Beta release of Bolt out of the Blue V10.0.

[2-81 Armor]

I played something like 100 PBEM turns of Bolt during COVID work-from-home, but ended up getting sidetracked by moving, work travel, and returning to the office and had to stop playing.

As much as I admire the great work that went into it, it's objectively a miserable scenario.  The unit density is far too high, the loss of 2-hex range for all WP units but a few T-80s is crippling against NATO 2-hex units, and it's impossible to breakthrough anywhere; rivers might as well be the Alps.  Within 30 turns, it literally becomes World War One with MBTs.  That might be realistic-- see Donbas-- but it's not at all fun, it's a grind.  I even went nuclear and chemical to try to break out, and all I did was trap more WP units in death pockets.



And this latest scenario redesign made it *worse*-- losing on-map helicopters takes away one of the few effective maneuver/fires tools in the game. 



Again, I hate to sound harsh, I really genuinely admire the work that went into this, but I regretfully put nearly a year into a scenario that does not work.

I'm both happy and a bit sad to hear this.

Happy because I'm not alone in thinking Bolt is overall too big and overdone, while being a remarkable design effort. I guess it's to The Modern Campaign series what Richard Berg's Campaign For North Africa was to SPI back in the day.

I'm a little sad because this confirms my suspicion that no amount of trimming down and editing can rescue Bolt from being an unplayable monster.

My hat's off to you for lasting as many turns as you did. I doubt I could have.

Maybe the enlarged map might be salvaged and used for a new design.