We asked you what you wanted to see first from the upcoming Armies of Germany – and you told us! This week, we’re looking at the Army Special Rules. These are, apart from unique units, what set nations apart from each other on the tabletop, and give each army its own character and playstyle. Army Special Rules aren’t new – they’ve been a major part of the game since First Edition – but we’ve taken the opportunity to expand and modify them with the new edition! Germany is the first nation to benefit from this change, but all of the nations can expect to see this kind of treatment when their respective Armies of… books come out!
Some things come, some things go, some things change, and some things stay the same!
One of the key principles when developing Bolt Action: Third Edition was that we wanted to keep aspects of the game that worked well the same – this philosophy extends to all corners of the rules, including these, and is why we see Hitler’s Buzz-Saw and Blitzkrieg return fundamentally unchanged with the new book! These two rules provide the foundation for how German forces play, giving players a welcome bonus to their Officers and machine guns – two vital components of Third Edition!
So those two have stayed the same – what’s changed? Well, Initiative Training has also come over from the previous edition, but with a fairly major change. When a Regular or Veteran German squad loses its NCO, they now simply ignore the morale penalty, rather than rolling to see if a squad member takes over the role! This represents exactly the same thing – a junior soldier showing initiative and stepping up to fill in for the dead NCO in the heat of the moment – without any dice rolls or confusion as to whether he also picks up the NCO’s equipment! Now, the NCO may be gone, but the squad simply carries on regardless – assuming they aren’t Inexperienced, of course!
What you’ll also see is that Tiger Fear has gone, gone, gone! This is a great example of a rule that never really worked, despite a few tweaks over the editions, being removed from the game. It got in the way of fun, so out it went! In its place comes Panzer Ace, allowing you to make one of your Veteran tanks significantly better at killing enemy armour! This represents your force including one of Germany’s elite tank commanders, who honed their craft on dozens of battlefields, and whose achievements were elevated to almost mythological status by propagandists. A Veteran tank can be a significant investment in terms of points, so Panzer Ace ensures that your Tiger or Panther (to name but two of the many eligible vehicles) hits as hard as possible!
Now we’ve looked at the over-arching national special rules, in previous editions this would be the end of the article…
But wait – there’s more!
Armies of Germany: Third Edition heralds the arrival of a new type of national special rule to Bolt Action – this is the first book where they’re shown off, and you can expect to see something very similar in future Armies of… books. Similar to certain rules that existed in various Campaign and Theatre books towards the end of Second Edition, but extended across the entirety of Bolt Action, these rules allow you to tailor your force to a specific theme like never before. They will have different names in each rulebook, but in Armies of Germany, they’re called:
Defend the Fatherland!
In previous editions of Bolt Action, while you could field Fallschirmjäger, Waffen-SS, or Gebirgsjäger squads, your team weapons, artillery, officers and the like were ‘generic’ – lacking the characterful special rules used to represent the more unique formations. This meant that, while you could paint and assemble your entire army as a homogenous force, there would always be a mixture of units. While this was addressed for some units in some campaign and theatre books towards the end of Second Edition, we knew we had a great opportunity to go all-out with Third Edition – so we took it!
Defend the Fatherland allows you to give the special rules of Fallschirmjäger, Waffen-SS, and Gebirgsjäger to a huge swathe of units, allowing you to field a force comprised entirely of your chosen formation – or mix and max exactly how you want! Want your Gebirgsjäger sniper team (perfectly represented by the awesome new book special figure!) to be able to keep up with the rest of the mountain troops, or to give your MMG team the legendary Fallschirmjäger spirit? Now you can! Let’s look at who gets what:
Not a bad little haul, right? As we can see, there are some criteria required to field units using these rules, and broadly that’s designed to bring them more into line with the original ‘base’ infantry unit of their associated formation – and naturally, you don’t have to upgrade those units, as they’ve already got the rules built in! Possibly the biggest ‘reveal’ here is that you can expect to see this formula rolled out across all our upcoming Armies of… books, with every nation getting a similar set of options to better represent their most iconic troop types!
If all this talk of special rules has got you hankering for a new German force, we’ve got some awesome new pre-order bundles including Armies of Germany: Third Edition – get yours now!
