Data Sphere

A long time, in a state far to the west of New York, I played a game called Battalions in Crisis. It was WW2 wargame which relied on 20mm (1/72 or 1/76 scale) miniatures and there was much fun. Then came Flames of War, using 15mm miniatures and I was left holding the bag as the gamers I played with jumped to the new game and scale.

Many years have passed since that time and like a certain sailor the Albatross (aka hundreds of minis and models) still hangs around my neck. While the sting has diminished the desire to play WW2 has not...and so we come to Bolt Action.

28mm scale WW2, put out by Warlord Games. What attracts me to Bolt Action over Flames of War is the entry cost, a 2000 pts forces (normally two rifle platoons) come in at less than $300. I have it on good authority that I am getting the rules for Christmas and I am wondering if anybody else has played it or seen the miniatures? (The minis aren't a big deal as I know there are multiple manufacturers of 28mm WW2.)

Just to be accurate, most FoW games are played at 1750 or 1500 and you can get an army for that size of game for $200-$300 tops. Even less if you buy from the many 3rd party 15mm WWII. But, back to Bolt Action.

Bolt Action is a pretty basic game, it's in dire need of a second edition, otherwise after playing it for a while you start to see the cracks and half-baked systems that they are only now starting to plug. It works, but you have to be really tolerant of oddities, and the rules and lists are much less historical than even the much hated FoW in that regard.

Food for thought, thanks.

If you don't want to invest into new models, try Nuts! from Two Hours Wargames. It is intended as squad / platoon scaled, and can use almost any scale of models.

Not very detailed (most weapon categories are rather generic, like, most machineguns are simply "machineguns", with a few notable exceptions), but rather fast-paced and playable.

It feels like 20mm WW2 has lost acceptance, finding players is far more a concern.

MacAttack001 wrote:It feels like 20mm WW2 has lost acceptance, finding players is far more a concern.

Check out the "Battlegroup ____" rules from Iron Fist Publishing. It's nominally a bit smaller scale than Flames of War, as you give orders to squads or individual vehicles. Game uses morale tokens that you draw as units suffer casualties. Each unit is worth a certain number of morale points ("Battle Rating" in the game), and when you have accumulated a number of BR points, your army is called back by higher HQ. Morale tokens range from 0-5 points, and also have some semi-random events like a unit/vehicle running out of ammo, breaking down, finding a minefield, or even a random air strike. How many BR points you've taken is also SECRET, so you never know when your opponent is going to break.

Groundscale seems to be about 1"=10yd/m, as rifles can shoot 30".

You have a semi-random number of orders you can issue every turn, and units do NOT continue doing what their last order was.

There's also statlines for lots of the random interesting minis, like Forward Aid posts, supply trucks, wire teams for the field telephones, etc.

While I play in 15mm using my Flames of War armies (I bought an additional platoon for each army and based that platoon individually), Piers Brand and Warwick Kinrade (yes, that Warwick) play in 20mm.

My buddy plays Bolt Action, which he described as "40K as it should have been". Says a lot really. I've never played. I tried FoW and gave up as I didn't like it very much.

I went for Chain of Command at 15mm, which is also platoon game but with an eye towards historical accuracy. TFL did a series of videos describing game play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiT70m6CJO8

I've been enjoying Bolt Action, though it really is a lightweight game.

I picked up Chain of Command and Nuts! but I've yet to try them out. Nuts! sounds interesting as it seems to rely on reaction-based mechanics and is suitable for solo play (think it could have originated as a solo game but I could be mistaken).

The deployment mini game of CoC looks really cool and seems to simulate squads happening on each other on patrol, rather than armies lining up at a fixed linear distance from each other.

Maxvon_d wrote:The deployment mini game of CoC looks really cool and seems to simulate squads happening on each other on patrol, rather than armies lining up at a fixed linear distance from each other.

Yes, that whole "patrol phase" mini game of Chain of Command is something I am tempted to borrow for scifi games.

Yeah, same.

There's a lot of cool mechanics from historicals and other less known games that could be used to make fun and interesting scenarios for scifi games. Even doing stuff like writing the game to handle such scenarios better.

Infinity, thankfully, has some very RPG-like stats, which helps in that department.

As for 28mm and 15mm WWII, you'll be able to find all sorts of rules and games that use figures of either scale. So even though I don't play them that much anymore, it's still a pretty good investment for me since these miniatures won't really ever stop being useful in one game or another.