Bolt Action Weekend!

So,

This was a good week for gaming Bolt Action, I got in three games this week. First up Mike W came over Thursday night and we threw down a 1000 point game. This was Mike's first full 1000 point game and the first time I think he actually played a official scenario (Envelopment). In order for Mike to play 1000 points, he had to take all Veterans for his American force. My list was as follows and I took it from the Defense of Italy list in the German :

Veteran 1st Lieutenant with 2 additional veterans - 116

10 Veteran Heer Grenadier with 2 SMG and 1 LMG - 156

10 Veteran Heer Grenadier with 1 SMG and 1 LMG - 153

10 Regular Heer Grenadier with 2 SMG and 1 LMG - 126

2 Regular Medium Machine Guns - 100

1 Regular PaK38 - 75

1 Regular Panzer IV G  - 235

Total points = 961

1000 point Heer Grenadier army

Needless to say, I did not do so well, in fact I lost to Mike's all Veteran American list. It seems that you can take all Veterans if you choose your list out of the main rulebook. We did a few things wrong, but it was a great game.

Well today Rob came over and we played not one game, but two games of Bolt Action. I took the easy way out and took the above list from Thursday night. Rob took a Regular American Infantry force which had 11 units to my 8. Game 1 was Demolition and neither one of us were able to destroy the others objective. So since we did not blow anything up, the game came down to a Draw (Woo Hoo, not a loss). It was a very close game and Rob's Americans were pretty beat up. I felt pretty good about what I had done but I made a huge mistake in turn 3 by not pushing a flank for his objective. This would come back to haunt me since by turn 7 I was still 12" from his objective. If I had been a bit more aggressive I could have possibly won the game.

Searching for a target

After a quick lunch break, we re-set the terrain and played our 2nd game (Maximum Attrition). We each used the same forces from the previous game and things were looking like they were going my way for the first few turns. Then things went horribly wrong for me. Rob's dice got hot and he started pushing my right flank, he blew up my Panzer IV and moved out of sight of the PaK 38. By turn 5 I pretty much knew the game was lost and to make matters worse, we went to turn 7 (variable turn after turn 6). After we played the last turn we looked at the Victory conditions, we both thought it was how many points we each destroyed, but it was one point for each unit destroyed. In order to win you had to do two more points than your opponent. Well Rob destroyed my Regular Heer squad, the Panzer IV, one Veteran Heer squad and a Mg team for 4 points. I destroyed 3 of his units. So since he did not kill one more unit, it was 4 to 3 and not enough for a win, just a draw! (Woo Hoo!) It was a strange game and we both thought Rob had won, but no, it was only a Draw.

So after three games this wee, I had 0 Wins, 2 Draws and 1 Loss. Not bad since the two Draws were not loss'. It was nice to get Bolt Action on the table and even though some things still feel weird, it looks like we will be playing more games and also Rob and I are talking about doing some games of Bolt Action for the Crete Invasion. So stay tuned...

TK