Bolt Action- Winter Skirmish

I have been cracking through painting my Winter German Army, and since McZ has had a Winter US Army for a while now, it was only a matter of time before we had a wintery game of Bolt Action!

The Regiment has been thinking about small scale, 500 point games of Bolt Action for a while now. Having so few points lends itself to being a brutal affair, so when McZ and I took to the field with 500 point armies, it was no exception!

I was running Regular Germans, with
- Second Lt
- 8 Grenadiers with an SMG and LMG
- 8 Grenadiers with an SMG and LMG
- 8 Grenadiers with an SMG and LMG
- 6 Veteran Pioneers with an SMG and a Flamethrower
- MG42

McZ was running (I think)
- Lootenant and buddy
- 12 GIs
- 12 GIs
- Pioneer GIs with a flamethower
- Light Mortar

The mission was to claim the loot from the Panzer III in the middle of the table, and then leg it off your table edge. Sounds simple enough?

As for the game, in picture form it went something like...

Hans, the disabled Panzer III got stuck in the middle of the table

The Germans arrive on table (after spending the first turn NOT arriving)

The German pioneers took some positions next to large fuel tanks. With their flamethrower....

The Americans showed up! 

The pioneers claim the Panzer III!

This is called a "horde" of Americans

A flanking squad of Grenadiers deploys next to the huts...

...and is charged by the US Engineers...

....And totally wipe them out!

All in all, my dice were terrible for the first three turns, and then they were just great, which meant that I was able to wipe the Americans off the table, claim the loot and win the game!

As for 500 point Bolt Action? Man it is brutal, and when it starts going wrong, it really goes wrong. I liked using small unit tactics, and certainly enjoyed getting the Winter Germans out onto the table. Just three elements to go then they are all done!

Whitewashing on the vehicles is going well too, I am super, super happy with the Panzer III

Grubby whitewash!

Till next time, I will get back to the painting table...

Pooch

Bolt Action Mayhem

With Prinny departing for Ireland, we had been musing over what to do with Bolt Action as both he and I are quite taken. Anyhow post McBeth's birthday bash we thought can we scale this game up. So here is what happened.

We settled on 2400 points with 4 platoons, then we could have 8 players, the more the merrier. Plus it what be chaos.

We rolled out to the Hutt Wargaming Club (blatant plug) and sey up a 10x4 table. I think we could have reduced it to 8x4, a bit tighter but with Bolt Action you want your troops in the game assaulting things, as you will see.

The setup

The setup, Germans from the left Allies from the right 

Bede explains the finer points of Veteran Paras to an on looking Stanton

Pelarel's Scout car rushes forward, to be 'rooted' by the Marder

The Hungarians only got this far forward before the artillery arrived

And here is what followed the artillery up on the Hungarians

 The second 'rooted' Scout Car

Well look at all those Paras, and the wana'be sniper in the ruins

The Tiger misses another target with his main gun...sigh

The Marder valiantly holds the right flank!

The Zyrinyi continues to be ineffective hitting but killing nothing

Bede's trail of assaulting destruction, he got all three half-tracks, Colin's Cromwell nailed the Stuka Da Fuss

Highlights, no so highlights, and what we learned

- McZermof's half-track nailing Perlarel's sniper in the first turn with precision MMG fire
- Pooch's Marder 'roots' a White Scout car with his first shot bailing the squad inside
- Prinny's Mortar ranges in first turn on Pooch's MMG
- Colin's Cromwell obliterates one of Tom's Pumas, after Bede's bazooka misses
- British artillery lands on target, both salvo's, wiping out the Pooch's on board 105 and pinning the Germans and Hungarians on the right flank very deep in a hole of doing nothing.
- Scotty's Csaba rooting the other White Scout Car
- Tom's other Puma passes its order needing a 5 with 4 pin markers
- Pelarel's MMG team rout a Hungarian unit after 'sniping' the NCO and piling on the pins with the aid of Prinny on the right flank
- The Tiger drives around the table scaring people by firing it's big gun, though hitting nothing
- Starting with 48 order dice
- Bede ended the game with six of the seven dice he started with, the rest of us not so much. Germans had seven of 21 by the end of turn six
- The Allies take the game 4-1 on objectives and would have wiped us out on a 7th turn, if we had one, possibly....
- Artillery can be devastating when it lands,and you do not need to kill a unit to take it out of the game enough pins will do that for you
- This is an infantry game, tanks look spectacular but once they begin to be pinned they are no help at all, especially if you fubar and run away...I am looking at you Zyrinyi
- This game would work well in a doubles format
- This game looks spectacular with lots of terrain and painted stuff
- Pooch paints far too quickly for the rest of us....
- Revenge will be had ........

Till next time

Scotty

Pooch's Painting- March Part Two!

Part One can be found here...

So where Part One ended was with my Infinity Aleph, some UN Irish and some AWI done.

Next?

Next we have more Bolt Action! This time, it is my Germans. A whole load of German Grenadiers from Black Tree Miniatures, supported by tanks, halftracks and even artillery.

Why so many halftracks? Well, firstly, they are cool. Secondly, the Rubicon miniatures halftrack is a lovely kit, and thirdly, turns out I can have a Panzergrenadier Platoon for a 1000 point Bolt Action list!

All the infantry!

Radio-man (Black Tree Miniatures)

105mm Artillery (Warlord Games)

 

The armoured force (Warlord and Rubicon)

Panzer III L. I just love this tank (Warlord Games)

Tiger crew (Warlord Games)

Hetzers gonna hetz.... (Rubicon models)

Halftracks! (Rubicon Models)

Close up of the Stuka zu Fuss (Rubicon Models)

But wait, there is MORE!

I finished my Impetus Norman Army. Yes, you read that right.

I FINISHED AN IMPETUS ARMY.

I am as shocked as you are, I promise. The army is made up from two boxes of Conquest Games Norman Knights, and two boxes of Conquest Games Norman Infantry. Plus a whole lot of spare bits like crossbows, bows and javelins to make the various supporting troop choices. I must say, I do love converting plastic miniatures, it is probably the thing I miss most from no longer playing GW games...

The whole army, in it's carrying tub

Close up of some horsemen from my game at the weekend

Close up of some of the foot from the game at the weekend

The only metal figure in the army, a dog!

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! (Conversion by me for the tower, figures from Studio Miniatures)

Right. So there you have it, I think you will agree that I managed to finish a whole lot of stuff this month! I am progressing pretty damn well against the goals I set myself at the start of the year, I have a few things on the slow grow, and I am mixing in a few shorter projects too. I am loving my current "actually finish stuff" approach- I hope it lasts!

Pooch

The Return of the Magpie.

I have been working away at my Bolt Action list for our latest foray into magpie-ism. I had bought a whole lot of 28mm German infantry a few years ago, off a friend. This was to be for the game "Chain of Command", but this game did not ignite my fire - in fact it doused it quite considerably. However my love for WWII gaming continued and when Bolt Action started to be played around here (looking at you Prinny) I fell head over heels for it. Firstly there was the purchases to be made - The Puma. On a side note, I was never a plastic kit modeller - in fact I disliked all my attempts at building models when I was young and never managed to build anything correctly. The Italerii kit, in this case, was fantastic to build - quick and easy with all parts fitting beautifully.

So the excitement took over and I started painting my squads. I have some teams to complete and I still have to decide on the final makeup of the list, but I have decided to base the build around the Panzer Lehr (demonstration regiment). I broke out my copy of Battlefront's Villers Bocage and I have the beginnings of the history of the stuff I want to theme the army on.

The next task is to make a table of terrain to fight over. I have dug deep into the collection and made the terrain from things I already owned or made. Bolt Action seems to be a game that requires a bit of cover - so now I get to do another favourite part of my hobby and create a table. This has also convinced me that I need to make some more bits and pieces to complete the board as some of my older terrain is starting to get a bit tattered.

Something else I wanted to show off is my Knights of Dice building that arrived this week. This is an Australian company and they make some great looking (kind of Art Deco-ish looking) buildings that I am hoping to buy a few more of to create not only a cool looking infinity table but a nice looking Zombie tables.

This kit was incredibly easy to put together and looks brilliant. I can't wait to paint it. The only issue is you can't take the roof off and access inside (no real biggy).

Well that's all for this time - off to the modelling table I go. Tank

Practice makes perfect.

Or Tank Engine and McZermof laugh uproariously at the stupid. 

I don't practice for competitions as a general rule and when I do, it's usually so someone else can actually practice.

However.

ValleyCon next year has offered up so many potential options I've actually had to try some of them out and today was the culmination of a lot of my ponderings about lists. I initially had planned to take Italians because Italian armour in Early War is very good but I couldn't settle on a list that I liked. The thing for me is that I have a list I love at 1500 and trying to pare it back for 1000 just didn't work and every build I started always led to the same place. Not quite enough points for the things I want and not quite the right options for something I'm happy with.

So I went back to the Panzerkompanie. And then I chucked that idea out too because while I love my Mark III Es, they're too expensive in a 1000 point army. Basically, I ran into the same problem as I did with the Italians. So I read through Blitzkrieg and ran across the Verlastete Panzerkompanie and I thought to myself that this list might have something to it. It's a bit gimmicky but Panzer Is are effective enough and most things I can deal to with the 20mm cannon on a Panzer II. If it needs a Panzer III or bigger, well, I probably wasn't going to be able to deal with it effectively anyway.

The Panzer II D/Es having half-tracked mobility to reflect their poor off road performance presents some challenges but after today, I think they can be managed well enough.

So we got to this list:

HQ - Panzerbefehlswagen, Panzer IID/E
Verlastete Platoon - 5 Panzer Is
Verlastete Platoon - 4 Panzer II D/E
Verlastete Platoon - 4 Panzer II D/E
Heavy Panzerspah Platoon - 2 SdKfz 231 8-rad (early)

Priority Air Support with Stutzpunkt

Camo stripes are underway.

That last line is a bit of a doozy. There's no mobile AT in the Verlastete list, no guns save 10.5 cm howitzers (which I don't own!) and while I can have pioneers, I think they'll be too slow. But, I hear you say, your tanks will be in the enemys base killing their dudes, your Stukas will have nothing to shoot at. True, I respond, except where there are things like 25 pdrs, PaK 38s and Matildas that I might have to contend with. In those cases, my little tanks will be far away!

So today I played a practice game with Tank Engine. He wanted to refresh himself on the rules for the Japanese (and my reaction to them which would make an excellent Doge meme....) and I wanted to see how the Panzers went in a game of Breakthrough.

Tank's list (if I remember it all!)

HQ - CO, 2iC, Regimental Banner
Full Hohei Chutai - 3 Nikuhaku teams, attached HMG
Reduced Hohei Chutai - 2 Nikuhaku teams, attached HMG
Reduced HMG Platoon - 2 HMGs
Regimental Gun Platoon - 2 Type 38 70mm guns

Result of topical application of Nikuhaku teams

So how did they go? Well as it turns out. Despite the photo above, which is what happens when three Nikuhaku teams blow themselves to bits in front of your little Panzer Is, the Panzers were able to beat the Japanese (although I had less than half my tanks left on the board at the end of the game.)

The end of the game-ish. Please ignore obvious missing objectives....

My superior mobility was hampered by Tank deciding to be Always Attacks (yep. He can do that. And not just in Defensive Battles) and doing a Dawn Attack (yep. He can do that too.) So I'm slower, lose my Verlastete move and have to rely on not rolling 1s to see how far I can shoot. It was an excellent tactical call by Tank and it meant he could move around the board in relative freedom (because Japanese can double in the dark and through terrain. Yep.)

In the end, I think the thing that saved me was all three of the Nikuhaku teams in the full platoon charging into my Panzer Is and while taking two of them out and bailing a third, they all blew themselves up in the Improvised Tank Assault. That let me bring my Panzer IIs on from reserve and wipe that platoon out with basically no fear of those Panzers being lost. They also cleaned up the HMG platoon while the other platoon of Panzer IIs cleaned up the smaller Hohei platoon and the regimental guns (despite the fearsome AT 3 on the Type 38s vapourising up my CO and a Panzer II!)

The well known and famous Japanese invasion of central Europe

It was a great game and there were a few moments where I thought I was really in trouble. If Tank had been a bit luckier with his Nikuhaku teams, I would have been in all sorts of trouble.

In time honoured tradition, the quote of the day goes to Tank Engine for the excellent and appropriate call "I CAST SWORD!"