Bolt Action on a Budget

Last year I wanted to see if it was possible to play the commercial wargame 'Bolt Action' by Warlords on a budget. Even if I managed to play a very basic game of 'Bolt Action' for free, I concluded the Battle Report with that I was really going to consider to use $$ to buy the rulebook.

After Bolt Action 3rd edition was published this autumn, I've been looking around for 2nd edition rulebooks 'on sale' to keep it within my 'budget approach' on wargaming. Here the other day I coincidentally visited the website to Moss TabletopBattle, which is located close to where I live, which had 'Bolt Action 2nd edition' on a 90% discount, and on sale for only £ 3,50/ $4,4/ € 4,25 (!) 
I don't think I will find a brand new copy for anything less than that, so this was a no brainer.

So after work I went to the store to pick up my copy. It's actually located less than a kilometer from where I live.

The Store-owner was very friendly and told me that he wanted to give me a little surprise as well, and gave me a 28mm scale miniature of an Italian WW2 Officer. He invited me into their gaming rooms and studios where they make their YouTube videos. I was very surprised to this kind gestures and we had a really good  and long conversation, resulting in that I was invited to join them in a Bolt Action 'demo game' some time later this winter.

So, this is my very first 28mm scale miniature I got in my collection, but he might not be the last perhaps...

2023 - A brief sumary - 2024 Quo Vadis?

Well it's soon the end of the year and probably time to look back on the past year, and share some thoughts for following one.

This is not a big blog with a lot of blogposts or having a very large number of followers, but 2023 has been the most active year on this blog so far. Most of the readers are located in United States of America, followed by Singapore (!), followed by United kingdom. I'm not sure if there are so many actual readers from Singapore, or if it's some sort of web crawlers or search spiders located there??
Anyway, I appreciate all of you who are following it, reading it, and contributes with your comments. Especially thanks to all of you that have been promoting this blog and linking to it through your own blogs, Facebook pages or other websites. Even if my settings are set to be searchable by Google and search description added, I actually got few hits from Google (only 115 through whole 2023), and when I do it's usually just right after posting a new post. So, you're all responsible for this years growth of members and blogposts, which motivates me to follow up with more. - Thank you!!

2023 - Status

In 2023 I continued to review free downloadable wargame rules that can be played with ordinary Army Men, which I started to in 2022. It seems like 'Old school gaming' from for instance Donald Featherstone are more popular than other free rules reviewed in 2023. I've been playing a lot of the free rules I found and was personally keen to try out, and there are still some few free wargame rules I want to try out though.

During the year I developed my own 'home brewed wargame rules', Rules of Engagement, based on experience from these other free rules I've played so far. Even if I think they turned out to be playable and pretty good as I achieved a lot of my goals for it, I still thinks they need some further development. I also used a periodic version of these home brewed rules in combination with free paper miniatures for a prehistoric game.

This year I also reviewed a commercial wargame rule, Bolt Action, as I found a way to play it for free. I recognize a lot of game mechanics that can already be found in many of those free wargame rules already mentioned, but I liked the way Warlord Games have combined them in Bolt Action.

2023 was also the year I tried out to use AI for wargaming either to develop rules or using it as an AI-opponent. During the process I experienced that the use of AI in general is controversial, and there was obvious no exception among wargamers.

Some of the Free Wargame Rules I played in 2023

Summers in Norway are usually short with mostly nice weather, so during that time of year it's more tempting doing 'hobby stuff'outside. Since I'm into model railways as well, I finally got around to convert a LGB-starter set I've had for some while into a Narrow Gauge Military German Railway. Since it was a starter set there wasn't so many wagons to form a larger train, so I started up converting even more LGB-wagons I got cheap. Converting them and making credible loads for them took longer time that I've expected, and it kept me busy through the autumn and winter, and it looks like it will still keep me busy for a while. 

During a running-session in a friend's garden early this winter I had a derailment which sent my German military LGB-locomotive into the ground, smashing the front of it. Luckily I wasn't running my Live Steam Locomotive at the time. Anyhow, this made me use more of my precious modelling- and gaming time to re-construct and getting it back in running condition again. Now I probably got a feeling what it's like to be into RC planes...

I added some more details like building plates, a hatch and grille to it while it was in the workshop. 

This left me in a situation where I had less time for wargaming and writing battle reports of my games than I expected, and therefore less activity on my blog from late autumn. Until now recently when I've been doing some quick projects on winter and Christmas related modelling.

2024 - What to expect?

Because my military garden modelling and locomotive mishap seized most of my modelling time at the end of the year, it meant that there were a lot of my planned activity I didn't have time to do during 2023. So this gives a good starting point for 2024 though. I hope I'll manage to cover them all this time:

• I plan to play and review at least one more new free wargame rules which you can find online and play with ordinary Army Men. If you have any suggestions, please post them in the comment section below.
• Finish a G-scale rake of cars for my LGB Heeresfeldbahn.
• Last year I played one of the first conflicts in history, so in 2024  I plan to prepare some figures and play one of the most recents conflicts in history. 
• I plan to prepare some miniatures and play at least one game of 'Fantasy Scenario' or probably also a 'Wild West Scenario' or both.
• I plan to do another 'Print and Play for Free', but with another period and scenario this time.
• If I can find a budget way to do it, I'll play another commercial wargame.
• As summers are short and intense in Norway, I'll do some outdoor military modelling in 2024 as well. Perhaps make an UK-military rake for my Live Steam locomotive, or make my RC-boat look more 'Norwegian'.
• Complete another indoor model railway layout.

-Time will show! 

I hope all of you will keep following for updates through 2024 as well, and comment and share the blog's contents. I'm certainly looking forward to follow your activities in the coming year!

I wish you all the very best for 2024!!

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.