Bolt Action

After posting the GhatGPT generated Tiny Troops; Fast and Furious Wargame Rules and the battle report after playing them, several have commented that the rules have similarities and references to the 'Bolt Action' rules. As I haven't played Bolt Action before I couldn't tell, but it made me curious about the Bolt Action rules. These are actually not another free wargame rules you can just download and play for free, and therefore actually not within my scope of this blog focusing on 'Budget Wargaming'. -But, can you make Bolt Action a budget Wargame and play 'Bolt Action' without having to buy the 'Bolt Action' rules? -Not by illegal copying or anything, but just by using information found in open and public sources?? 

I've found the rules summary for free online on several sites and combined with so many different 'how to play Bolt Action' videos found on YouTube I've decided to have a try to see if it provides enough information to play the commercial Bolt Action game by Warlord Games for free, and within my scope of 'budget wargaming'. The reference and rules summary can be found on Warlord's own site, and on the blog Jay's Wargaming Madness for even further details. For YouTube reference there are tons of 'how to videos' out there when it comes to BA. - I don't know if BA is considered to be a particularly difficult game to play since there are so many different 'how to play it videos' on YouTube? For this game I used the Bolt Action Basics playlist.

Since I don't have any Bolt Action items such as order dice or pin-markers, some kind improvisation was necessary. For pin-markers I used some 'fire markers' I initially made for 'Wargame in a Bag'. For order dice I considered just using ordinary D6 in 2 different colors in a bag, but decided to go fancy here and 3D-print some order-bullets I found for free at Thingiverse simply colored as 'Team Blue' and 'Team Red' (just like the oposing teams were marked during my own service). They're good for 3D-printing as they don't need to be balanced or anything (like throwing-dice). The bag to draw the order 'dice' from is actually the just the bag which came with my army men (never throw anything away!). For miniatures I just used regular 54mm army men.

As I was going to play this game SOLO I was curious if 'Bolt Action' had some Solo-mechanics. After searching Google I didn't find that Bolt Action had such, but there are others that has made mechanics to play it solo, so I chose some Bolt Action Solo Play Cards by Martin Otten. 

I had pretty high expectations to this game as there seems like a lot of gamers considers this as a kind of leading game and reference for easy and realistic tabletop wargame rulesets for miniatures and was eager to try them out. Perhaps it would be fair to play it with my earlier 'Battle of Lumbaya'-scenario, but a normal game of Bolt Action seems to be about only 6 to 7 turns, and that is too few for my previous 'Lumbaya-scenario', as it would almost just take that number of turns just to get all the units into positions. Besides, after about 16 games with the same scenario and setup I'm (more than) ready to play some new scenarios and setups. To have something to compare them with, I'll attempt to play the Bolt Action rules with the same scenario and setup as I did with 'The One Page Rules' and the ChatGPTs 'Tiny Troops: Fast and Furious Wargame rules':

The scenario

Bolt Action is a WWII game, but I've placed this skirmish some few years later than that, as most of the equipment used in my scenario were WWII-style anyway. I've placed this skirmish to the United Nations largest mission in both scale and operational scope during the Congo Crisis 1960-65, when UN troops 'peacekeeping' was actually more offensive 'peace enforcement'. I decided to play the UN and 'Team Blue' as I have a soft spot for the UN-troops as almost 1200 Norwegians participated in this mission. The Card-generated opponent played Katangese Gendarmerie and 'Team Red'.  

Situation:

Two UN vehicles from the UN base at Kamina were performing a reconnaissance mission on the roads  between Kamina and the city of Kolwezi. Outside Kambezi they came under heavy mortar shelling from Katangese forces and they were probably both hit as the UN HQ at Kamina cannot reach them by radio anymore. 

The UN HQ sends out search and rescue patrols to find the missing reconnaissance-unit, and it's expected that the roads in the area have taken damage and are impassable for other vehicles, and it's only reachable at foot.

The Katangese forces in the area are aware of the possible UN-wrecks and sends out patrols to find them, and to seize anything of value such as documents like the UN SOPs and codes for radio-communications.

Some houserules to this scenario seems to be required though; It takes 1 man 1 turn to search a vehicle, and it takes 1 man 1 turn to examine  a casualty. To check a casualty's condition, roll a D6, and if the roll is the same value or higher than the turn number for that turn, the casualty is alive and can be medivaced. Casualties can be medivaced at half speed. 

Forces:

• Katangese:
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (Mauser 98k) and 1 LMG (FN MAG)
• 1 inexperienced rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (Mauser 98k) and 1 LMG (FN MAG)
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 5 rifles (Mauser 98k), 1 sniper rifle and 1 LMG (FN MAG)

• UN:
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (M1 Garand) and 1 LMG ( MG3)
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (M1 Garand) and 1 LMG (MG3)
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 5 rifles (M1 Garand), 1 bazooka and 1 LMG (MG3)

Regarding troop quality and morale Bolt Action differs between with inexperienced, regular and veterans. M1 rifles do not give a -1 penalty when fire on the move. The MG3 is a MG42 equivalent, and gains an extra dice for firing.

Mission:

• Katangese: To find the immobilized UN vehicles and search them for valuable things such as secret UN documents, orders, maps, SOPs and radio-codes 
• UN: To find the missing reconnaissance-patrol and save the members of the unit, and make sure no graded documents in the vehicles fall into the hands of the enemy.

AAR

Time:    1 hour and 50 minutes

Turns:   7

Result:  UN victory by eliminating 2 Katangese squads and capturing their order-dice, and successfully searched one vehicle and started a search into the second vehicle. None of the casualties could be saved unfortunately. 

As time was an important factor to save their comrades, the UN issued run orders to quickly get to their supporting positions and to the scene itself.

The Katangese Gendarmerie approached from the other side, but somewhat slower and safer as 'advance-card' was drawn for them

This made the UN the first to approach one of the vehicles, and they could also start to examine the casualties from it.

Trying to avoid the UN forces to succeed with searching the vehicle, an inexperienced katangese squad run for it and entered close quarter combat, killing a first responder and a casualty. Not very heroic.  They didn't know they were running right into a kill-zone, and a UN squad eliminated the whole Katangese squad.

After searching the rearmost vehicle where none of the casualties could be saved, the UN advanced towards the first vehicle and the casualties there, but were met by Katangese fire as they also had approached the first vehicle and started to search it.

The UN forces had to halt and exchange fire...

And perhaps the UN had better weapons, equipment and training, as the fire-fight was starting to take a toll on the Katangese Gendarmerie, which was downed due to several failed order-tests. Soon they lost another squad.

The UN squads exploited the Katangese passivity and approached the first vehicle and started to search it. It was obvious that the Katangese understood that they were now fighting for their lives so they opened fire again.

One of the UN squads failed an necessary order test and..... -FUBAR!

... -even if it looked like the UN had the upper hand in the battle, the squad panicked and start fleeing the battle...

As the end of turn 6, a roll was made for a turn 7 (on a 4+). Now the few remaining Katangese Gendarmes was outnumbered and outgunned, and it seemed like the fleeing UN-squad also was going to return to the battle again. None of the casualties by the first vehicle could be saved by this time, but the UN manged to search both the vehicles and seize the classified material there. 

Pros

• Easy to learn wargame rules on platoon level.
• I really like how units being fired at or charged immediately can react on the action taken against them by going down, or fire back at the charging unit unless they have already activated that turn. 
• Intentionally for 28mm figures, but works well for 54mm figures too. I've even read about people using these rules with 1:72 scale figures.

Cons

• Difficult to build armies with different qualities without the rule-book regarding their options and points. I just made 2 armies of the same size and quality, so they were balanced.
• I suppose veteran units have higher motivation than inexperienced ones, and therefore would be easier to activate first or earlier in a game. When activating in Bolt Action,  you don't get any benefits for trying to activate a higher leveled unit as far as I can see, as you just pull order-dice from the bag and activates randomly. Perhaps players with veteran units shoul be able to pull two dice from the bag, choose the best one of them and put the other back into the bag again?
• This con is not on the Bolt Action rules themselves, but on the Solo Play Cards. They don't include 'AMBUSH' action as an option on their cards. This makes the AI-player more likely to push his troops faster and deeper into combat, than perhaps would be in reasonable. In my game this resulted that a card-driven team did a very stupid move and just ran into the kill-zone. These solo cards will perhaps not work so well for scenarios where the card driven opponent are supposed to be defending.

Conclusion

Bolt Action by Warlord Games is not only the rules them self, but includes own dice, templates, miniatures and vehicle as well. In my local shop the order-dice is like $20 (!). As I have a 'budget-scope' on this blog towards wargaming, I thought I was going to conclude that I was not willing to start using $$ for a specific wargame system as there are so many free and really good wargame rules online. Famous last words. - After playing a game of Bolt Action by Warlord, I really liked these rules, and will probably play them again. The Bolt Action rules have much in common with and many of the same mechanics as with a lot a lot of the free wargame rules I have reviewed so far on this blog, but I liked the way the 'Bolt Action' have combined the different mechanics into their ruleset. Even if I plan to game it with other miniatures in other scales and perhaps 3D-print the necessary templates and so on, I do actually consider to buy a rulebook now...

If my 'budget approach' to Bolt Action are fair to the rules you buy in a rule-book, I let others who have actually played Bolt Action with licensed products to decide. I just wanted to see if it was possible to play Bolt Action without having to get the rule-book (or any other official Bolt Action items), and I have a feeling that with all information provided online about how to play Bolt Action it is actually possible to play a basic game of Bolt Action. If you want a more complex and detailed game with even more options, I think it would be easier to get a rule-book to find all the information in one place. If you're in a wargaming community and BA is one of their games, you'll probably going to need all the other official items as well. 

Feedbacks from gamers who have played Bolt Action is welcome.

Disclaimer: While working on this blogplost it's come to my knowledge that the Bolt Action rulebook are copied and uploaded and available for free online. I belive to upload a licensed product and download it again when you know it's copyrighted is probably illegal even if it's for your own use. Anyway it's highly unethical to do so. For this blogpost I've only used as initially stated the reference sheets by Warlord Games them self, supported by some of the endless videos on YouTube on how to play this game. Therefor I still considers to buy a copy of the rules when I can find a good offer for it.