Matrix Games

Wargamers! Your tactical options on the battlefield are limited by a strict Army Point Budget. The platoon you choose, every squad you recruit, and every individual weapon upgrade you assign has a specific point cost. Managing this budget is crucial because it doesn't just dictate your raw firepower—it establishes your squads' veterancy mix, their resilience under heavy suppression, and how many Order Dice you contribute to the virtual bag. 

Choose your Faction

Your army composition is shaped by your faction's innate National Characteristics. Since each faction features multiple distinct traits, a strong list doesn't try to force every rule into one army—it leans into a specific strategic focus.

For example, if you build a US list heavily around Fire and Maneuver to remove movement accuracy penalties, you will likely skip heavy, static artillery entirely. Instead, you spend your points maximizing mobile rifle squads to fully exploit that aggressive tactical style.

Choose your Platoons

In Third Edition, armies are built around specialized platoon templates instead of a generic unit pool. Your platoon type dictates which units you can select, each favors a different strategy. Scaling from standard front-line setups to specialized support detachments:

• Rifle Platoons: The standard backbone of almost every list. They provide maximum infantry capacity, making them essential for capturing objectives and holding lines.

• Armoured Platoons: Built for breakthroughs and heavy firepower, trading away infantry slots to unlock multiple tanks and anti-tank combat vehicles.

• Recce Platoons: Focused on speed and disruption. They maximize light, mobile armored cars to outflank the enemy and target weak points.

• Heavy Weapons Platoons: Specialized infantry fire-support detachments that bring concentrated heavy machine guns and anti-tank teams to lock down lanes.

• Artillery Platoons: Fixed firing batteries that trade battlefield mobility for devastating indirect fire howitzers and anti-aircraft guns.

• Engineer Platoons: Close-quarters specialist detachments with access to assault gear, mine-clearing equipment, and deadly flamethrowers.

While point scales vary throughout the campaign to fit historical scenarios, online multiplayer features custom limits, with 1,500 points serving as our matchmaking baseline.

Upgrading Your Squads

After selecting a platoon, you dictate individual squad composition using simple plus and minus controls. The trade-offs are immediate: keep squads cheap with standard rifles to preserve points, or invest heavily in specialized gear. Upgrading an NCO with an SMG spikes close-quarters lethality, an LMG extends your suppression range, and a few Panzerfausts transform a baseline rifle unit into a sudden anti-tank threat.

Packing extra men and weapons into a squad is an efficient way to concentrate firepower, but results in fewer total units. Factoring in Veterancy tightens this dilemma further; upgrading to Veteran increases a unit's point cost but ensures your troops can shrug off Pins and pass critical Order Tests under heavy fire. This shrinks your Order Dice pool, allowing the enemy more activations than you.

The Three Pillars of List-Building

Balancing your point budget ultimately comes down to navigating three core tensions:

• Veterans vs. Numbers: Upgrading squads to veterans increases their point cost but grants the morale boosts needed to shake off pins and pass order tests. More cheap and inexperienced recruits provide more dice rolls which can pin and kill faster.

• Big Boys vs. Order Dice: Sinking points into a massive tank like a Tiger provides devastating armor, but only adds a single Order Die to the bag, making timing and positioning more important. Spreading those points across infantry and light support teams pads your activation density, granting you the tactical flexibility to out-maneuver your opponent.

• Platoon Synergy: At higher point thresholds, you aren't restricted to a single formation. You can open secondary platoon selectors to build powerful combined-arms forces—such as anchoring your center with a sturdy Rifle Platoon while utilizing a specialized Recce Platoon to aggressively sweep the flanks.

The Digital Advantage

By shifting the war room to your PC, we’ve stripped away the traditional wargaming paperwork so you can focus entirely on the strategy. The digital workflow delivers:

• Auto-Builder: Use ready-to-play default armies right out of the box, use the auto builder to smartly generate a list or use auto-fill to intelligently spend your remaining points.

• Visual Preview: Swapping weapons, adding men or changing uniforms is visualized immediately in 3D turning list building into a fun, interactive experience.

• Validation & Live Tracking: The builder automatically checks platoon restrictions and updates your point totals and Order Dice count in real time with every single click—no rulebooks required.

• Save & Share: Save, name, and manage multiple custom rosters on your account, or quickly import and export lists by copying and pasting simple army codes. 

The Road Ahead

That wraps up our deep dive into the army builder! But once your platoon is locked, loaded, and perfectly balanced, where exactly are you taking them?

While jumping into competitive matchmaking is a blast, we know a huge portion of our community prefers a dedicated solo experience. It’s a bit overdue, but in our next preview, we are finally pulling back the curtain on our Dynamic Campaign Mode. We’ll be diving into how you'll command your forces across a persistent theater of war where every tactical victory—and every hard casualty—actually carries over to the next battle.

Community Question: What’s your go to list building strategy? Are you anchoring your force with a high-cap Rifle Platoon or are you looking to dominate the battlefield with a high value Armoured Platoon? Drop your day-one strategy in the comments!

Wishlist Bolt Action here: https://www6.slitherine.com/game/bolt-action