British Bren gun team facing a Japanese Banzai charge, by Peter Dennis © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 229: Kohima 1944.
Although Bolt Action is designed for games between two opposing players, during the course of developing the rules we had recourse to playing many games between teams of two, three and even four players a side. In fact, most of our games were played in this way, with the command of each side shared between a number of players. When playing in this fashion each player would take a roughly equal proportion of the forces, usually all the forces on one flank or in the centre. As order dice are drawn from the dice cup the team would decide between them whose need was greatest, and allocate the dice to the appropriate player. Aside from facilitating games between rival teams, the game otherwise plays exactly as described.
For you, Jerry, the war is over!
One of our groups of players decided to use distinctly coloured dice not only for each side but for each player as well, so one side might be black, grey and brown, for example, whilst the other could be blue, green and yellow. Using this method, as a die is drawn from the dice cup it not only identifies which side’s unit is activated next, but which individual player, and therefore which portion of the army. This gives a slightly different dynamic to the game, but is probably more realistic and certainly speeds things along if teams are otherwise prone to dithering (or worse!).