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Dakka,

Thought I would share a friend and I's recent obsession.

With GW nonsense on the continual rise, I began looking elsewhere to scratch the nerd itch. I like WW2 a ton, but reading the old testament that is the Flames of War rule book is just too much for me. Somehow I found Bolt Action and knew immediately that this was the game I was looking for. Prior to the discovery of Warlord games, I was attempting to write a 15mm skirmish game for all the lovely Open Fire minis I had bought in anticipation of getting back into FOW 3rd edition. One day I was gluing them to pennies and then thought why not use them for Bolt Action. A friend of mine (dj0311dj) agreed and the rest is history.

If you want a fun pick up and play platoon combat game try Bolt Action. If you are tired of rebalancing your budget to play 40k then try Bolt Action. If you are extra broke at the moment (like myself) and lucky enough to have a friend willing to play 15mm, then buy a Flames of war platoon for 20 bucks, maybe a vehicle for another 12, glue them to pennies and you will have more points than the game is even suggested to play at. (FYI, in the USA pennies are a coin that is worth less than the energy it takes for one to bend over and pick it up off the street if found... so if you live in a country where your money is worth something use another suitably small round object).

Or...If I have gotten you to read this far, look at the Open Fire Starter set. 60 dollars for 2 complete armies with TONS to spare.

Battlefront Minis getting ready to be painted.


Here is most of my collection as of now. I don't even know how many points this is but its well over 2000. Keeping in mind the game is supposed to played at 1000.


I'm not the best painter. But at 15mm...who cares?






I don't really use the big cats often. Bolt Action is a very Infantry centric game, and massive Jagdpanthers usually get ignored or become Airstrike fodder quickly, and at 500ish points a pop they suck up a lot of resources in a 1000pt game.

But every German Army at least needs the option for a Tiger


And now the Terrain. Since I'm still walking with a limp from a few years of an abusive GW relationship, I decided I would try and make all the terrain from everything I had left over in the house. These bush rows are coat hangers sprayed brown with flock glued to them. Doesn't get cheaper or more effective than that. Some of the houses are cardboard and other such things with some plaster I had left over from my terrain kit. Few plastic pieces scrounged from the bits box.



field made out of a scrounged mini clip board.





A 2x2 section of my modular game board with terrain on it.






And lastly, the one house rule that we play with. If you have ever seen Too Fat Lardies WW2 set Chain of Command, you will find this awesome "patrol phase" mechanic that they have. Basically, before deployment, players play a mini game where they move tokens around the board, having them lock in place when they come a certain distance from one another. These represent were your forward scouts have reconnoitered and become jump off points for your units to be place on.



We allow infantry and vehicles with the Recce rule to enter from these points, all other vehicles must enter from the table edge. It makes for an effective Fog of War, and adds another layer of strategic depth in deciding where to commit forces.

So far we have played on a 4x4 board and have always had ample room. The only other change we make is adjusting to centimeters. 2 centimeters per inch shaves off just the right length..ie. a MG 42 on bipods normally fires 30", so now fire 60 cm.

Thanks for reading. If you are looking for something fun and cost effective I assure you 15mm Bolt Action is worth looking at. We have had tons of success with it.

Very cool, but I thought Warlord Games was 28mm?

 hellrath wrote:
Very cool, but I thought Warlord Games was 28mm?

You don't have to use Warlord figures to play their rules. The same goes for all companies.

There's some players at the FLGS who've done the exact same thing!

I've been intending to give it a go myself since I've got loads of spare BF models I can base. I've actually been putting together a SAGA force in 15mm, much nicer to work in that scale I find.

Yeah Warlord makes figures for bolt action in 28. Very nice and affordable ones I might add. Most of them being multipart plastic.

I just had a load of BF minis that weren't being used. In fact I can't help but believe that every ww2 gamer has atleast a small stash of extra FOW figures on hand.

Using these I inadvertently discovered that 15mm comes with some inherent advantages. Though painting fine details is a bit harder than 28mm, it's possible to churn out whole squads in half the time. Furthermore, you just get a ton more battlefield at that scale. More battlefield, more room to maneuver, more tactical depth.

Thanks for the interest fellas. I'll try and post up a batrep and more pics .


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also...Has anyone actually played Too Fat Lardies' Chain of Comman?

Nice, We will have to give it a try

Excellent stuff. I've also based up a load of my spare 15mm figures in this way. Not tried them with Bolt Action yet, but I've used them with NUTS! and Flying Lead. Your terrain is also really inspiring.

Hope you post more soon.

I might just have to start getting ww2 miniatures... maybe I'll start with dioramas, I've always wanted to do them.

I play Chain of Command, what do you want to know?

@marielle.

Just how you like it really, and how it stacks up against Bolt Action. I watched the YouTube videos on it and was pretty impressed. But I have also heard a fair share of people saying they got bored with it easily.

I just can't seem to find any info on it other than people loving it or hating it. Is it worth picking up?

I don't buy the whole Rolling Stones vs Beatles thing between Bolt Action and Chain of Command. It's a question of what sort of game you want - as for loving or hating, the only people I know personally who love Bolt Action are being paid by Warlord to promote it at shows - the others find it meh...

Is Chain of Command worth picking up?

The short answer is yes.

The reasons I like the game is that the games develop organically, and are very much character driven... not in the sense of a pre-defined character (with a premium priced miniature to match)... but in the sense that private Schultz can change the flow of the game and Private Smith can swing it back.

I suspect the people who get bored with the rules easily are your typical small d.... uhhhh.... ego... gamer which wants a game where you line up and run at each other, after poring over supplements to build 'the list'. Chain of Command is most definitely not that style of game - there is a points system - but it is not really a pick up game - which is probably why many of the critics are American (my apologies if this sounds stereotypical). To maybe clarify that point, in the recognized sense it is not a balanced game, and it doesn't pretend to be. If you get the dice, you can win without the opponent deploying in certain scenarios. Within the frame of reference of what is being played out that is perfect - you get orders to recon a village, there were no enemy in that village, you have succeeded in what you were told to do - to some people this is not a wargame,

However in reality what tends to happen more often is that you get the dice going with you, you decide that you feel lucky, you take a chance to run across a field, the dice switch and you get machine gunned by an ambushing fire team that wrecks half you force - which again to many people is not a wargame, because why should you be expected to plan for a sudden change of iniative - and it's not realistic that the machine gun team lose over watch because the turn ends - even though if you bother to think about what has really happened is that the machine gun team has taken up position, decided that nothing is happening so have broken open the field rations for a much needed meal - that doesn't happen in a game of super soldiers.

To me the strength of the system is that the various elements of your force act and react in an historically consistent and relevant manner. And you are rewarded for building terrain and modelling a battlefield - which to me is a wargame.

Plus if you link battles together and use your imagination in doing so, the game becomes stronger.

Yeah no love lost on the American war game scene. While we have a good amount of casual gamers, our systems is built primarily around pick up games with aquatainces/ strangers in an FLGS where point balance is kind of Important in the "good fences make good neighbors" approach if you get my drift? But when the primary game is 40k. It's not like equal points equal a balanced game.

I was floored by some of the Two Fat Lardies Mecahnics. They are both simple and incredibly intuitive. Their force organization chart to me is one of the best parts. Very out of the box but seems to be effective. not saying that a donkey cave can't jump in and game the game but it still seems pretty well thought out.

My friend and I are both former infantry Marines so we tend to be a bit more critical than the average gamer. Of course we understand that realism has to be sacrificed for fun at some level, but we find the fog of war effect that the jump,off points create is a super awesome mechanic. ( are they the first people to install this?)

Nevertheless the American game scene is also suffering a massive GW hangover at the moment, so a simple pick up and play style game like bolt action is an easy transition for many.

Chain of command however looks great. Seems like those guys have come up with some real novel ideas. That patrol phase is one of the best war game innovations (assuming it is new) that I have seen for awhile. I will buy their games to support them at the least. I just hope that the rest of the rule set doesn't go to far down the complex rabbit hole. I've memorized so many rules in the last two years that bolt action's simplicity is also some of its allure. ( even though we house rules chain of command into it ).

My only issue with it is this. ( and this is assuming that this is true). Can't you just keep rolling 6s to a degree and keep taking turns without your opponent getting a turn?

Also we love bolt action at 15mm. But we also have to admit that the patrol phase jump off point that we stole
from toofatlardies is half the fun and changes the game completely.

Also Marielle I forgot to thank you for the detailed response. Fortunately for me My friend will go down the rabbit hole with me on any ruleset so I think,I'll pick it up. Are you completely against Bot Action?





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit for spelling. "Good fences make good neighbors" NOT good feces makes good neighbors.

The rolling 6's sounds great if you are looking at it from the perspective of the math hammer gamer trying to break the game in a vaccuum.

But what actually happens is that the more 6's you roll, the less you can do in that specific phase, And the things you can do, are not necessarily what you would want to do. In effect the extra phases you get allow you to develop the attack or defence over more a longer period of time.

As for Bolt Action, I am not completely against any game or rule set. My issue is that the design uses weapon ranges to achieve the fire and movement aspects of WWII infantry combat, which to me is a poor decision - especially when one considers the ground scale at 28mm (assuming you follow the model of using the figures and rules from the same company) the effective range for a WWII rifle is roughly the equivalent of an 18th century smoothbore musket.

I think you sold me. I'm going to buy the book.

Nice painted jobs btw... in all the excitement I forgot to mention it....

OH DEAR JESUS!!!!!! I just explained to my wife the awesomeness and cleverness of this and as shes heard me talk about wanting to start bolt action but her being against the several hundred dollar investment (again) she is all on board for this and that for under a $100 bucks to get a decent army plus the books etc WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!! Not to mention others in my game group!!!

Haha yeah you can get into 15mm bolt action at about 30 bucks!

Thanks for the inspiration mate, just pulled out some 15mm British, I honestly don't think ww2 is right for 28mm it seems to scale much better with 15's or 20's plus its cheaper and the battlefields just seem more right

 marielle wrote:

As for Bolt Action, I am not completely against any game or rule set. My issue is that the design uses weapon ranges to achieve the fire and movement aspects of WWII infantry combat, which to me is a poor decision - especially when one considers the ground scale at 28mm (assuming you follow the model of using the figures and rules from the same company) the effective range for a WWII rifle is roughly the equivalent of an 18th century smoothbore musket.

One thing you have to consider with the ranges is that it's not the maximum effective range of the weapon but an effective engagement range in a combat situation. Is is easy to hit a target at 500m in the prone on a rifle range with proper respiratory pause, sight picture and sight alignment. It is a completely different story under fire with smoke, dust, explosions and adrenaline.

Personally at 28mm I do feel the ranges are a little short for anything outside a house to house engagement but you also have to remember your models aren't ducking and weaving like a person in combat. I do think that 15mm is a much better scale and things seem more realistic in the sense of ranges and maneuver space.

I should really do this with that Open Fire set too. However, i think I would use Force-on-Force rules for my WWII platoon+ gaming.

I'll start off by saying I love Bolt Action, both rule sets and scale for skirmishes. I've currently got 2,000-ish points of German infantry. However, if I want to recreate a larger-scale battle then 15mm might be the way to do it. (I'm deludedly thinking of 40k and Epic 40k).

I'm going to mention the dreaded "range", as in what range do you use for Bolt Action in 15mm? I'm thinking of halving everything (28 divided by 2 is 14 which is roughly 15).

Easy E I was just about to bring up force on force... for small level games between irregulars and regulars I love the system especially for it base simplicity and the room it allows for expansion into complex issues affecting your troops be it LSD in vietnam or low ammo and supplies for the surrounded germans at stalingrad

dj0311dj wrote:

 marielle wrote:

As for Bolt Action, I am not completely against any game or rule set. My issue is that the design uses weapon ranges to achieve the fire and movement aspects of WWII infantry combat, which to me is a poor decision - especially when one considers the ground scale at 28mm (assuming you follow the model of using the figures and rules from the same company) the effective range for a WWII rifle is roughly the equivalent of an 18th century smoothbore musket.

One thing you have to consider with the ranges is that it's not the maximum effective range of the weapon but an effective engagement range in a combat situation. Is is easy to hit a target at 500m in the prone on a rifle range with proper respiratory pause, sight picture and sight alignment. It is a completely different story under fire with smoke, dust, explosions and adrenaline.

Personally at 28mm I do feel the ranges are a little short for anything outside a house to house engagement but you also have to remember your models aren't ducking and weaving like a person in combat. I do think that 15mm is a much better scale and things seem more realistic in the sense of ranges and maneuver space.

28mm is @1/50th or 1/48th depending on you choice, therefore a 6' by 4' table is @200' by 300' (or about the size of a standard football pitch)', so I am not sure why you are talking about ranges of 500m. One would need to use 6mm figures on a standard table to get ranges anything close to 500m.

It makes no sense that a rifle has a maximum range of 100', even if you are prone with a proper respiratory pause.

Silver_skates

We convert the inches into centimeters by doubling the inches.

Ie...30 inches (the range of an LMG) becomes 60cm. It manages to shave just the appropriate amount of the range off.

While this method works well for us, you may find that keeping inches works just fine.

We have an invasion of Normandy 2vs2 planned for the spring on a very large table. Looking forward to how the large scale battle works out as well.

From the guys I know who've been playing it in 15mm; they haven't changed the ranges on anything and they've found it works just as well.

 marielle wrote:

dj0311dj wrote:

 marielle wrote:

As for Bolt Action, I am not completely against any game or rule set. My issue is that the design uses weapon ranges to achieve the fire and movement aspects of WWII infantry combat, which to me is a poor decision - especially when one considers the ground scale at 28mm (assuming you follow the model of using the figures and rules from the same company) the effective range for a WWII rifle is roughly the equivalent of an 18th century smoothbore musket.

One thing you have to consider with the ranges is that it's not the maximum effective range of the weapon but an effective engagement range in a combat situation. Is is easy to hit a target at 500m in the prone on a rifle range with proper respiratory pause, sight picture and sight alignment. It is a completely different story under fire with smoke, dust, explosions and adrenaline.

Personally at 28mm I do feel the ranges are a little short for anything outside a house to house engagement but you also have to remember your models aren't ducking and weaving like a person in combat. I do think that 15mm is a much better scale and things seem more realistic in the sense of ranges and maneuver space.

28mm is @1/50th or 1/48th depending on you choice, therefore a 6' by 4' table is @200' by 300' (or about the size of a standard football pitch)', so I am not sure why you are talking about ranges of 500m. One would need to use 6mm figures on a standard table to get ranges anything close to 500m.

It makes no sense that a rifle has a maximum range of 100', even if you are prone with a proper respiratory pause.

I think you have missed my point. I've got multiple brands of 28mm, all approx 1 1/4" tall. Call that the average height of a man at 6' and you looking at about 230' X 346' on a 4' X 6' table.

500yds is the effective range of an M1 rifle. That range is only achieved on closed ranges in training using the techniques I mentioned perviously. While that can easily be achieved in that situation on a stationary target it cannot be reliably achieved in combat against a moving target in cover or concealment. Most firefights happen much closer with multiple line of sight obstructions effectively making combat effective range more like 100 to 200 yds or 300-600'.

24" in this scale is about 115' which like I said before I do feel is too short. I didn't say maximum effective range of a rifle was 100' in the prone with proper respatory pause I said it was representative of a combat engagement range.

A 18th century musket was used en masse at 50yds, over open terrain, not aimed at individuales and simply a precurser to a bayonet charge. It was still not reliably accurate at that range.

When we use 15mm we have a table that is more like 384' X 576' with 24" being 192' which we feel is just a touch more accurate.

dj0311dj wrote:

 marielle wrote:

dj0311dj wrote:

 marielle wrote:

As for Bolt Action, I am not completely against any game or rule set. My issue is that the design uses weapon ranges to achieve the fire and movement aspects of WWII infantry combat, which to me is a poor decision - especially when one considers the ground scale at 28mm (assuming you follow the model of using the figures and rules from the same company) the effective range for a WWII rifle is roughly the equivalent of an 18th century smoothbore musket.

One thing you have to consider with the ranges is that it's not the maximum effective range of the weapon but an effective engagement range in a combat situation. Is is easy to hit a target at 500m in the prone on a rifle range with proper respiratory pause, sight picture and sight alignment. It is a completely different story under fire with smoke, dust, explosions and adrenaline.

Personally at 28mm I do feel the ranges are a little short for anything outside a house to house engagement but you also have to remember your models aren't ducking and weaving like a person in combat. I do think that 15mm is a much better scale and things seem more realistic in the sense of ranges and maneuver space.

28mm is @1/50th or 1/48th depending on you choice, therefore a 6' by 4' table is @200' by 300' (or about the size of a standard football pitch)', so I am not sure why you are talking about ranges of 500m. One would need to use 6mm figures on a standard table to get ranges anything close to 500m.

It makes no sense that a rifle has a maximum range of 100', even if you are prone with a proper respiratory pause.

I think you have missed my point. I've got multiple brands of 28mm, all approx 1 1/4" tall. Call that the average height of a man at 6' and you looking at about 230' X 346' on a 4' X 6' table.

500yds is the effective range of an M1 rifle. That range is only achieved on closed ranges in training using the techniques I mentioned perviously. While that can easily be achieved in that situation on a stationary target it cannot be reliably achieved in combat against a moving target in cover or concealment. Most firefights happen much closer with multiple line of sight obstructions effectively making combat effective range more like 100 to 200 yds or 300-600'.

24" in this scale is about 115' which like I said before I do feel is too short. I didn't say maximum effective range of a rifle was 100' in the prone with proper respatory pause I said it was representative of a combat engagement range.

A 18th century musket was used en masse at 50yds, over open terrain, not aimed at individuales and simply a precurser to a bayonet charge. It was still not reliably accurate at that range.

When we use 15mm we have a table that is more like 384' X 576' with 24" being 192' which we feel is just a touch more accurate.

Instead of using pedantry and sophistry, go back and look at my initial criticism - namely....

"As for Bolt Action, I am not completely against any game or rule set. My issue is that the design uses weapon ranges to achieve the fire and movement aspects of WWII infantry combat, which to me is a poor decision."

btw I enjoy watching you twist in the wind, and find your attempts to teach me to suck eggs amusing,

@dj0311dj

What do you think the max effective range on a javelin is? Thats probably something were gonna need to figure out the appropriate 15mm range on soon.

 Strombones wrote:
@dj0311dj

What do you think the max effective range on a javelin is? Thats probably something were gonna need to figure out the appropriate 15mm range on soon.

Which javelin? This one?



If so, 2500 meters is what is typically listed, though the article here: http://www.deagel.com/news/Javelin-Man-Portable-Anti-Tank-Missile-Demonstrates-Extended-Range-Capability_n000011204.aspx indicates a much longer range. I suspect that longer range has the missile in a high arc with most of its flight unpowered since the rocket will have burnt out a lot earlier in the flight.

If you mean the thrown spear javelin, effective range was probably about 50 feet, but good troops could probably chuck it 100 feet or so.

yeah I'm mean the anti tank missile. We have a running joke that My Bolt Action Germans Will soon be able to upgrade panzerschrecks to javelins in the new armies of germany book.

Though I'm sure a modern warfare 15mm game is not far off in the list of things to do. Khufasan minis might be good for that.

Edit. Also, this picture is motivating.