A Bit of Bolt Action

I went to Finn-Con yesterday, a small local convention in the library of Miami-Dade College. I spent most of it manning a table for the public library outreach, but got to take my lunch hour with a demo of Bolt Action. Second edition I think. (There was no point taking actual lunch, since the lines were half an hour long.) I've been meaning to try it as a test for Very British Civil War, so it was nice to see these books:

No historical scenario here either, just a handful of units on the board to demonstrate mechanics and a decidedly un-WWII table:

Not a bad trench table, with corrugated cardboard for the metal
sides and matchsticks for the flooring.

No idea what sort of armored car this is.

Finnish ski troops.

Assorted troops of many lands.

Australians.

We played across a third of it, and I came in during the first turn of a demo against Gabriel, who was playing British. I got Germans. Both sides had three infantry squads, a transport (SdKfz251 v. Bren carrier), a tank (StuG v. Cromwell), an officer base, and a special weapon (Germans: heavy mortar, British: sniper team).

The report will be a bit incoherent and misremembered, as I lost what few notes I had partway through writing this. Fun game, anyway.

While I've bought the small 3rd Ed. "beginner" set as a test for VBCW, I haven't yet absorbed the rules; in particular, the "pinning" rule stymied me. When a unit takes a casualty, it also takes a pin test, which if failed must be passed when the unit attempts to activate. Activation checks must also be taken if an officer isn't close by. They are roll-low on 2d6.

What I do like about the system is that it isn't entirely IGoUGo. Activation dice are drawn and the side that comes up gets to activate a unit. There also aren't saving throws, and an infantry unit that loses CC is wiped. (The rules may have been simplified a bit, though; for example the squads were only armed with rifles - no smgs or light machine guns.)

So, Turn 1: "The British are coming, the British are coming!"

Yeah, the Brits climb out of their trenches and head for the German lines. What is this, the Somme?

Well, no. A bit more like Cambrai.

One squad just walked across the top, another overloaded itself into the Bren carrier and drove. A perfect target for my StuG! ... which had already activated that turn. An 8cm mortar round into the open-topped vehicle? ... eh, needed a 6 to hit and missed. They could hit on a 5+ next turn if they chose the same target and it hadn't moved. Well... The British sniper team took out my command element, while my rifles and 251 MG concentrated on the dismounted squad, killing about half of them but failing to pin or break them.

In Turn 2, the Brits got closer - but not close enough for my back line, as rifle fire has a range of only 12". So I had to scramble my third squad forward. The StuG readied to take a point-blank shot at the loaded carrier - but had been pinned last turn and failed to activate - the lost command element would have provided a bonus to the roll. My rifles continued throwing fire into the leftward British infantry, driving them down to two men - who still didn't break.

The rightward Brits about to assault - their third squad can be seen coming behind.

In Turn 3, the Brits got into the trenches. I failed my rolls to fire into them as they closed, and lost the first combat. (Like 40K, dead casualties don't get to fight, and the attacker goes first, so...) My second squad assaulted back... and still lost the combat. My third finally cleared the trench, thus preventing the Brits from winning the scenario at this point.

During combat.

At some point during this kerfuffle, the StuG and Cromwell exchanged fire. I missed (damn dice!) and Gabriel hit, eliminating the StuG. My leftward rifles took on the leftward British infantry and eliminated them. And that was the game, from my POV at least, as I had to get back to work and presumably the GM took over again for the Germans. At that point, they had an intact Hanomag, mortar team, and a battered infantry squad, while the Brits had their Bren carrier, Cromwell, and an intact infantry squad and sniper team. I think I'd hurt his command squad at some point but not killed it.

While I'm certainly misremembering some of this, my impressions of the game as a whole are favorable. If Gabriel turns up in the comments I'd welcome his recollections. It was an enjoyable outing. The GM was one of the Bolt Action club that plays at a local store on Monday evenings, so I may see him again too one of these days. Thanks for reading.

Lastly, here's what little progress I've made so far
on my 30 BEF troops...

Bardia Holds Out - Easily

Our regular game of Tactical Combat today was a vignette of Operation Compass from January 3, 1941, the first action of the 2nd Australian Imperial Force.

The table from the Commonwealth side; ominously open
and overseen from a height.

The Italian western flank.

Eytie defenders setting up.

The hammer - eight Matilda infantry tanks of 7th RTR.

The smaller but plucky Italian armoured corps.

A platoon of 2/7th Australian Battalion, riding in two trucks
and five Bren carriers, supported by a 3" mortar and two portees.

 

The eastern end of the defence, across a wadi. 

We concentrated our forces on the right, where the rows
of barbed wire weren't, but right away had a tank knocked out.

We drove forward, sheltering our infantry behind clouds of dust.

Both sides also had supporting artillery, while the Commonwealth had a preliminary bombardment (which mostly missed) and a Gloster Gladiator (which failed to turn up). We rolled really poorly for much of the game.

A few turns in, we're halfway to the enemy positions, but
are taking casualties, and what are those tokens between us
and the treeline? (Minefields, that's what.) 

Italian cavalry arrives - the defenders don't really need the help.

At this point we had a little luck, by knocking out three of the Italian vehicles and strafing the enemy artillery positions.

This didn't really help much, though.

This is about as far as we got before giving up for the day.

Part of the problem was concentrating our attack, which meant that even missed shots scattered into more of our troops. Part of it was the minefield, which turned out to be empty right in front of the Matildas. Part of it was our opponents' positioning of obstacles, which was professional and intimidating enough to make us try to flank him and run into those mines. And part was our rotten dice luck.                                      

The ruleset is not the culprit; it's an old friend to most of us by now and surprisingly effective at what it tries to do. I still hope to use it to run a VBCW game sometime.

I'm sorry to admit I kinda disengaged from play, letting my partner take over most of the tactics and only occasionally tossing dice or moving an errant unit for him. The relaxed club atmosphere encourages this - another member (having been distracted by car trouble) was fast asleep!

In other news, I put up a diorama of the Battle of Olustee, February 20, 1864, for Black History Month at the library:

Given the current political climate, this may be subversive.

Depicting the rearguard of the 54th Massachusetts at the end of the battle, I intend to add more Confederates and make better smoke. I forgot to borrow some of the pillow stuffing we used for dust in the Bardia game, but maybe I can pick it up this week. See you next time.

The Road to Bastogne

 Pete Panzeri ran another of his operational games for us today, specifically the Bulge. This was sadly delayed from the 80th anniversary of the battle, but today is the day victory was ultimately declared in January 1945. Did we do any better than the 101st Airborne?

Well, we couldn't do any worse than the movie version...

Oriskany Jim livestreamed the game again for Sitrep Podcast, but I have some highlights and a few closeup photos.

The field of operations.

And the field of operations.

The game was run by Pete, who played the Germans on autopilot while the rest of us tried to hold him back. I was voluntold as the overall American commander, with four others as division/corps commanders. The scenario is based on an Axis and Allies variant, and each base represents roughly a battalion, while a single building represents a small town.

A closeup on Bastogne.

Center of the map, under construction with dark sand for the roads.
Note Sam the Eagle in Bastogne, representing the 101st.

American center, with my HQ units (light brown tank
and artillery) at center rear by Clervaux.

Germans pour onto the board.

A typical representation of a "town."

These poor bastards are about to be overwhemed by artillery fire.

The Germans storm onto the table.

The ultimate German objective is the ancient fortress of Namur. On a fifteen-foot table you'd think they'd never make it, but under the rules any vehicle on a road can move as far as it wants - all the way if it likes. The catch is that it can't bypass a defended town on the road. While it can go offroad, it can only move six to twelve inches. This means that the "nodes" - especially the bridges and Bastogne - are critical and even a single base will halt the German advance for a turn. This is why we spread out units and supply markers across the board, although we heavily frontloaded our line. So they got steamrollered, though we bit back here and there (combat and shooting are simultaneous) and blew one bridge.

Example unit of Garritroopers.

American dead pool.

A hapless American glider unit under my command holds
Trois Ponts bridge against a massive horde of tanks for two days.

This massive horde!

On turn 4, they finally get across.

I roll successfully for reinforcements, who come in
on the Nazi left flank.

Air power also turns up.

Intimidating mass of German artillery.

The game ended after turn five (five days) with the Americans having done somewhat better than history - Bastogne was attacked but not surrounded, and I rolled five sixes out of 16 dice for a night raid on the German tank laager... My role was less "leadership" than good rolls for reinforcement, weather, and other force-multipliers. A couple rolls raised cheers from the team. 

Pete's scenarios are excellent participation games. I'm alway happy to join in them.

A couple more photos:

Decoration, and a reenactor in Armored Infantry uniform.

Helmet and M1 carbine.

Next week, the first installment of a 16th century Florida campaign; not sure how much of it I'll post, as there is secret movement andd reinforcement. See you then.

Across the Narrow Seas

 Not having been to the club for a bit, I was keen to try Cruel Seas again with John's scenario.

A mined French harbor, with rare Games Workshop
hills for terrain at the back. German defenders at
top, British attackers to lower right, Axis convoy
to come in at upper right.

Three Motor Gun Boats and three Vosper MTBs.
"Early War," so not a huge range of armament.

Two German "Kriegfishcutters," or picket boats.
Also two R-boats that doubled as minesweepers.

A convoy of Axis freighters was on the way in, and our goal was to sink as many ships as possible.

We only had six dud-prone torpedoes to do it with.

I took the MTBs (right), Mark the MGBs (left). The convoy started off board, so in Turn 1 we just moved forward with a little desultory shooting from 2-pounder and 37mm guns.

On Turn 2, though, the convoy showed up (random die roll for appearance). Another round of light gunfire, while I slowed to launch four torpedoes at the incoming big ships (they need 20cm of run to activate the exploders). The R-boats went for the mines in the entryway farthest from us. One set off a mine and took severe hit-point damage; the other also failed its roll but thankfully it was a dud. 

Closeup on the R-boats.

Germans dealing with the first row of mines.

Fish in the water!

Turn 3, the torpedoes ran 40cm, not quite enough to hit. We shot up the harbor craft some more.

John checks the range as the firing boat
turns to bring its broadside of three machine guns and
a 20mm Oerlikon to bear. Can they even hurt the target?

Turn 4: The torpedo salvo crippled the freighter even though only one went off. (One miss and two duds for the others.)

In exchange, an 88 (!) on the next ship scored a direct hit on my third MTB, which was a) on fire, b) took a rudder hit and c) took 32 points of damage - leaving 3!

Unhappy boat crew on a vinyl sea.

In what I expected to be the boat's last moments, I fired its torpedoes and plastered the tanker in the second line with MG fire, doing 13 points of damage and a bridge hit. Further fire did 24 more damage to the tanker which then (due to the bridge hit leaving it unable to steer) hit the island on its starboard bow. It was also now down to single hit points. Mark had a gunboat take half damage, but his return fire finished off one of the German harbor boats.

A view of the "second line" of the convoy, with the tanker
aiming for the island ahead of it.

K-k-k-k-krunch!!! The R-boats behind are heading
for the mines at upper right.

In Turn 5, my crippled MTB's torpedoes were duds. I spent the turn putting out the fire, but was down to slow movement which, given limited turning at that speed, aimed me either at an island or into point-blank range of enemy fire. The 88 on the following freighter took out another MTB with damage dice alone, with the two crits just icing on the cake. Two more large ships were getting away, but I polished off the stricken tanker by fire (Mark had to leave at this point, but we were down to four operational boats anyway...)

That bloody 88 can be seen amidships of the dazzle-camoed
freighter.

In Turn 6, I sank the third freighter by gunfire (good riddance to the 88) as the R-boats cleared the channel for the fourth to get away. In a characterful but not gamist move, I halted my nearest surviving boat to the cripple with the intention to offload its crew and then run. Unfortunately, this made it vulnerable and one firing phase later, it was in the same situation as the first boat - down to 4HP and with no return fire allowed next turn.

Well, that didn't help.

But at least only one of those convoy ships escaped.

In Turn 7, my surviving boats got off board. End result, the British had managed to interdict the convoy, including crucial oil, and only the smallest ship got into port. We also sank one of the harbor tug-types. In exchange, we lost one MGB sunk, one abandoned, and one which would not be able to escape the board before the vengeful R-boats got through the hole they'd finally made in the second row of mines. Surrender is probably in order. Still, a victory is a victory. 

It occured to me belatedly that smoke would have been really useful to shield my damaged boats, but it didn't matter as the rules for that aren't in the main book we were working from. Ah, well. Also, the torpedoes didn't help much - we had five hits out of six shots, but only one went off (early-war torps - coulda been even worse if these were American boats). Our two-pounders, 20mms and Vickers guns did most of the damage, which suggests the freighters were pretty darn thin-skinned! But in exchange, a mere 35 HP per British boat meant that a single round of fire could take one out of the game - as John pointed out, they are very much glass cannons.

I'm still a little disconcerted at the large scale of the game, but it still makes for a fun time and with lots of exploding dice to roll. A fine game and scenario by John. I'd happily play again, and with great opponents too. The weekend of the 15th we're planning a three-day series of games, so I should be able to make at least one; of course there is also the annual Limeys and Slimeys "regatta" coming up too for more nautical mayhem. See you around, and thanks for reading.