Dennis - Bolt Action: Campaign: Market Garden

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This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain in 2018

2018 Osprey Publishing Ltd and Warlord Games

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ISBN: 978-1-4728-2868-2 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-2869-9 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-2870-5 (ePDF)
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CONTENTS

The purpose of this book is to complement the Bolt Action wargame system by providing information and scenarios for games set in the greatest airborne operation ever mounted, Operation Market Garden. You will need the Bolt Action rulebook; other Bolt Action volumes Armies of Great Britain, Armies of Germany, Armies of the United States and Tank War are all useful, but not vital. The special rules for Market Garden should be regarded as supplements or alternatives to the basic rules, not replacements.

For Bolt Action players Market Garden has it all daring attacks, determined resistance and heroic last stands by American, British, German and Polish troops ranging from elite veteran paratroopers to novices and from obsolete armoured cars to King Tiger tanks. The airborne troops might be outstanding soldiers, but they do cost a lot points-wise, so they are few in number; you will not get many figures for your 1,000 points!

This volume covers a very short space of time compared to other Bolt Action campaign books just a matter of nine days in September 1944 and is focused on a much smaller geographical area, a single narrow route through the Netherlands rather than a broad sweep of very variable terrain across several countries.

The fighting was incredibly intense; youll find bullets, blood, bombs, and bravery in abundance. The Allies struggled to keep the road open and the Germans struggled to cut it, so both sides engaged in attacks and counter-attacks over the same ground and therefore faced the same challenges.

Market Garden enthusiasts can count themselves blessed when it comes to information. The sheer volume of eye-witness material from the accounts of individual participants from generals to private soldiers is massive perhaps proportionately more extensive than for any other campaign in history. This is particularly true of the Arnhem battle; scores of British airborne soldiers wrote of their experience.

There is also a huge amount of secondary material from general accounts to detailed academic studies and any number of television documentaries, not to mention two significant films. The first of these was Theirs is the Glory. It was shot on the Arnhem battle sites in 1946 with 200 veterans both as principal actors and as extras.

Many readers will be familiar with Richard Attenboroughs production, A Bridge Too Far. Although liberties were taken by the films production team in respect to accuracy, it is still a reasonably good narrative of the operation and has undoubtedly been the inspiration for many thousands of wargames. As has the excellent book and television series Band of Brothers. This traces the experience of Easy Company of 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the American 101st Airborne Division.