Was a pretty quiet session today with just Mark and I rocking out a 500pt game of Bolt Action.
I'd field my Germans and Mark was playing British.
Being 500pts, I figured it would be an all Infantry affair..... how mistaken could I be!? Here's Mark's force....
How the hell did he fit a Cromwell in at 500pts I thought! Well, dropping a rifleman from each squad helped. As did taking an Inexperienced Lieutenant. That meant just enough points to squeeze in an Inexperienced Cromwell. This was not looking good..... I had no AT whatsoever. The rest of his force was Regular.
My force was all Regular and consisted of...
Lieutenant
2 Squads of 10 (2 smg, 1 lmg, 7 rifles)
MMG
Medium Mortar + Spotter
Sniper Team
The scene was set.
We rolled our mission... Total Annihilation. And it would get messy....
Both forces advanced onto the table. Mark's force looking good. Mine needs a little work..... :)
The British forces quickly took up commanding positions in the buildings. The Germans would take a little longer (I had foolishly set-up some nice little hedged backyards for the buildings on the table side that I ended up on... whoops).
Meanwhile... out of the shadows... a dark shape startled the advancing Germans as it raced around the buildings....
....catching a few German units with their pants down. Luckily, it's shooting was rather ineffective. By now Mark's FAO had moved into position and targeted the Chateau where one of the German platoons was setting up a defensive position. We consulted the rules to see how this worked. My wise words to Mark were don't roll a 1....
That little black base sitting on the building wall.... that's the targeting marker. Something had gone horribly wrong with the targeting calculation... Mark had rolled a 1, allowing me to move the target position. The bombardment didn't do much, but all the pin markers effectively neutralised that platoon.
Meanwhile, I decided I had no choice but to try and pull off an assault on the Cromwell. Some lucky rolling would be required.
Somehow, I actually managed to pull it off and damage the Cromwell. Unfortunately having no AT weapons meant I could only do superficial damage. A crew stunned result gave me 1 turn to review options...
Trying my luck in the next turn left the infantry squad isolated as the assualt failed (failed tank fear morale) and they got punished for it. I eventually managed to pass my morale check and gave them an order to run into the building. As the game was fast approaching an end, the British forces decided that cold steel was going to be the only option now.
The assaults went in. First the FAO assaulted the MMG reducing the team to 1 man, but dying in the process. The British commander positioned himself for an assault only to be assaulted by a nearby German squad and was wiped out.
The unpinned British squad had a crack at the German squad that the Cromwell had been mauling. The reactive shooting from the Germans was brutal and at the end of the assault, only 2 Germans remained alive. Their celebrations were short lived though as an HE shell from the Cromwell ended their day.
By this time the game pretty much ended (we forgot about our turn counter, so figured we had completed around 6 turns). Only the Cromwell and PIAT team remained effective on the British side. The remaining infantry squad had 7 pin markers and a mortar ranged in on them. The Germans had only lost the MMG and 1 infantry squad.
Next week I'll be making sure I have some AT weapons in lists at all points levels!
We also found we really needed to remember a few key rules, like:
- Snipers ignore cover and get +1 to hit when shooting
- A 6 is required to wound infantry in buildings
- Penetrating weapons are really useful to counter the above
Overall, they wouldn't have actually changed the game much, but would have meant a few more pin markers in certain places.
We also ended up in a couple of tricky situations. Mark was hoping to assault my infantry with his Cromwell, but the angle meant that he would hit the buildings before going at least half its maximum move. Being a medium tank, we figured that he couldn't assault due to this which seemed right. Just as well.... I wasn't keen on having to try and pass a morale check as there was a good chance of the unit routing. The tank machine guns put some hurt on as it was anyway.
The building rules seem a little odd. Mark had part of a squad split over 2 levels in a building, but as far as we could make out, the whole team had to be on the ground floor to be able to move out (not sure they can be split across levels or different rooms either?). Even giving a run order wouldn't get the guys on the second floor outside (rules just state "must be on ground floor"). Seems a little odd with runs being able to take you up multiple levels or through the walls of 2 adjoining buildings. We suspect its for simplicity.
Still, a little more reading is required I think.
We'll try again next week :)
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