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Me and my friends are starting a bolt action group. I'm going to be Soviet. My friends are Japan, Germany, and the US. My questions are do I need to buy the supplement books, or only the rule book? How much will a good starting army be? What would a good starting list be? At what point level is good for starting? I'm getting the "build an army" since I'm getting winter infantry; should I get a bt-7 or the t-34? How good are assault engineers? Should I get the ba-3 or a transport? Lastly, what are some terrain tutorials? I'm thinking of making a rural board. Thanks.

 lilgammer123 wrote:
Me and my friends are starting a bolt action group. I'm going to be Soviet. My friends are Japan, Germany, and the US. My questions are do I need to buy the supplement books, or only the rule book? How much will a good starting army be? What would a good starting list be? At what point level is good for starting? I'm getting the "build an army" since I'm getting winter infantry; should I get a bt-7 or the t-34? How good are assault engineers? Should I get the ba-3 or a transport? Lastly, what are some terrain tutorials? I'm thinking of making a rural board. Thanks.

With you going Soviet you need only to pick up the main rulebook for the 'starter' list of Soviets, while certainly you can pick up and play with your army with the soviet list in the main book your not going to have as wide as breadth as you would if you got the army book supplement. For your friend going Japanese he need's to pick up the supplement book.

For your next three questions they are intertwined. Your soviet winter box will get you by with a full 2 squads and your extra inexperienced rifle squad, but that is kinda bear bones for a soviet list I would say get another box worth of the soviet winter troops to really full out your list since your looking for quantity over quality. A good starting list would have your officer with his body guard, 3-4 squads of regular riflemen, your free inexperienced squad and that's about a 500 point force, you add in a MG, motar and specialist team or a T34/85 and that brings you close to 750 points. The best sort of points level to start would be at 500-750 points range.

And the assault engineers are good (the toughest infantry in the game), but you need the supplement in order to paly them. Also get the BA-3, transports really aren't needed unless you were going for a more elite army.

In regards to Terrain, I can't help you there. Look it up on youtube is my best suggestion.

Thanks, that cleared up a lot for me. And I was planning on getting two boxes of infantry.

Oh also I forgot, you need BA (or dice of the same size but of different colors) dice as well to play

Hello,, I am new to BA. I play British Paratroopers and the infantry sections can include up to 4 soldiers armed with SMG's (Sten guns). Can those soldiers break away from the rest of the section and create their own fire team? I want to use them to assault buildings and capture objectives under the covering fire of the rest of the squad.

 Dali_Goblin wrote:
Hello,, I am new to BA. I play British Paratroopers and the infantry sections can include up to 4 soldiers armed with SMG's (Sten guns). Can those soldiers break away from the rest of the section and create their own fire team? I want to use them to assault buildings and capture objectives under the covering fire of the rest of the squad.

No. Individual men can not leave squads.

You do not need BA dice to play per say. You can use similar size dice or you can use pretty much anything that comes in different colors/markings that is the same size and shape. Honestly you could take a heart and a spade card for each unit (one player as hearts and one as spades) and shuffle them together and pull them for activation.

The main idea is some way to randomize activation, so tiddly wink, different colored dice, different color glass beads, poker chips, etc will all work just fine and can save some cash if you aren't playing in cut throat tourneys.

Lastly, how good are HMGs? Should I get one or a mortar? How should I equip squads? How many anti tank rifles, LMGs, and SMGs for a soviet squad?

 lilgammer123 wrote:
Lastly, how good are HMGs? Should I get one or a mortar? How should I equip squads? How many anti tank rifles, LMGs, and SMGs for a soviet squad?

HMGs are okay but you'll get a lot more mileage out of a medium mortar. A mortar can do a lot of damage and it forces enemies who are camping to move. It "zeroes in" every time it fires on a target that hasn't moved previously so that you eventually only hit it on a 2+. Perfect for dislodging that annoying machine gun team or cowardly sniper.

Anti-tank rifles form separate two man teams with one man using the rifle and the second man spotting for him. I would take 2-3 personally as Soviets get extra allotments for their Anti-tank teams. ATR teams are cheap, mobile and somewhat versatile as they can act as a poor man's sniper team in a pinch.

I'll let other Soviet players give you advice on individual squad loadouts as I'm very miserly when it comes to equipping them. I just give a 10 man squad 2 SMGS and send them on their merry way.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 lilgammer123 wrote:
Lastly, how good are HMGs? Should I get one or a mortar? How should I equip squads? How many anti tank rifles, LMGs, and SMGs for a soviet squad?

HMGs are okay but you'll get a lot more mileage out of a medium mortar. A mortar can do a lot of damage and it forces enemies who are camping to move. It "zeroes in" every time it fires on a target that hasn't moved previously so that you eventually only hit it on a 2+. Perfect for dislodging that annoying machine gun team or cowardly sniper.

Anti-tank rifles form separate two man teams with one man using the rifle and the second man spotting for him. I would take 2-3 personally as Soviets get extra allotments for their Anti-tank teams. ATR teams are cheap, mobile and somewhat versatile as they can act as a poor man's sniper team in a pinch.

I'll let other Soviet players give you advice on individual squad loadouts as I'm very miserly when it comes to equipping them. I just give a 10 man squad 2 SMGS and send them on their merry way.

Though if you want to pin down an enemy unit then you may want to go with an HMG rather than a Mortar which you may get a lucky hit on... but that is if you are not targeting infantry units persay unless your talking about a fixed weapon team.

 lilgammer123 wrote:
Lastly, how good are HMGs? Should I get one or a mortar? How should I equip squads? How many anti tank rifles, LMGs, and SMGs for a soviet squad?

I field 12-man rifle squads as chaff, and then 12-man all-smg squads advancing behind them to assault my enemies when they get close.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dali_Goblin wrote:
Hello,, I am new to BA. I play British Paratroopers and the infantry sections can include up to 4 soldiers armed with SMG's (Sten guns). Can those soldiers break away from the rest of the section and create their own fire team? I want to use them to assault buildings and capture objectives under the covering fire of the rest of the squad.

What you would do is field two five-man squads instead of a single ten-man squad. Make one five-man squad have an nco and members all with sten guns.

Bolt Action has flexible squad sizes like this so you can play larger games with max-sized squads for a nearly company level game, or smaller platoon-level games with minimum sized squads (representing fireteams or reduced strength units)