Before I start let me first say that this post is not about championing one set or rules over another. It’s about my own opinion about playing a similar game with Bolt Action and the Chain of Command sets of rules and what I see as the advantages and disadvantages (or likes and dislikes) we found with both.
These advantages may or may not hold true for your own gaming circle, style and house rules etc.
Firstly, Bolt Action.
Advantages
- Dice in bag Initiative system.
- Less figures required compared to Chain of Command. You can field a relatively small army in Bolt Action where as in Chain of Command you need a full strength Platoon.
- You get to play with all of your ‘Toys’. – With Bolt Action you get to use all of your units included in your army list at least once a turn or until it is destroyed or otherwise out of the game.
- More flexible with the amount of different types of unit that can be fielded.
- A relatively fast game compared to Chain of Command . We managed to get two games of Bolt Action in the same time that it took to play a game of Chain of Command . The turn limit lends itself to a quicker game.
- Good for competition games.
Disadvantages
- Can be more costly when buying Army lists and campaign books.
- Less realistic game play than Chain of Command
Chain of Command
Advantages
- Command Dice system for initiative, Double(+) 6’s giving extra phases.
- More realistic game play than Bolt Action.
Disadvantages
- If you buy a unit/vehicle with your support points, you still may not get the dice to use it to its full potential.
- More restrictive with the amount of different types of units you can use.
- In our experience so far games take longer to play, usually only managing one game per session/evening.
In conclusion both of these sets of rules have their place within our gaming circle and no doubt they will both be played. Which one when will depend on the flavour of the game that we are looking for for that particular session. As we play more games of Bolt Action and Chain of Command, I’ll update this post to reflect our increased experience of these rules.
Williton Gamers 
We found it easy to hammer BA into a more historical form and speed it up so we can have company actions as our default game at home and have bigger actions with several players on each side at events; would that be difficult with CoC?
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No, not difficult. There’s a set of free add on rules called Big Chain of Command which allows for actions of 2+ platoons. The only downside it that it does takes
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The only down side is that it does take a long time to play a game of that size, at least for us it does.
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