Valentines Day Bolt Action vs The Wife

Jen and I decided that after dinner the perfect end to our Valentines was of course going to be a war-game. We hadn't played Bolt Action for a while so that was what ended up on the table. We didn't quite get the game finished on the night so it sat for a few days at turn 3 and got finished up on the Monday.

Pregame bombardment took a fairly even toll on both sides of the table

Early game had my Germans keeping the Japanese forces fairly well pinned down.

As per usual for our games Jen's Kamikaze Antitank teams managed to get through to my armour. 

As the game was spaced out a bit and due to the fact that I now have to zip and email my photos to myself off my phone it's taken a while to get this one typed up and naturally I've forgotten a fair amount of the action. That being said it was a fun little game and though the end results don't show it very well Jen was starting to push back fairly well during turns 5 and 6, I have a feeling that if we had have gotten the 7th turn she would have evened out the score.

10th April - General Update

While I haven't been overly active on the blog I have been rather busy with the hobby in general. I've got a couple of games in here and there and have been getting quite a lot of painting knocked over.

Arwen and I have been sitting down watching Critical Role together and painting away since she started the holidays. Now I've knocked over a few of my own projects Jen (the wife) has decided that her Bolt Action Japanese are the next on my list so I've just started touching up what she'd started and am going on from there. Arwen has started on her Circle of Orboros Hordes starter box and using the technique guide in the back of one of the mini books she's starting to play with some layering and shading and I think it's coming along really well. I'll put a few photos up in the next update.

Due to a bit of a lack of motivation and decent weather the photos aren't the best but I'll put up what I've taken anyway.

Germans for Bolt Action

Kriegsmarines

Grenadiers

Fallschirmjager

I also pulled out the Lords of Dust for the Home Raiders game as I had promised my youngest niece that I would have a game with her when she came over to stay next. They'll be over later this week so I knocked them over in a few days so I'm ready to go for her. I've still got a Scarab Rider to go but the penguin himself is done so it shouldn't take me too long to finish off.

I should get a few games in this week so I'll try to get some battle reports done up sometime soon.

24th March - 20th March Bolt Action vs The Youngest

Arwen and I managed to get another game in this week, though we did have to break it up over two nights. It's been a while since we got a game of Bolt Action and I've been feeling like getting it on the table for the last few weeks so that's what we went with. We decided to play a scenario that required us to hold five objective points spread across the table.

 




The first turn was mostly the two of us moving up into position although I did manage to hit her M13/40 with a glancing shot pinning it down slightly.

The second turn the firing really began with most of our heavier guns and fire teams beginning to attempt to pin each other down. Several units did pick up a few pin markers here and there but most of the fire was ineffectual.

Shaking off their shock from the large German shell that rattled their tank the Italians returned fire but failed to hit the Hetzer, though they did mange to pin down the nearby unit of German Grenadiers stopping the men and more importantly their panzerfaust from getting to close to their vehicle. Unfortunately the Italian's were then taken out by the return fire from the German vehicle. With that flank now relatively secure the German's began to push toward the centre heading for the objectives while suppressing the distant Italian units.

While having to deal with some fire from the Italian Autoblinda the German's continued their push across the river cutting down the Italian machine gun team. A brave squad of Grenadiers then pushed up the hill cresting the top and opening fire with their panzerfaust destroying the Italian Armoured Car.

The final Italian squad finally entered the battle after quite a bit of delay, though it was possibly going to be too little too late. While the Grenadiers on the hill came under some heavy fire and began to take casualties they managed to rally and hold their position. Several units under both commands began to suffer the effects of the engagement going down rather than attempting their assigned orders.










The final turn proved too much for the Italian morale and though they were able to prevent the Germans from gaining any further ground.

It was another really tight game and while I did manage a clear victory this time Arwen had me play quite cautiously over several turns. I've got another 4 squads of German on the painting table at the moment including one unit of Kriegsmarines and I'm toying with the idea of a larger multi player game in the near future.

27th September - 26th September Bolt Action vs Toby

I got my 2nd Edition Bolt Action rule book in the mail the other day so I hit Toby up for a game which we finally got onto the table yesterday.

It was quite interesting to see how the changes effected the game play. One of the big differences was the fact that in this edition it is actually a viable move to rally your troops. I can't think of a time previously when I had actually used the order before, but in this game we both used it at least three or four times each. The introduction of templates for the HE weapons is also a good move in my opinion though I understand that's always going to be a touchy subject for some. Personally my favourite change was the ability for the HQ units to draw order dice out of the bag and send orders to nearby troops, for me this finally makes them worth their points cost.

We decided on a standard scenario with the sole objective of killing each other. We deployed our troops and suffered the preliminary bombardment on both our troops. Toby got the better end of it with a couple of his units managing to avoid pinning, while I ended up mostly heavily pinned and my 1st Lieutenants accompanying trooper left as a casualty.

A disappointing first order saw my PAK team fail to understand their fire order and the men went down. My regular infantry squad picked up the pace however catching the veteran US ranger squad in the open and pinning them further. Toby returned fire with his M3 half-track killing one of the men crewing my medium machine gun team. My HQ team then barked orders out ordering the nearby machine gun team to fire on the distant regular US infantry squad and when they missed the veteran Grenadier squad to advance into hard cover and fire upon the same unit who still ended up pinned despite going down to avoid taking too much damage early on in the engagement. The US rangers manged to make it into cover despite being heavily pinned and the turn ended with my mortar team also failing to understand their orders and going down.

The German lieutenant again sent orders out to the machine gunners and veteran grenadiers. This time the machine gunners managed to pin M3 while the infantry unit manged to get a couple of kills into the US squad and keep their heads down. The German momentum continued with the regular infantry not only managing to hit the rangers again but killed their NCO leaving the US squad with a serious hit to morale. The rest of the exchanges were mostly ineffective fire, though the Sherman did make it onto the field for the US where as the German Hetzer was delayed.

The Rangers having just successfully rallied were again pinned by the German infantry. The Hetzer finally made it onto the battle field and while it's machine gun helped keep the Rangers contained it's main gun missed the US M8 by a long way and the plucky little armoured car returned the favour with a well placed shot, not managing to damage the tank destroyer but stunning the crew inside. The US sniper team continued harassing the second squad of veteran Grenadiers but the gunman was unable to take out any of the dug in men. The other squad fired their panzerfaust at the M3 but couldn't manage to hit the vehicle leaving the machine gunners to keep the vehicle pinned while the remaining men in the squad harried the US infantry they had contained.

The crew of the Hetzer managed to shake off their ringing ears and sent a well aimed shell at the M8 blowing the little vehicle apart, the US Sherman moved to revenge the armoured car but while it's shell hit the front armour of the German vehicle was simply too thick for such a hastily lined up shot to penetrate. On the far side of the battle field the 2nd US infantry squad made it to a position to put pressure on the veteran German infantry but while their fire was largely ineffective the return fire saw them lose two men to the efforts of the German light machine guns.

Seeing an opening the US M3 driver took a risk to try to assist the distant infantry but was caught out in the open by the grenadiers who made a short effort of assaulting the vehicle leaving it a smoking ruin before regrouping back to cover. The US made a valiant effort to try to regain some ground, but despite some heavy fire and a few casualties they failed to make much of a dint in the dug in German line.

The final effective shot in the game saw the PAK team finally understand what "Fire!!" meant and they're shot took out the US sniper and his assistant. Seeing his line badly compromised the orders went out and the US pulled back leaving the Germans in control of the field and taking victory for the day.

Again I really like the changes to the rule set. It was mostly tweaks in my opinion but those couple of changes really helped the flow of the game out without changing the feel. I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to getting another one on the table soon.

22nd October - 20th October Bolt Action vs Toby

Just a quick update today, back to covering holidays at work :). Got a game of Bolt Action in with Toby after a couple of weeks of postponing. I've had my Tiger 2 painted up for a while now and had yet to get it onto a table so we knocked up a couple of 2000 point lists.












I managed to get the Tiger on and it survived the first round from one of Toby's two Chaffees but the second turn saw it taken out on the first order die. We then proceeded to get stuck in to some pretty heavy house to house fighting until the next highlight.

I got my SdKfz 250/10 on the table towards the end of the third turn and with some exceptional shooting (many many sixes) I took out one of his tanks with the anti-tank gun on the front :).






At the start of the fifth turn we were tied for victory points but not enough for the win so I took a couple of gambles charging two US infantry squads dug into houses to get my Brandenburgers close enough to take a few shots at the remaining Chaffee with their panzerfausts. While I did clear both houses gaining the two victory points I needed for the win I also lost one of the my units giving Toby one as well. Of course after that the Brandenburgers then failed to hit the tank and the game ended as a draw.





Hopefully I'll get a bit of painting down over the next few weeks, but we'll see what happens as time will be limited.