Starting Bolt Action – fall in, Private!

• Posted on 15 April 2022
• By Simon Thurtle
• Posted in 28mm, Bolt Action, Getting started, WW2
• 0

Getting started with a new gaming system can be tough. Especially if the game has been around a while. There are rules, books, miniatures, terrain, gaming aids and expansions all sat there wait to jump all over your wallet. So, what do you need?

Starting Bolt Action – fall in, Private!

Getting started with a new gaming system can be tough. Especially if the game has been around a while. There are rules, books, miniatures, terrain, gaming aids and expansions all sat there wait to jump all over your wallet. So, what do you need?

What IS Bolt Action?

Bolt Action is a platoon level wargame, set in the second world war, and at 28mm scale. The focus is very much on infantry, though tanks, transport vehicles and similar are within the game.

In practice, that means you’ll have around thirty to fifty infantry and a few vehicles, depending on the army you choose to play and the list you put together.

Unlike a lot of systems, Bolt Action has a randomised activation sequence. The units from each player are represented by a die, all of the dice are dropped into a bag, mixed then a player draws a die from the bag. The player who owns that dice may then activate a single unit. When that activation is completed, another die is drawn until they’re all used.

Not knowing which player will go next will impact tactics and planning turn to turn. If you’re not sure you’re going next, will you be defensive? Or risk more aggressive play? It can all change on the draw of a die.

Rules

As with any wargame, you’ve got to start with the rulebook. Bolt Action, now in it’s second edition, has a pretty big one, totalling 228-pages, the rulebook covers everything you need to play the game including army list for the US, Great Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Imperial Japanese armies.

This is the best place to start for new players, letting you see and evaluate the different armies before making your choice. We recommend this as the best place to dive into the game UNLESS you’re grabbing one of the two player starter sets, but see below for more on those!

But, where to go next? Well, you’ll find that Bolt Action includes a large number of different theatre books which add different options and units based on different territories and times of the war.

Starter sets

With the rules in hand, now you can pick your first army. You’ll find that Warlord Games have helpfully put together some great starter sets.

Starter sets come in two flavours; the first are the two-player starters. These include two  armies of around 500 points, a rulebook, dice, and other accessories so that you can get straight into the game. Bolt Action 2 player start sets to be the cheapest way into the game and means you don’t need to worry about buying anything else to play, other than a tape measure.

If you’re new to Bolt Action, these really are a great place to start , having everything you need in one place and at a good price. The units in the box will also form a good core to build on for larger, more competitive armies which you may move on to.

The second type of starter is army start set  This type delivers a core of an army, German Grenadiers, for example. Each box contains Infantry and vehicles to build your army from. Each Box make a force of at least a 1000 points and often more/  Though these boxes do not contain any dice, rules, or other accessories, so you’ll be needing those if you want to start the game here.

Again, these Bolt Action army starter sets are great value and give you a really strong start to the army they contain.

Gaming aids

If you’re coming into and diving straight into an army starter, rather than a two-player set, there are certain accessories you’ll need to start playing Bolt Action.

These are specific to Bolt Action, so you’ll be unlikely to have them even if you’ve played other games. These include:

• Order dice: These are used to decide activation order
• Dice bag: For storing and drawing your order dice 
• Lots of six-sided dice (D6s): You might have some, but do you have ENOUGH? 
• Pin tokens: pinning is a key mechanism in Bolt Action, so tracking them is important 
• Tokens and templates: big explosions need big templates… but of a specific size 

Tank War

If you spend time looking into Bolt Action, you’ll soon come across Tank War.

This is a variant of Bolt Action which, as the name implies, uses only armour. We won’t go into Tank War in this post but suffice it to say that you don’t need Tank War to use armour or vehicles in your game. This expansion exists for people who prefer the smell of engine oil and cannon fire to unwashed infantry!

Once you’ve decided on your route in and gotten everything in place, you’re ready to get started and fight the battles of World War II… well, once you’ve built your miniatures, of course!

As with every wargame, knowing what you need is important, hopefully we’ve cleared that up for you. But if you’ve any more questions about getting started with Bolt Action, then pop over to our Facebook and let us know!  We’ll see you on the battlefield.