Bolt Action

Bolt Action is a World War II based tabletop Wargame using 28mm miniatures first published by Warlord Games in 2012, with a second edition released in 2016. Most of its success is attributed to how, in stark contrast to certain more popular games owned by a certain other British wargaming company, not only are models more reasonably priced, those made by third parties are not only explicitly allowed in play but encouraged as Warlord Games could not possibly make miniatures for everything in the war (and, of course, can't possibly own any of the subject matter). This makes the barrier to entry very low.


 * Alternate History: The Operation Sea Lion book covers the planned but canceled invasion of the same name.
 * Anachronism Stew: The default Reinforced Platoon can have any unit a faction fielded from the 1st of September 1939 to the 2nd of September 1945, even if they didn't exist simultaneously. This is averted by Theater Selection platoons, which enforce temporally accurate units.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Heavy tank armor is 15% better than medium tanks that cost 57.8% as much while shooting just as often, and medium tanks themselves are often considered to push the edge of what's worth it at the game's scale. This especially goes for Maus, which costs 580 points (684 if taken as veteran, needed to prevent it from suffering Death of a Thousand Cuts from light anti-tank weapons) points, over half the standard 1000 most armies are made of and well over three times the 185 points a basic early Sherman costs.
 * Boring but Practical: Even discounting other forces getting access to American vehicles via Lend Lease, America has only one unique special rule attached to its units ("Easily Catches Fire", reflecting the flammability of the Sherman's ammo before wet stowage by making damage results that set the tank on fire more devastating), and lack the crazy wunderwaffe and last ditch weapons that provide color to other factions. Despite this it has three incredibly powerful national special rules.
 * Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Rules for France reflect only the Third Republic and Vichy forces with Free France technically a separate faction.
 * Creator Provincialism: With Warlord Games being a British company, Commonwealth forces gets a lot of love.
 * Hollywood History: Invoked. Books will acknowledge certain supposed "facts" are myths or greatly exaggerated, but make rules around them anyway because it leads to mechanically varied forces.
 * Joke Character: Every faction in Armies of France and the Allies except Partisans (who aren't particularly strong) has the strictly negative Communications Breakdown national special rule to reflect their swift defeats (Even Greece, which won the Greco-Italian war). Campaign books have spent a lot of effort trying to fix these rules.
 * Lethal Joke Character: While it suffers from this rule and lack of unit variety, France's other two national special rules granting it free units have proven very effective in low point games: A free medium artillery worth 75 points and a free inexperienced infantry section worth up to 121 points are much more valuable when one only has 500 points to spend.
 * Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: As near-standard for non-simulationist wargaming.
 * That One Rule: The air strike called by forward air observers involves multiple random tables, little interaction with the opponent, and can easily either win or lose the user the game before the end of the first turn.