ERRATA AND FAQS – THE COMMAND POST
For your convenience, we have created the Command Post – a section of the Warlord Games online forum that is your one-stop place for all of the official rules material we publish to support the Bolt Action series of books.
In the Command Post you will find, as free downloads, the latest PDF documents of the Errata and Frequently Asked Questions. These documents fix any typos and/or rules issues that have crept into our books. For example (and it’s a very relevant example for this book!), in these documents we have addressed the problem that heavy tanks used to be too easily pinned – now Veteran armoured vehicles are only pinned by weapons that actually have a chance of penetrating their armour!
But that’s not all you can find in the Command Post – this area also includes useful gaming aids, like reference sheets, as well as the evergrowing Additional Units PDF, which lists a number of new units that we have added to the game, for many of the belligerent nations. And then there’s extra optional rules, tournament guidelines, get-you-by army lists, rules commentaries, scenarios and more – please come and have a look!
15th Panzer Division attacks towards Alam Halfa Ridge, by Howard Gerrard © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 158: El Alamein 1942.
Welcome to Bolt Action – Tank War. This book is all about armoured formations in the Bolt Action game. As Bolt Action players will know, the rulebook envisages that players who wish to do so will adapt historical formations to represent forces that are as realistic, or representative, as they want. However, the standard selectors given in the Bolt Action game allow you to field only a limited number of vehicles in an army. This is because the standard game is built around the infantry platoon as its basic element, with other troops taking supporting roles. Even when including as many vehicles as possible in the standard game, the tanks and armoured cars are likely to be outnumbered by infantry squads. Not so in Tank War. Tank War is built around armoured formations and makes provision for entire armies of tanks as well as fully mechanized units such as Panzer Grenadiers. The rules in this book enable you to field forces based upon these most powerful of fighting formations, and to field them either against each other or against forces chosen using the selectors from the main Bolt Action rule book or ‘Armies of’ series supplements.
Panzer III Ausf M
The last thing many Soviet tank crews saw – the monstrous Ferdinand taking aim...
The book is divided into the following sections:
ARMOURED PLATOONS
This is the core section of the Tank War book – the new Armoured Platoons selector enables players to build a Bolt Action force representing a platoon of armoured fighting vehicles. This armoured platoon can be accompanied by supporting infantry and artillery units together with their attendant transportation. This new selector can be used to represent any armoured or mechanized division of World War II.
As in the case of the Reinforced Platoons in the Bolt Action rulebook, with a force for Tank War you can field either a single Armoured Platoon or multiple Armoured Platoons, so long as the total requisition points value remains within the agreed limit for the game.
TANK BATTLE SCENARIO
A new Tank Battle scenario is provided to stage games between armoured forces. This scenario is ideally suited for fighting battles between armoured units, as opposed to the scenarios included in the Bolt Action rulebook, which are better suited to fighting games between Reinforced Platoons. This new scenario is very adaptable because it features a random number of objectives that are positioned by the players. This means the same scenario can be adapted to represent many different types of engagement.
VEHICLE CREW EXPERIENCE
This section introduces new rules to represent the cumulative effect of experience on tank crews. See your tankers improve in quality and gain special fighting skills.
LEGENDARY CREW
Tank aces and other noteworthy tankers of history, with details of their stories and special rules for your games of Bolt Action.
GREAT TANK BATTLES OF WORLD WAR II
Some of the most famous armoured engagements of World War II and suggestions to help you recreate them on the tabletop.
APPENDIX 1: ADDITIONAL COMMAND VEHICLES
New command vehicles to go with the ‘Armies of’ series of supplement books for Bolt Action.
APPENDIX 2: ARMOURED RECOVERY VEHICLES
Rules for and a list of Armoured Recovery Vehicles, for recovering knocked out vehicles from the battlefield under fire.
APPENDIX 3: TALK LIKE A TANKER
Tanker jargon and slang in several languages to bring extra colour to your wargames – Zmeya!
APPENDIX 4: TANK ACE!
A light-hearted mini-game pitching the Red team against the Blue team in vehicular mayhem. May the best tank commander win!
A IS FOR…
The Archer was a most unusual vehicle, used principally by the British, and was an attempt to give some mobility and protection to its mighty 17-pounder heavy anti-tank gun. The 17-pounder was a most destructive gun, which no German tank could stand up to, but paid for this ability with its great length and weight. Experiments were carried out with the reliable but obsolete Valentine tank chassis, and the two were married together to give a reasonably mobile and low-profiled weapon system.
Peculiarly, the only way to make it fit together was to have the gun firing to the rear, the breech literally recoiling next to the driver’s seat! This odd arrangement worked well enough, and in fact gave the Archer the advantage of being able to shoot from cover then drive away as quickly as if advancing. It saw action in October 1944 crewed not by tank troops, but by the Royal Artillery, with over 600 seeing service.
German counterattack on D-Day, by Peter Dennis © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Command 5: Erwin Rommel.