After a bit of a break in Game Knight League’s Bolt Action/Combined Arms Campaign, we’re back! But first, a look at our Capstone 6 player D-Day Game!
D-Day June 8 2025
To honor the anniversary, and knowing that a lot of our regular members would be busy in the coming weeks with summer obligations, we tossed together a multiplayer scenario representing a beach landing.
The scenario was simple: Allied forces had 12 turns to take three positions on the heights above. They had unlimited resources to do it, while the opposing Axis forces had significant defensive advantages, but were hampered by low quality troops.
At 3 players per side, this was our biggest single game of Bolt Action, and it came down to quite the nail biter. Allied forces, despite some early successes with offshore artillery and the support of multiple tanks, bogged down crossing the final stretch of beach.
On the final turn of the game, the final of three positions was secured when allied forces finally managed to overwhelm the final bunker.
So What’s Next?
Well, I’ve been a bit of a poor lead, letting things get in the way of continuing the project, but now, at the start of November, it seems like as a good a time as any to bring everyone back to the tabletop.
I’m definitely taking some lessons learned from the previous campaign.
Combined Arms is a great game, and great addition to a campaign, but I believe it works best with two players who can actively make use of the special adjustments and timing required by the rules. Air battles were rarely fought in our previous campaign, partially because of a lack of resources, but also because they needed to be concluded (rules as written) before all sea and land battles.
While I would like to play another campaign using Combined Arms, I don’t know if it properly scales to a full community endeavor like this.
Ultimately, I think the spirit of a combined arms campaign can work with the mechanics stripped away. I want to keep things as open as possible for our players, while maintaining the boundaries that make campaign battles meaningful.
I’ve got a bunch of new hairbrained schemes to attempt
New Hairbrained Schemes
We’re keeping the map, though this time around, to facilitate player interests and to keep things open, the actual changes to the frontline will be determined by a set of parameters established at the start of the campaign week, that will be determined by game outcomes.
This means we can keep a narrative intact, with special hardpoints that offer tangible benefits, but in a manner that won’t directly rely on ‘tokens on a map’ to continue the fight.
Air combat, which has been neglected, will grow in importance as we will now have an ‘air superiority’ tracker, that games of Blood Red Skies will impact, will offer minor but tangible impact on naval and land games (borrowing from Combined Arms’ cards here to maintain some balance) in that week.
Naval games, which tended to stretch the imagination last campaign, will now reflect battles across the seas, with an impact on the severity week by week of the change in frontline position. Lose all your land games but win more naval games? Congrats, restricted logistics means that the enemy can’t take full advantage and moves up less.
At the end of the day, this is all in the service of getting people out and playing wargames together, so none of it will be taken too seriously, but I did want to try to keep a campaign meaningful and with good flow.
Time will tell, I suppose!
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