Few Gripes

[Midge]

Many moons ago now I played no small part in the creation of Bolt out the Blue with Aaron. We chewed the fat many nights and did bucket loads of playtesting. Back then we had a few concerns about how the programme would cope with Bolt and having recently started playing again I see not much has changed.

Couple of big things we requested regarded ZOC issues and Assault, both of which were not fit for purpose for a modern dynamic fast moving game.

Having the ability to mark units as having NO ZOC in the OOB Editor would enhance things considerably, it already exists in the programme as Partisan units have no ZOC so it shouldn't be that difficult.
We both found during playtesting and the few games we played against online opponents that players had the ability (and continually used it) to use non combat units (such as the numerous types of equipment/bridging Engineers and the countless other small units in Bolt) to Isolate big combat units. This made the game unrealistic and pretty unplayable in a competitive nature.
The last online game I played about ten years ago the WP player was just rounding up entire NATO Brigades by using Bulldozers and Bridges basically, I had a good laugh and gave it a miss!

The next gripe concerns Assault. I did similar playtests the other day as we did ten years plus ago and the results were the same.
I was Assaulting WP bridging units with full strength 600 man NATO Mech Btns and 50 strong tank Btns.
The bottom line is if the Bridging unit is Disrupted you win, if it isn't, in over 90% of tests you fail to move it. Not really condusive to fast moving modern combat.
I refer you to my above last online game, my WP opponent guarded the entire flanks of 3 Shock Army with Bridges/Bulldozers and Minelayer units in the full knowledge if attacked out the blue by even a full strength NATO tank Btn, he had a couple of turns (4 hours in game time) in which to move things to their assisstance!!

In the end, although in my opinion it's a masterpiece, it just comes down to the side with the "most counters" regardless of type usually wins!

Anyways rant over for another ten years