Bolt Action
On Friday, 24th July I enjoyed my first game of Bolt Action!
The battle saw my 1,000 point US force v Rob's hastily assembled German force. To achieve the points limit we both took veteran troops. My biggest worry though was that his veteran Panther would no doubt eat my regular Sherman for breakfast!
Although we inevitably got some rules wrong, and missed some out altogether we thoroughly enjoyed the game. I had seen a few battle reports online and I had watched Alessio and Warren's Demo Game on
Beasts of War more than once and so I knew the game mechanic quite well. It was new to Rob though and at first he assumed that the order dice would all be drawn and given to each unit ahead of the first turn. Once the penny dropped and he realized the random activation element he was very impressed.
The biggest feature in our game was my decision to bring an Artillery Observer. The barrage brought down devastated his centre line. I then got a bit giddy and decided to assault his weakened squads only to run into my own ongoing barrage! A rookie error which my veteran troops would probably not have made without me leading them!
The Sherman was first immobilised and then destroyed by the Panther.
I got my revenge with the Bazooka!
The squads performed well. They exchanged fire with the Germans and held their own.
Summary:
US Veterans are good and I will continue to hone my tactics
Pin markers are an amazing game dynamic and very important - new tokens/counters to be made!
SMGs were not used - we never got in range! I had took my maximum allowance and so had several troops just watching the action.
Man of the match was my Artillery Observer - we never discovered how or when the barrage ends, maybe it never does?
Rules we got wrong:
We never realised there was a max and minimum morale
We never removed a pin for continuing to be 'down'
We allowed the major in the Hanomag to fire from it.
