Mechanized Infantry Are GOOD in Bolt Action

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Hey, reader. Welcome back to the channel. This is Centaur here, and today we are taking a look at the mechanized infantry rule. This is a special rule that appears on only a few things. The Americans picked it up in their armored infantry sections. Uh we also saw it present on the German panzergrenadier section, and it's also made an appearance in the new Italian book with the RDT veteran infantry. Um and so, it's not like overwhelmingly common, but it is one that is nice to know and it has some interesting tricks. All you need to know is for plus one point per man is pretty good, actually. So, if you're looking at running one of those things or if you want to try something just a little bit different, this could be the route for you from an infantry perspective.

[00:00:42]And so, in terms of what this is supposed to convey or what it's supposed to represent, uh it's troops who are trained for specifically swift deployment or relocation via transport.

[00:00:53]Okay? And so, I anticipate there will be more armies that will have access to this. Uh currently, as regards the the armies of books, you know, Germany, the United States, and Italy so far have them. I anticipate the French book will have them as the uh chasseurs à pied and the um the dragons portés were also were both this style of mechanized infantry, just split up between half-tracks and wheeled transports. Um and so, I I anticipate we may end up seeing uh some of that also in the French book and possibly in others as well. So, kind of cool, and hopefully we'll end up seeing even more of that because it it is kind of a nice rule, right? And you can see it over here on the right, relatively easy to understand.

[00:01:33]Uh the unit gets to reroll failed order tests to both mount or dismount a transport, uh which is nice. So, if you need to be able to get somebody in or out of a place, even if they have some pins on them, they are more likely to succeed. Um in addition to that, in the event that their transport vehicle is destroyed and they're still inside, instead of suffering D6 small arms hits, which could potentially be quite catastrophic to regular or inexperienced troops. Uh they only suffer D3 hits, which also means if they're a veteran unit, which some of these are veteran only, um they're they're not likely to take very many hits at all, right? Maybe one wound, that's about it. So, you're likely to keep a lot more of the unit.

[00:02:12]The result is you're you're very likely to be able to do what you want to do, especially with veterans, when it comes to using swiftly transported up units, which for a lot of armies could be really advantageous. Right? I mean, we've seen mechanized play be very, very common. A lot of people have been leaning into paratrooper and engineer style units just because they have really nice attacks um from small arms access to, obviously, heavy weapons access in the case of engineers, to things like flamethrowers.

[00:02:39]But, in general, if if you look into these squads, they're they're really not that bad, right? I mean, what what they primarily give you for just that one point per man is just insurance.

[00:02:50]Right? Obviously, if you don't take any pins on the unit, and then they activate, they might be able to dismount without having to take an order test.

[00:02:57]But, if they do have to take an order test, the best kind of order test is one where if you're off by a little bit, you get a second chance, right? That that is the ideal. And, of course, if you have an officer in there with them, more on that a little bit later, they're even more likely to pass, right?

[00:03:14]So, again, it's the special rule, it's not strictly necessary because with certain types of deployment, how you deploy them, keeping them out of line of sight, then suddenly jumping into line of sight, um you know, to be able to do their job, or if you have them coming in from outflank, it's very possible that you may not need to use the special rule, but it's it's like a pillow, right? It helps you sleep better at night. You feel better about your chances of things going closer to average being the way that you want, which is always nice. And and when it comes to the varying veteran C, this is also one of the nice things about it, right? There are several special rules in the game that are overwhelmingly restricted in terms of their access by veteran C. So, in the case of a lot of rules, veterans are the ones that get access to it. Field craft being one of the best examples of this, where in order to get access to the field craft, because it's specialized training for specialized mountain troops, generally speaking, you only get access to that if you're a veteran unit.

[00:04:10]In this case, it can be on veterans. All of them so far, all of the units that have this do have access to it on veterans. But, you can also take it on regular troops. In the case of regular German panzergrenadiers and regular American armored infantry. And in the case of American armored infantry, you can even take them inexperienced with this rule.

[00:04:29]And so, depending on which nation you run, you might find that you can get the special rule without having to pay the premium of also paying for a veteran.

[00:04:36]And when you're paying for potentially things like submachine guns, as shown in the picture on the right, potentially assault rifles, it's really, really nice when you don't have to pay an extra three points on a veteran if you wanted to take them instead just regular. Of course, for German panzergrenadiers, they also get the added bonus that it is like the only regular unit that can take two light machine guns.

[00:05:02]So, it's also kind of a nice thing there. You're paying an initial one point per man, sure, but it's giving you access to a second German Hitler's buzzsaw light machine gun. And maybe that's worth the extra five points, seven points, however many points you're paying for the unit.

[00:05:17]It also comes often with other bonuses, right? So, in the case of the American armored infantry, uh it also allows you to take an extra anti-tank team in the platoon, which is kind of nice. You could take extra bazookas that way.

[00:05:29]Um unfortunately, that's all that you get access to that extra on that one. Uh cuz they don't get access to a Boys AT rifle, even though the Americans did use AT rifles at the Battle of Guadalcanal.

[00:05:37]Um mostly because the bazooka had not made it to the Marine Corps. And so, even though Boys AT rifles were used there, you cannot currently use them in Bolt Action with the Americans.

[00:05:45]Uh it also gives you sometimes access kind of additional heavy weapons options in the squad. So, obviously Germans with access to panzerfaust is a great example of this. Uh sometimes you'll get access to tough fighters in the case of the RDT. The RDT also get access to behind enemy lines.

[00:06:02]However, behind enemy lines is a little less useful for RDT as a general rule because it doesn't help them if they're in a transport.

[00:06:15]So, it would only really benefit RDT if you were to outflank them on their own.

[00:06:20]And then at a future point you load them up into a transport.

[00:06:25]Which is fine and that could happen. But that's not generally how a lot of people run mechanized troops. They would generally prefer for them to start in it, swiftly deploy them where they need to go, and go for it because effectively what it would mean is if your RDT are using their behind enemy lines special rule, you miss out on turn one because you can't outflank on turn one. You miss out on turn two because you can't outflank on turn two. You come in on turn three, to be fair, but then if you want to load up on a transport, mount up on a transport, you're going to spending an entire turn just mounting up onto a transport to be delivered on another turn. So, you're effectively giving up half the game where you weren't doing anything. So, in my mind, doesn't help that much. If you want to do Italians and you really want to take advantage of behind enemy lines, go with the San Marco's Marines.

[00:07:10]San Marco's Marines get access to behind enemy lines. They don't have access to the same rules as the RDT. And in my opinion, I think that's a better way of doing it. But just suffice it to say, rule on the whole, the fact that it's a one-point extra per man that not only is giving you a really nice set of special bonuses, can in many cases be taken a variety of veterancies, but also in addition to that often comes with extra bonuses built in, is really, really nice.

[00:07:36]Now, there is one change that I would recommend making. It's not actually to the special rule itself.

[00:07:41]It involves access to the special rule, which is if you take at least one unit that has that rule, I would allow you to basically treat it as a subtype, where you can also upgrade officers, maybe AT teams, medics, chaplains, light mortars, people in the same platoon with the same special rule.

[00:08:02]And it's not because strictly this is necessary. Light mortar teams don't benefit all that much, all things considered, from this.

[00:08:07]Other than the D3 hits when your smaller team is really nice over and against D6 hits. It's less chance that you're just going to be wiped entirely, which is always good. Um but it it means that you would be able to actually field a panzergrenadier or DTR armored US infantry platoon and not just the infantry sections, cuz we don't currently have a way to apply this to even an officer that's in the transport with these guys.

[00:08:31]That was clearly intended to be their panzergrenadier officer.

[00:08:35]He can't benefit from it. Okay? It would also be again extremely useful on those smaller units because it chance that you only lose one guy means that there's a decent chance that at least you're getting a chance to roll them around to see if you disappear versus having to actually like, you know, just be wiped off the board, right? Whereas you might be completely just destroyed by virtue of taking D6 hits, especially if you're not purchasing those smaller teams veteran.

[00:08:59]And then finally, the units are still affordable. Right? If it's only one point per man and it doesn't require you to pay up for veteran C, then it it it's very reasonable, right? We we might see more people using this side this sort of thing. Which is really cool, right? I mean, you know, again, one of the things that we talk about on this channel, not all the time, but we talk about it relatively frequently, is that tension between I'm playing a game, so I want to play with a competitive edge versus well, it's a historical game, so I want to play historical.

[00:09:25]I am all in favor of anything that says, "Hey, you can play historical, you can load out exactly the way you want off of the regiment and the unit that you want and it's not going to cost you through the nose to do it. And I think that is ideal because it means there's a chance that we can move the needle because in my opinion competitive versus historical is not they're not polar opposites, but it does mean that that we can get a little more overlap between the two. And I'm a huge fan of that especially when we have special rules that already exist that are reasonably priced that allow us to do that. We just might need a little more access to make it something that feels like we're able to embrace the historical side of things a little bit better. But what do you think? Do you think this is a really good special rule and it's something that you haven't really taken advantage of because maybe you're typically run SS infantry or you run German Grenadiers or you're running US Rangers and so you're not really running them. Is this a kind of rule where you're like, well, the way that I tend to run these, I don't really need them because I'm going to be trying to keep my transport away from taking pins in the first place. So having the rerolls ideally if for avoiding pins or avoiding getting hit so it doesn't really matter how many wounds are being dealt. This really is just kind of a non-issue because of your particular play style.

[00:10:38]Let us know down in the comments below and I will see you next time.