There were two or three females in the original Imperial Army range.  There was also a single female Catachan Jungle Fighter with a grenade launcher, and a female commissar.

If you want classic guard, you just need to make shoulder pads out of Bic pen barrel and use the Wargames Atlantic cannon fodder.  They have a set of men and a set of women so you can have it your way.  For that matter Wargames Atlantic have all sorts of good Imperial Guard proxies and reworked versions of the Dream Forge powered armour figures that would work for Space Marine proxies.  They also have giant spiders with rayguns and sunglasses.

Well, I have my copy of Far West in my hands right now. Just arrived tonight.

Pretty hard to believe, after all this time.

I think part of the issue is scale.  You're looking at a game about what are really very small, minor skirmishes.  A couple platoon's dusting it up might not be an air support or heavy tank priority. From a tournament perspective tanks verses infantry can be pretty one sided and air support is pretty all or nothing, you don't really want those things in a tournament.  Points costs are, of course never perfect but I think they intentionally discourge tanks a little because if you're infantry, even an R-35 is still a tank and in the period you'd run into one, your guys won't have bazookas.

Bolt Action is fast, fun, and gamey.  For a better WWII wargame, I'd suggest Plastic Soldier Company's Battlegroup if you can find it.  It's playable, more detailed, and more scalable than Bolt Action or Flames of War and is set up so you can run anything from 1/32 to 1/300 scale miniatures.  There's a game called NUTS! that does a great job of larger battles with 1/300 figures, it really feels like you're commanding larger forces.  But there's no shortage of WWII games out there.

Heya Shark! I've been playing for around 7-8 years or so, and here's what I've found in my experience.

(1) LMGs in squads aren't bad, but they are pricey. An LMG gunner is 30pts for a Regular, plus it uses up a squaddie to be a loader. So that's roughly 40pts for 4 shots: that's equivalent to 4 individual Riflemen that cost 10pts each. The advantage, however, is that you're getting 4 shots from just 2 guys. Essentially you're doubling the cost of two models to double their shots.

(2) I can't say as to exactly why this is, as I don't play competitive games. Honestly I think Bolt Action is best  when played with friends.

(3) With the Reinforced Platoon you pretty much each get the same thing, but it comes down to what you prioritize. Some armies will favor more infantry, while some Veteran forces use less infantry and supplement themselves with more support squads. From what I've seen, most forces tend to be pretty different outside of some choices. I've never seen a list run without a MMG Team, but I have seen forces eschew a Tank or a mortar.

(4) In this case, and I can't remember if it's mentioned in the rules, but both forces have to abide similar Theater Selectors. So if a Soviet Player wants to play a Stalingrad Force, his German opponent has to play with the German Stalingrad Theater selector, or the nearest equivalent. That way he can't run a reinforced platoon or something like a Berlin defense force.

If I've learned anything playing Bolt Action, it's that it runs a fun line between historical wargame and beer and pretzels gameplay. It's fun, but it has its flaws. Personally, I still don't understand how to run a good Inexperienced force, but people do it all the time. If you don't mind me asking, how long have you been playing?

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 05:41:16 PM

Quote from: FingerRod on Today at 06:54:37 AMI just checked my watch, it is still a story game. And that mechanic is a way for others to participate in the STORY. It 100% is not used as part of standard resolution.

And when 1 is barely a success, 2 is you do it but not well, 3 you do it adequately, etc. those are called DEGREES OF SUCCESS. And again, the failure story mechanic does not change that. It is only used as a way to introduce something "more interesting". The person doing the action can always reroll, using insight, until they get their way. Annnnnd....if the player doing the action doesn't think the failure is interesting for their character or the story, then most of the time people back it out. A table etiquette thing.

I cannot believe you keep digging deeper on this lol.

FingerRod: "My GM always let me succeed with no risk of failure, because at our table it's standard table etiquette not to allow anyone to fail if they don't want to."

Dude, that may be the etiquette at your table, but that's not the standard etiquette for all tables, and it's not what the Cthulhu Dark rules say. No, I haven't played Cthulhu Dark, but I was very involved with story games in 2010 and read it when it was released. I had been a participant on The Forge and administered the Indie RPG Awards, and played lots of its siblings and predecessors like Lady Blackbird, Blowback, etc.

In general, I find it is more fun to have the risk of failure. In my groups, it was normal for the GM and others to introduce risk of failure, even if the rules allowed for the GM to grant auto-success. If I were playing Cthulhu Dark, I'd be using the failure rules to their fullest as written - the same way that I have introduced failure and adversity in other story games like Lady Blackbird, Polaris, etc. For me, it's been more fun that way.

Nice resume, who cares? You got caught trying to represent a game you've never played. Simple as that.

For the record, I tried with you this time.

Clearly the take away message is that the third time's the charm for a woman named Williams to head the company in charge of D&D!

Also, none of the midwits in the C-Suite lost their jobs. Shit, even Williams is getting her golden parachute after torching WotC. Hasbro deserves whatever terrible fate (may) befall it in the future.

Greetings!

Well, there are a few problems that I have noticed with Bolt Action.

(1) Disparate Effectiveness of MMG's and LMG's when compared to the cost-effectiveness of standard Rifle Squads. What the frigg is up with that? Historically, the more machine guns you have, the more you kick ass. Bottom Line. And yet, with the point costs involved, and the dice mechanics within the rules with the units, machine gun units are actually a disadvantage.

(2) Minimalizing or Banning of Air Power in Competitive Games.
What is up with that? Superior air power is a key component of how the Western Allies wrecked the Wehrmacht from Africa to Europe. Furthermore, in the Pacific, the loss of air superiority for the Empire of Japan spelled fucking doom for their forces at every level, in every battle, whether such battles were land forces or naval forces at sea. Not to be forgotten, the slower but gradually growing strength of the Red Air Force along the Eastern Front did much to further savage the Reich's war machine and fighting effectiveness at every level.

(3) Point Costs of Tanks and Transport
This especially hurts the German forces. It becomes apparent that in so many scenario match ups, it is like a common menu of 1,000 or 1250 points where both sides are totally evenly matched in points, with one MMH team, one mortar team, one artillery gun, and one Light or Medium Tank. Maybe a truck or Half Track. That seems to be pretty much it, along with standard Infantry Squads. 

That set up sounds nice, but it essentially handicaps the relatively few advantages that the Germans possessed--Tiger and Panther Tanks, and lots of strong armoured assault guns and artillery variants. The Germans were not feared across the battlefields of Europe and Russia because they supported their infantry with armoured cars or Panzer III Light Tanks.

(4) Dissonance Between Theater Forces and Maxed Homogenous Standard Forces
Similar to aspects of all of the above mentioned, a player using various cool Theater Forces, which are more historically accurate--is essentially wasting points on expensive units, when there are more effective standard units at a cheaper cost--or they are buying themed units that mechanically are just not as effective. These dynamics ultimately mean that a player seeking to deploy a more historically accurate force will likely simply be outclassed and ploughed by a player that deploys the Maxed Homogenous Standard force.

Anyone see these problem dynamics? Or am I just too new to Bolt Action and missing something?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Last

2nd