Bolt Action Rules AAR - Play Test....

Sunday night saw the first outing of the Evesham Wargames Club of 2012, 4 games on offer, I was lucky enough to play test the forth coming rules from Warlord Games - "Bolt Action" the Game.

It would be wrong of me to share anything of the rule set or unique mechanisms but as with many of Rick Preistly's previous offerings they are quick to pick up but the challange lies in how you position and order your troops.

It's been quite a while since my Jungle terrain got an airing, but it does give a great feel for the pacific, the scenario was simple, US marines and Japanese Infantry were both given the orders of seizing the village.

The initiative and order mechanism has a slick feel to it, which keeps book keeping to a minimum. I had the luck of the dice in the first rounds pushing my infantry forward.

Mean while the Marines pushed their armour along the track flanked by infantry.

My Japanese reached the entrance to the village and the tanks moved into an over watch position awaiting the slow progress of the US Marines.

Mean while the sneaky yanks had pushed through the jungle to the right flank of my Japanese and had moved into a strong firing position and were putting exstreme pressure on the section holed up in the wooden hut.

Whilst the rules provide the Japanese with a strong morale the weight of fire forced the section to become pinned and ineffective, not surprising really given that the US armour and a Flame Thrower team added to the Japs discomfort.

Finally after 3 rounds of the fire the Japanese section could take no more with killed and pinned littering the hut, they were destroyed and removed form the game.

Meanwhile the fire fight on the left had drawn a significant number of US forces away from the exposed US right flank

Thus allowing the Japanese to push through the centre of the village aided by the destruction of one of the Stuart's.

As we reached wrapping up time at the club the Japanese launched a final Banzi attack on an isolated US section, defeating them in Hand to Hand and removing them from the game, but at a significant loss to their own number.

As with any play test we came away with some questions around process and game play, but the rules played well, fast and low in book keeping, we had the rules pretty much nailed in a couple of turns...
I look forward to seeing how these develop over the coming months and look forward to the finished product in the summer.