target. (Small arms have 0 modifier so they can't hurt anything over a 6+, which are 'soft sided' vehicles like canvas trucks, etc) even light armoured cars are a 7+, and some heavy tanks are a 10+!
Each army has some unique advantages, for example americans can 'advance' and fire with no penalty with rifles, British come with advantages in artillery (and a free artillery unit), Germans can ignore the penalty for losing their NCO, and Russians get free inexperienced infantry.
The books also give a few other advantages which I will discuss in detail per country later.
I need to get a couple games under my belt to see how it plays more, but it looks quite promising so far.
The main rule book comes with enough basic rules to play the British, The Americans, The Germans, or the Soviet Union. Although there are detail army books with additional rules and units for each, plus there seems to be books for additional countries as well.
The game seems to be designed as a 25mm game, although nothing in the rules requires this, so you can play with any scale army, as long as your opponent does the same. Most people say that 1/56 scale models work remarkably well for this game, although I suppose technically those would be slightly larger than 25mm.
It is an infantry based game that shares some similarities with games like 40k. Although there are quite a few mechanical differences that make bolt action stand out.
First and foremost is the activation system. for each "unit" you have you add an order die to a bag, and your opponent does the same, dice are then drawn randomly from the bag to determine order of play. One unit at a time receives an order, either Fire, Move, "advance" (which is like move and fire, but slower than move, and with a penalty to hit rather than fire), Down (taking cover), Ambush (overwatch), or Rally (removing pin markers) After the unit is activated, the next random die is removed from the bag and play continues. Yes, technically your entire army could go before a single unit from your enemy, but it is extremely unlikely. However, you cannot depend on a "you go/I go" style either. as activations are random from remaining units.
Weapons follow the "did I hit" then "Did I hurt" mechanic (there are virtually no saves, only modifiers to hit or hurt)
All weapons have a fairly equal chance to hit, basically hitting on a 3+ with modifiers (+1 for point blank range, -1 for long range, -1 for inexperienced troops, -'s for cover, movement, etc...)
All weapons also have an equal chance of causing a wound, based on the skill of your target (similar to flames of war) needing a 3+/4+/or 5+ to hurt inexperienced/regulars/veterans respectively, again, there are modifiers to this roll based on cover, body armour, etc.
Finally all weapons have a "penetration rating" for use against "hard targets" (basically anything with vehicle armour) In order to hurt an armoured target, you often need a 7+ or highers on a d6.... which means if you dont have a penetration bonus, you simply can't roll that high. you add your penetration rating to a die roll to see if you penetrated the armour of the target. (Small arms have 0 modifier so they can't hurt anything over a 6+, which are 'soft sided' vehicles like canvas trucks, etc) even light armoured cars are a 7+, and some heavy tanks are a 10+!
Each army has some unique advantages, for example americans can 'advance' and fire with no penalty with rifles, British come with advantages in artillery (and a free artillery unit), Germans can ignore the penalty for losing their NCO, and Russians get free inexperienced infantry.
The books also give a few other advantages which I will discuss in detail per country later.
I need to get a couple games under my belt to see how it plays more, but it looks quite promising so far.