Bolt Action - Force Adjustments for 500 point games

Our club has recently developed a real taste for smaller 500 point BA games on club nights.  This allow a game to be very leisurely played and placed up inside 90 mins - important as we play at a pub so this allows additional eating, drinking and chatting time in the evening  :-)

But more importantly, the smaller game is giving very intense gaming experiences.  With only 5 or 6 units, every activation is important and every casualty has an effect.  Its quite a different experience than a 100+ point game.  However, the smaller scale means that means that some game effects are unbalancing.  For example, the Free US Air Controller or Brit Artillery FO can be utterly devastating.  We also didn't want to allow players to come along with an unbalanced force of say one big tank and 1 squad to capture objectives. So we are using these rules to adjust the force .  I offer them here for comment and use as desired (and so I can find them easily!):

* 500 point games are generally played on 4 x 4 sized board

* At least 4 units must be taken

* No Hvy Guns can be taken including Mortars, Howitzers, AA and AT (unless its a specific scenario)

* National Characteristics Adjustments (because their impact is overly influential at the lower scale)

• German - no changes
• British - no free artillery observer. +50 points
• US - no free forward air observer. +50 points
• Russian - Free squad reduced to 6 men.
• French (just for you Dave) - Free Light Howitzer

* Note - I was also tempted to limit vehicles to a max armour value of 8, but with a minimum 4 units and 500 point ceiling this should generally be self limiting (noting tanks cant capture objectives)

In addition to Bolt Action this will work equally well for smaller Konflikt 47 games too (we we hope to try out soon)

Feedback welcome!