This Saturday afternoon, our group played a game of Bolt Action set in late war Burma. Allied Forces — British, Sikh, Gurka and Indian — were tasked with forcing their way across three bridges defended by the Japanese. The victory conditions for both sides was to control two of the three bridges.

The game ended in a tie, with one bridge each controlled by the Allies and Japanese, and one bridge contested.

We played with the standard Bolt Action 3rd rules with a couple of exceptions. One is that we allow weapons to fire at up to twice their standard ranges at a -1 as a house rule. The modification works well; the main effect is to speed up the game, which we appreciate.

The other change is a group play modification: when a die is pulled from the bag, we dig through the bag and give each player on that side a die for activation. So, if a Japanese die was pulled, each of the Japanese players gets one die from the bag. Otherwise, a game with six or eight players would take forever.

Although as veteran gamers — we’ve been gaming as a group for more than thirty years — we have tried dozens of WWII rules, we have settled on Bolt Action.