BA 101: Beginning Bolt Action

By Troy A. Hill

Images from Warlord Games, or by the author

Well, I took the plunge recently into a new game system. Gamer-Crack got hold of me again.

I’ve been looking for a new WWII system for a while, and I was hesitant to go back to a 28mm system after abandoning Warhammer Fantasy (WHFB) during its dark-era.

But, I wanted to find a system that would come equipped with a fairly stable player base in my part of the world (Southern California). Outside of Flames of War (FOW), is the next most popular WWII miniatures game. And it has a tournament scene. Double Win for that.

The first game I played, hosted by a few of our HMGS-PSW gents,  included a “objective” of Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz. Seems those two had gotten lost near the Eastern Front. The Soviets were tasked with capturing or killing them. The German players had to recover them. That led to many poor attempts at German accents for quotable Hogan’s Heroes lines – I know NOTHink! – being tossed about like a live hand-grenade.

This article will serve as a kick-off to a series on my experience as a new player in Bolt Action. For the series, I’ll cover assembling and painting my US Army, learning the rules, some early Battle Reports, and hopefully, culminate with a tournament I’ll be hosting at our fall HMGS-PSW convention in Fullerton California. Hopefully, I can share enough of my experiences so that a new player to Bolt Action can learn from my trials and tribulations along the way.

The Initial Buy-in

I managed to sell off a good portion of the 15mm Eastern Front boxes and blisters I had acquired a year ago in anticipation of expanding my smaller scale gaming into that theater. I reinvested in a US Starter Army, and various bits and bobs of heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to accompany them. I even had enough funding left to begin investing in Italian forces. They currently occupy the spot under my painting table where the Soviet horde in 15mm recently resided.

The box set I picked up was the US Starter Army. This came with a daunting pile of sprues. And I do mean daunting. Compared to assembling and prepping stands of 15mm figures, I quickly learned that getting this army on the table would take a different approach.

Sooooo many arms to glue… so many arms.

And then, there are the other arms, the weapons to add. But more on that in a later piece.

There are two items a new player like myself will need to have right away: The Bolt Action Rule Book, and the appropriate Army Book for their force. Head on down to your local game store that stocks Warlord Games products, and get them ordered.

The Bolt Action 2nd Edition rules were written by Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestley. While you can purchase a digital rulebook from either the Warlord Games site, or from an ebook online retailer, I suggest the hardcover rulebook for one reason: I wanted to be able to highlight rules as needed. I really like the WHFB game system from the Allessio and Rick eras (I played back in the V5 and V6 days), so I was receptive to giving the BA rules a good try.

But, I remembered from my WHFB days, that Alessio’s and Rick’s rulebooks mix fluff and explanations in with the rules. This is one area where I admire what BattleFront has done with their rulebooks. They separate the rules from the extraneous material. With an index in the back, the BF books make finding an appropriate rule easier than in the Bolt Action books.

One glance in the Bold Action V2 book showed me that I’d need to get the highlighter and colored pens out to mark the key spots. My own memory is like a retired AFV at the firing range: full of holes. I knew from experience that I’d be referring back to the text many times until the rules sank into my subconscious. My old WHFB books were well highlighted, and now my Bolt Action book is as well.

Even though the main rulebook includes typical Army lists in the back for US, German, Great Britain, The Soviets, and Imperial Japan, there are other Army Books available. The ones for Big Five that are already in the main rulebook, include theater and period specific alterations to the generic lists from the main book. I also grabbed the Italy and the Axis book, for my Italian Army. This volume includes lists for both the Italian forces in North Africa, but also the push on the Eastern Front with armies from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Finland.

Forces

If you’re like me, and coming out of tank-heavy smaller scale game, you’ll need to reconsider your buying habits should you move into Bolt Action. This is a squad-based skirmish game, so you’ll be assembling and painting a lot of infantry and man-packed weapons. That’s a lot of arms to glue onto torsos. A LOT of arms.

The intro game I just played with some friends had each of us field 500 points. That gave me two platoons of grunts (9 and 10 strong), an HQ section, one M3AI half-track, and two inexperienced heavy weapons (MMG and Med Mortar). Since most games are in the 1,000+ range in our area, I’ve still got a lot of dudes to glue arms and weapons onto. I’m only half-way (at best) to my goal of assembling a well-rounded 1,000 pt list of squads and weapons. Of course, I’ll be adding AFVs as well.

My starter army set came with both the Sherman and the half-track. On the advice of other players, I made sure to get the half-track assembled first. Machine guns are your friend in this game. An armored platform rocking with several HMGs is an awesome investment. So much so, that another half-track is under the painting table for the next round of vehicle assembly. But first, I have more arms and weapons to glue on grunt bodies.

Since I’ll be basing my squads up as North Africa fighters (at least for the initial set), I have also added an M3 Lee medium tank. But, that will wait until I get the infantry, M3A1 Half-tracks, and other assorted weapons assembled and painted.

In the next piece, I’ll take a look at assembling the American forces. Oh! the arms… gluing all those arms!

Troy is a long time gamer, and the author of the Cup of Blood medieval fantasy series. He’s also the dude who strives to keep the typos under control on No Dice No Glory.