Bolt Action

What is Bolt Action

Bolt Action is Warlord Games’ World War II game, played with 28mm miniatures. It’s Warlord’s flagship, and it covers the whole war: Blitzkrieg, North Africa, the Russian Front, D-Day, the Pacific. You build a force of infantry, heavy weapons and vehicles from one nation and fight a battle on a table that’s usually 6 × 4 ft.

The game was developed by Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestley. The first edition came out in 2012 and the second in 2016. The Third Edition arrived in September 2024, written by Cavatore and published with Osprey Games. It’s a 320-page hardback with army lists for Great Britain, the USA, Germany, the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan.

Third Edition kept the Order Dice and the pin markers, and rebuilt a lot around them. Goonhammer’s review calls it “a far more ambitious overhaul” than expected: new army building, new scenarios, reworked shooting and assaults, and a clarity pass over the whole book. Old second edition armies still work, but unit rules and points costs changed across the board.

How it plays

Order Dice. Every unit you have puts one die, in your army’s colour, into a shared bag. Draw a die and whoever owns it activates one unit. Nobody knows who’s going next. When the bag is empty, the turn is over, and a game usually runs six or seven turns.
Six orders. The die’s faces are the orders: Fire (shoot, no moving), Advance (move, then shoot with a penalty), Run (move faster, no shooting), Ambush (wait and react to the enemy later), Rally (shake off pins), and Down (hit the dirt and get harder to hurt).
Pin markers. Units pick up pins as they take damage. Enough pins and a unit may refuse its orders or leave the table. Rallying costs you an activation you wanted for something else.
Company scale. Third Edition moved from a single reinforced platoon to a company. You choose from six platoon types (infantry, engineers, heavy weapons, artillery, recce and tank), and Goonhammer says a typical 1,000-point list has about three of them.
Plain six-sided dice. Everything else runs on d6s, a tape measure, and a few templates.

It sits closer to a war film than a simulation. Goonhammer calls it “firmly in the Hollywood action camp” and says a game is easy to finish in about three hours.

Warlord makes a huge range of plastic, metal and resin kits for it, but you can also use 28mm WWII miniatures from other makers.

How to start

Prices below are from Warlord Games’ US store.

Get a Starter Set. Both come with the Third Edition rules as an A5 rulebook, two small forces, a vehicle each, scenery, a double-sided mat, Order Dice, a dice bag, pin markers, templates and ten d6s.
- A Gentleman’s War ($149) is North Africa: 12 plastic British 8th Army infantry and 12 Afrika Korps, a Humber armoured car, an Sd.Kfz. 222/223 armoured car, and an MDF ruined North African house.
- Band of Brothers ($152) is D-Day: 12 plastic US Airborne and 12 German Grenadiers, an M3A1 and an Sd.Kfz. 251/1 half-track, and a plastic ruined farmhouse. It adds a Field Manual that walks you through building, painting and introductory missions before the full rules.
Already have WWII minis? The hardback rulebook is $55 and comes with a resin special miniature of Medal of Honor recipient Francis S. Currey. There’s also a $35 PDF and a $35 mini-rulebook.
Playing a nation that isn’t in the book? Warlord’s digital resources page has free PDF army lists for the other Axis and Allied nations, plus a quick reference sheet and the FAQ and errata. Those lists are being replaced over time by the Armies of… books. As of February 2026, all five nations in the rulebook have one, and Italy, the British Commonwealth and France are next.