Bolt Action, a game about WW2, where regular people battle regular people across farmland and small villages.
Nothing alike, right?
Well, apart from the fact that they had some of the same writers involved at various stages. (Rick Priestley, Alessio Cavatore and Andy Chambers among others). But aside from that, completely dissimilar.
Take a peak at this (previous edition style) 40K profile:
WS:na BS:4 S:3 T:4 W:1 I:na A:1 LD:9
Gun - Range:18" S:3 Assault 2
That's the statline for a German Veteran Grenadier with an Assault Rifle.
Vehicle statlines work in a similar way. BA assumes that ALL weapons have a base strength of 3 and all vehicle AV scores are therefore 3 points lower. A half-track has AV10. A King Tiger has AV14.
Effectively, Bolt Action uses a very similar set of rules to older 40K rules. That's one of the reasons for it's success. 40K players who migrated to BA found the rules familiar and comfortable. You know those trick art pictures where if you look from one direction it's a picture of X and from another it's a picture of Y? That's 40K and BA more or less.
There are some significant differences though, the lack of a WS or Initiative value in BA for example. The game assumes that everyone is, on average the same. The way morale works is different, the turn structures are different and, looking at the previous version of 40K, BA uses to hit modifiers which 40K didn't.
So, the more patient of you may be asking, "Where is Prim going with this?"
Well, it's probably no secret that I have felt a tad disenchanted with 40K for the past few editions. Since late 5th ed, there have been more new games coming along with new ideas, new mechanics and some of them have been pretty innovative. I still like 40K's fluff and (my opinions about GW pricing notwithstanding) the GW range of figures has some truly awesome pieces. I just find myself being less and less interested in the game itself.
"But Prim", one of you may say, "there is a whole new edition and you haven't even tried it yet!"
Yeah, it's new and shiny and streamlined, but it's really just the same thing as before. You still have some units rolling dice by the bucketload. Super characters can no longer form a death star, but they are still around. The random pre-game rolls have gone, but been replaced by other randomness. Models can launch themselves from deep space and land with pinpoint accuracy, but no-one is sure how fast they can run or how many times their guns might fire. Gone are the Universal Special Rules (USRs) of old, only to be replaced by Unit Special Rules (USRs?). Literal Gods fight in small skirmishes.
Yeah, New40K is looking a lot like Old40K to me. It seems pretty popular though and I've seen more 40K on the table since 8th dropped (without scattering), than I did in the years of 6th and 7th. It's just not catching my attention though. After years when the idea of fielding official Primarchs would have allowed me to 'cut glass,' to borrow a Spevna-ism, I'm liking the small handful of dice and the almost non-existant special rules-ishness of BA. Plus the order dice mechanic is, IMHO, brilliant.
"You're still not reaching any kind of point here," the imaginary you in my head says in frustration. You imaginary readers are so impatient!
Fine, I'm thinking to try to adapt 40K to the Bolt Action rules, it's something I have tried before and it didn't work because we tried too hard to keep all of the 40K stuff in the game while adding the random turn mechanics of BA. That's not the plan this time around. What I want is to play BA with 40K models and flavour, not 40K with a couple of BA rules tacked on. I don't expect this to replace 40K or BA at Joshin. Quite possibly I'll just play it at home with a few interested parties. I certainly don't want to detract from others' enjoyment of either game. Despite my own lack of interest in 8th ed. I'd still recommend people play that as much as they'd like and tell me how awesome it is. (Who knows, I may change my mind in the future).
I am interested in what people think and if anyone wants to add some constructive criticism, I'm happy to listen. There are a few things that I think will be difficult to port over between the systems, so ideas are very much welcome. I'll be posting up drafts and so forth somewhere on this forum, so if you fancy the concept, have a look and leave a few comments.
"Ok, you're definitely insane," the voices are saying.
Yes, yes I probably am.
