It's been a little while since I last gamed, so it was good that most of us were able to make it to games yesterday.
Phil had conned Mark into a demo game of Dropzone Commander, so Rob and I played a game of Bolt Action.
We had initially thought we would sign-up to the Warlord campaign and enter the result there, but since the campaign is only in the early war stages and we were very hazy on the rules.... we decided not too.
I would field my standard late war German list:
Reg. Second Lt. + 1 team mate
Reg. 8 man squad (1x smg, 1x lmg)
Reg. 8 man squad (1x smg, 1x lmg)
Reg. 8 man squad (1x smg, 1x lmg)
Vet. 7 man squad (5x smg, 2x panzerfaust)
Reg. medium mortar + spotter
Reg. light howitzer
Reg. medium machine gun
Reg. sniper team
Reg. Puma
Reg. StuH 42
Rob fielded loads of Russian's.... :-) I think it went something like this:
Reg. Lt.
Reg. 12 man squad (2 lmg)
Reg. 12 man squad (12 smg)
Reg. 12 man squad
Reg. 12 man squad
Inexp. 12 man squad (free unit)
Reg. Medium MG
Reg. 2x AT rifle teams
Reg. Sniper team
Reg. ISU-122
We were using the Bolt Action dot Net season 2 format rules for this game (i.e. cheaper lmg's).
For the mission... we rolled up Maximum Attrition.
Let the carnage begin! Everything rolled on in as first wave...
Not a lot happens in the first turn or so, but then one of the Russian ATR teams gets a little cheeky...
.... by rushing forward and having a crack at my Puma. I contemplated disengaging, but figured since Rob needed a 6 to hit and a 6 to scratch the paint, then it was worth taking my chances. Should have disengaged....
Still, I get my revenge with one of the German infantry squads advancing through the forest. They needed better than 6's to hit, but I figured it was worth a crack. Box cars! I've rolled 2 6's. I just need to do that again.... bingo! 6's again. So that's 2 hits. I roll to wound..... you guessed it.... 6's again :-) First blood to me.
The Russian advance continues. Both sides snipers are generally proving ineffective until the Russian sniper takes out my MG team which leaves a bit of a gap in the line. My sniper takes out the Russian MG team and I think that is all that either of them do.
The ISU-122 hunts my StuH which I keep advancing to try and stay out of its arc of fire... Rob happily obliges and rotates his ISU... right in front of my Veteran unit. Panzerfausts to the fore!
I fire both and get 1 hit. I need a 3 or better to dent the armour. And I roll a 2. Pretty typical of the game so far. I'm getting hits all over the place, but just cannot convert them into casualties. Rob on the other hand is constantly rolling a couple of 6's to hit with each squad and turning them into casualties. My small squads can't handle casualties. Maybe I should have checked Rob's dice.... there were a lot of 6's coming up.... :-)
The table after the first 3 turns...
The inevitable result of the cat & mouse game with the ISU vs. the StuH,,,,
My Puma finally activates and gets some revenge...
And my Veteran's die under a hail of SMG fire in close assault... (after Rob managed to pass an order to check with the unit which had 5 pin markers on it!)
That pretty much ends the game. Rob had been killing 1 or 2 from each squad with every round of shooting. Luckily I seemed to have an uncanny ability to roll double 1's to pass morale checks. I think it's the only time I've been happy to see snake eyes. Although my Sniper team fubar'ed half way through the game and legged it behind a hill where they pretty much refused to do anything else.
The end tally was 6 VP's to 4, so the Russian's took the victory. A good game and well played by Rob.
My plan had been to use my infantry squads to anchor sections of the board and use the various support weapons to wear down the Russian's. My Veteran squad were to be used aggressively to hunt the ISU or take out units in assault. It would have worked well.... if I could have rolled a few more 4+'s!
In hindsight, my small squads are fragile, so I think I would have been better off refusing a flank to concentrate my units for mutual support. Oh and take out the enemy sniper quickly! Loosing my MG early on cut out some serious firepower (ROF 7 under the dot Net rules), but I also suspect I deployed it poorly.
I blame the last beer I had on Saturday night for clouding my thinking on Sunday :-)
All good fun. Thanks for reading.
