The Assault on Normandy box is the starter set for the game Bolt Action by Warlord Games. You have heard Conesy and I talk about the game at least a couple times on the show as we really like it. We have given a pretty good quick overview of the game in our Gaming Spotlight segment of Wiscodice Episode 52. This is the blog post I mentioned I’d do to follow up with a review of the starter box.
The box contains everything you need to play your first game and many more after that. Included in the box is the Bolt Action rulebook, 20 German and 20 American infantry and their respective assembly guides, two different colored sets of 4 order dice, a guide to the starter box and a ruined building terrain set.
The rule book is very nice full color hard cover containing all the rules for playing bolt action. It is not many pages into the book that you can have a very good understanding of how to play the game. A little further reading you will have all the advanced rules for things such as buildings as well as for adding vehicles and other support units. In the end of the book there is the scenario rules for playing a game and rules for building and playing all forces in history that are in the Bolt Action game. While you can always learn the rules from a friend I think owning and reading the rules for yourself is nearly a must for becoming a good player of any game.
In the set to make the 40 infantry models you get 4 American infantry sprues with 2 weapon sprues as well as 5 German infantry sprues with their 2 weapon sprues. These sprues give you many options to make basic infantry with different armaments and gear as well as officers and even some support weapon teams. Having all these options in the one kit is really awesome but this can seem a little daunting to a brand new player. The guide that comes with gives a brief explanation of suggested load outs to build the infantry included in the box for a starter game. There is also a lot of info in the books and the assembly guides for the infantry to help decide how to arm them. At a minimum you can just assemble them as an officer and 2 squads of 5 riflemen with NCO because that is the most basic requirement for playing a game. You really can’t go wrong picking their armaments and as you add things later you will have plenty of models to chose how you load out your squads in a list.
The rest of the contents are the 8 order dice and the ruined building. The dice are just 2 random colored sets of 4 each. I was kinda sad that the ones I got really weren’t colors I would of picked but they are there so you can play your first games. The ruined building is a variety of plastic parts that can be assembled anyway you please. There isn’t any instructions or pictures with it but it should be easy enough to put something together. I haven’t built it yet but you may see it pop up in some terrain pics or videos whenever it gets put together.
The Assault on Normandy Box is an exceptional deal for your first purchase to get into Bolt Action. The retail price for the box is $112 dollars which is a slight discount over all the parts individually. What is really awesome is that you can pick it up on Amazon for just over $70! That is a huge value! It gets even better that you could split the infantry with a friend if you’re collecting the forces included. If not they would be really good to have to get your first few games or for future demos.
All in all this is a really fun game and a really good deal for a starter set. Check out the Episode 52 Gaming Spotlight to hear more about the game as well as in our future shows because we have been really enjoying it.