Bolt Action!

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Real life and other events have conspired against gaming, but it was back on yesterday. Having gamed for so long on Sundays, it felt a little weird meeting up on a Saturday. Today feels like it should be Monday which is a terrible thought!

Anyway, it was a pretty quiet day with just Mark, Rob and I.

Over the last month or so... we were weak. We bought into a new game - Bolt Action. Me, mainly to try and win the Pegasus Bridge boxed set competition. The others were in once Warlord announced their ex-GW deal. So, we've all been busy assembling our various forces and today was my first chance to try out a German Heer force @ 1000pts.

I took:

Regular Leutnant + a team mate
Regular 9 Man Squad (2 smg, 1 lmg, 6 rifles)
Regular 10 Man Squad (2 smg, 1 lmg, 7 rifles)
Veteran 10 Man Squad (4 smg, 1 lmg, 5 rifles)
Regular Medium Mortar
Veteran Sniper Team
Medic
Regular Panzer IVH
Regular Sdkfz 222

This would give me 9 orders and I would be up against Rob's Japanese force (some sort of training mission perhaps :) ).

He took loads of Japanese dudes, a MMG, some crazy suicidal AT guys, a sniper and flamethrower team. I think he had 11 orders in total.

I also had no idea what I was doing..... Mark would command the Vet infantry squad and armoured car to help me out.

First mission - Maximum Attrition! Seemed a good first mission to play - just kill everyone!

The table... Mark's Sarissa buildings are coming along nicely.

Not much happens on the first couple of turns as forces advance... the buildings would be key.

Then the shooting starts. And Panzer misses. Pretty much every time. Useless. The mortar hits one of the buildings sheltering some Japanese troops, but fortunately for them, the round explodes on the roof.

The Japs keep on coming.

 

Things are still kinda looking okay for the Germans. Until this guy sticks his head out...

My squad in the building gets toasted. Flamethrowers are brutal! I don't think it killed anyone, but it loaded up the pin markers and forced a morale check. Which I failed = squad destroyed.

Then this happened... BANZAI!

One very blown up tank. 

I didn't get any photos of it, but I think there was also a very brutal assault on the other side of the table. 

Morale of the story... don't get into close combat with Fanatical troops!

That pretty much ended the game with a victory to Japan.

We still had time, so reset and started again. This time the mission would be Point Defense and I would be the defender.

There was some early panic...

Proceeded by more panic....

But somehow, this was the result....

The German Veteran unit had somehow managed to hold and destroy the assaulting Japanese unit!

Time to re-focus our efforts... Oh no, not again!

But, luckily, the Panzer didn't go kaboom this time. The AT mine rattled the crew and set the tank on fire. At this point, things were looking grim for the German defenders. The Japanese flamethrower had done its trick again and most of the Japanese squads were still pretty healthy.

Time was against them though. Turn 6 was fast approaching and no objectives had been taken by Japanese forces. Unfortunately, home time was also fast approaching. So we kinda just ended the game. I reckon we'll call it a draw aye Rob? :)

So overall thoughts.... the game was good fun and seemed easy enough. We got quite a few rules wrong in both games, but we learnt from them. I'm certainly looking forward to playing some more.

I think I might be dropping my Medic to fit in a flamethrower team.... Or maybe I should buy that Flammpanzerwagen....

And I will be checking Rob's order dice closely next time! Every time we pulled a dice out it seemed to be one of his! I don't know who was more frustrated with the long runs of orders coming out like that though :)

In regards to the models. The quality is pretty good and where I did have issues, Warlord's customer service was also good (albeit very slow in responding). Only negatives are that the vehicles are a little on the small side and I was disappointed to not have more variety for the rifle poses in the late war German box (especially when compared to the early war variety).

I will be interested in trying out the Chain of Command rules to compare against Bolt Action though.

Now I better go pick up a paint brush otherwise I will be in trouble....