Bolt Action at Adler Hobby

Yesterday I got the chance to do some rare Sunday gaming thanks to the Labor Day holiday on Monday here in the USA. Gordon at Adler hosted a day of Bolt Action gaming at his store complete with catered lunch of meatball subs and Italian ice for desert thanks to a contribution by Scott.

I played in a historical scenario Gordon is working adapted from a scenario book. It's a North African battle that actually happened pitting Italian light armor M13/14 'medium' tanks against a desperate force of Australians defending an old desert fort with just some Boys anti-tank rifles and a couple of portee 2 pounder anti tank guns. To successfully delay the Italians the Aussies would have to get up close and personal with anti-tank grenades and side armor shots with the Boys ATRs.

This scenario was well played by the Aussies, led by Chris helping new players Jeff and Marco learn the rules. On the Italian side we had Marco's son Guillermo and me being tutored by the other experienced player, Dan. This was my first game of Bolt Action actually playing and it was easy to learn and quite fun. The scenario seemed very well balanced for a first play. The Italians were down to their last shot on their last tank of the last turn. Hit and they win, miss and the Australians win. Very close with the Italians squeaking out the victory. 

 

On the other table some of the more experienced players played a four player game in the ruins of Berlin. I believe it was Americans against Germans, so western Berlin I would assume. I'm unsure of the outcome but everyone seemed to be having a great time.

Australian Bofors AA Battery

This is a two-gun Bofors AA battery I purchased from a private seller on Ebay about a month ago. With my pending surgery I've become quite behind posting purchases lately. During my recovery I plan to make up for lost time and clear the backlog. Expect to see a post a day for a week or more as I catch up. There will be plenty for EVERYONE this upcoming week: 15mm, 28mm, Napoleonic, AWI, Ancients, Pirates and WWII.  Mostly purchased items but towards the end I hope to have a few of my own painted units posted.

This is an Australian AA battery, but will also serve dual purpose as part of my desert rats force when needed. The only complaint is I have to do some touch up on the gun barrels where they got bent in shipping and the paint chipped off. Other than that they're marvelously painted and match my basing quite closely. I did add some Silfor grass clumps to better match my units, but besides that they're as I received them.

600 Point FOW Tourney at Adler Hobby

Saturday I played in a small 600-point early war Flames of War tournament that is part of the New England regional FOW qualifier series. The series has many New England stores hosting a day of gaming at their store. Saturday was Adler Hobby's turn. I'm not much of a competitive gamer, but I thought I'd show up to support the store and the series. I played 600 points worth of my Australian kangaroo tanks. Not much of a 'tournament' list, but it's what I had available. There were four of us playing, myself and 3 visitors from other areas. My first opponent was Phil (shown above) playing Italian armor. Phil's nine M13/40 tanks made short work of my three M13/40 tanks and 5 M11/39 tanks and 3 Bren carriers.  Phil was the eventual tournament winner.

My second opponent was Mike playing French armor comprised of three Somua S-35 tanks and four Hotchkiss H-39 long gun tanks. The Soumua were nigh-impossible for my tanks to kill but I did manage to kill one and one Hotchkiss, but other than that Mike made easy work of my lighter tanks. It didn't help that by turn three nine of my 11 combat vehicles were bogged down. Yes I rolled 9 of 11 bog rolls of a '1' by turn 3. Phil was gracious about my bad luck and was the eventual winner of the sportsman award, which he deserved for listening to my complaints about bad dice for a whole game without showing any visible sign of irritation. I'm sure I wasn't very pleasant to be around although I did try to put on my best manners during the bad dice run.

My last game was against Temis (sorry for clipping your face in the photo!). Temis played British infantry with two platoons of 2 pounder AT guns, a platoon of A11 Matilda infantry tanks and a platoon of infantry. Since nothing I had could even scratch the paint on a Matilda I attempted to kill everything else in Temis' list. I managed to destroy the infantry platoon and one platoon of AT guns, but my assault on the final platoon of AT guns went horribly wrong with one of my final 2 tanks bogging to basically end the game with a loss.

All three visitors for the tournament were great guys to game with. They all had a MUCH firmer grasp on the rules than I did and were helpful and understanding in bringing me up to speed on when I didn't know the rules well enough. I would like to thank all of them for their great sportsmanship. I went 0-3 for the day, which is about what I expected from my 'fun to play' kangaroo tank list. Mostly I think I'm more suited to casual fun games than tournament games. I'm not sure I'll ever be the 'qualify for the nationals' type of guy.

FOW V3 'Shake Out' Game

Gordon's friend Russ is a FOW V2 veteran and will be helping Gordon run an upcoming FOW tournament at the Huzzah! convention. Gordon asked that I give Russ a game for him to get tuned into the new V3 rule changes. I could also use the help learning the new V3 changes so I was very excited to play a game with Russ with learning the V3 rules as the primary goal.

To keep things simple we played a 1000-point game. Russ pushed Gordon's Italian infantry horde with some AT guns, artillery, mortars, a platoon of M13/40 tanks and a huge infantry platoon with integral heavy weapons. I pushed my Aussie Commonwealth Infantry with two small platoons of Captured Italian tanks (mixed 11/39s and 13/40s) mortars and OQF 18/25 artillery battery.

Russ placed both his artillery and AT  guns on one flank so I chose to press the other with my two small tank platoons. Russ countered with his tanks, but with help from my artillery I was able to kill the tanks and press the flank with repeated assaults on Russ' infantry with my tanks. All in all the game was a success. We got a good handle on how warrior and independent teams work when selected as targets for shooting, and also were able to get a solid grip in the air and new assault rules. Russ, Gordon and I are hoping we can get Russ a few more tune-up games before Huzzah! Possibly next time I'll push my Blitzkrieg Germans so Russ can see another nationality as an opponent.

Saturday was 'bring out your dead lead' day at Adler. Everyone brings their unwanted lead and we had a good swap meet. I was able to get rid of a few things allowing me to buy some new stuff I'm excited about painting up. The swap meet means we had a full house with the other table playing a late-war game of Germans against Americans. The left photo below is Russ and Don discussing some of the new V3 rules. Below right is Russ and Scott (right) with Scott's friend playing their late war game.

EW North Africa Escalation League (7)

Last night was what might be my final game in our soon to be completed early war North Africa Flames of War Escalation League. Before the games some of us had a 'review of the troops' photograph session. The league has prize support for completing two 1500 point armies for the league. To the left you can see me with my two armies: my German Stützpunkt force (also shown in detail below left) and 1500 points of my Australian commonwealth infantry force (below right), which in all total approaches 3500 points worth of troops painted up during the league. There is a more detailed troop review of the entire Australian collection in this previous blog post.

I've had great fun painting up these two armies. I'm most likely going to continue tinkering with the forces a bit. I have a couple more units of Australians that I've purchased and will paint up just to complete the project. The Stützpunkt is a bit more of a work in progress. I still would like to add a couple platoons of armor, preferably Panzer IIc or Panzer III tanks and could also paint up one more platoon of infantry. The addition of the latter would also allow me to field this force as a regular infantry company.

 

After the photo session was over I played a very enjoyable game with my Australians running them as a Divisional Cavalry squadron, against Gordon's Black Shirt Italian infantry horde. Gordon was aided by Eric for a portion of the game. My honorable opponents are shown in the photo to the left. This game featured several successful assaults by Gordon's infantry, one against my Bren carriers (below right), and another one pushing back my captured Italian tank platoon in a great counter-attack by a lone infantry team. Brave chaps those fearless conscripts are. I guess the Italians knew exactly where the weakness of their own tanks were!

Early on I had some success with my recon moves and was able to catch Gordon's anti-tank platoon while being towed (above left) and also took out one of his heavy artillery guns also while towed. These two early gains secured me an opportunity to press him on my left flank which eventually ended up being an objective I could hold with my tanks on Turn 6 for the win. The win was not without cost. I lost both of my anti-tank platoons and had only a single carrier left from one of my Bren carrier patrols. All in all a fun game where we learned some of the new V3 rules, all of which everyone seemed to feel were significant improvements to the rules.

What Platoon Is THAT Tank From?

In my game last Saturday against Don casualties and time pressures (in the battle) required that I intermix my two platoons of captured Italian tanks and my 2iC tank. Since each platoon had suffered casualties the whole fur ball became a confusing mess. The captured Italian tanks historically didn't have unit markings on them other than whatever Italian markings were not covered up by the Aussies. My figures originally also had no unit markings which only added to the confusion of the situation.

After the game Don and Gordon had some recommendations on how I could identify my 2iC tank by adding a left-over Italian aerial recognition symbol (an off-white circle) to the top of the hull. I've done this as you can see in the right most tank in the photo above. Originally I had thought about adding some additional kangaroos on one of my platoon, but much to my dismay I had used up all of the decals I had. Reasoning that the small Italian unit markings could have been left on by the Australians I added some to one of my two combat platoons. This should help me differentiate each platoon and the 2iC. Thanks go to Don and Gordon for the good advice.

Saturday Game Day at Adler Hobby

Today was one of our twice-monthly game days at Adler Hobby. The second such game day normally focuses on painting, terrain building and anything else we decide to do. Gaming of course is always on the menu if people bring armies and want to play. Several of us are considering supporting an upcoming benefit tournament hosted by our friends from the Boston Trained Bands club. To help support this effort I brought a couple of DBA armies so I could teach people how to play the rules.

The tutorial game started with Gordon playing the Greeks and Russ playing the Romans, but Don took over for Gordon when some new customers came to the store that needed help. All three players picked up the rules quickly and Don and Russ played a very good game with both making good tactical DBA decisions several times. In the end Russ squeaked out a win with the Romans with a score of 4-2 assaulting and capturing the Roman camp with a unit of Triarii. There's something you don't see all the time!

Russ had to leave but Don and I still had some time before Gordon had to close up shop so we played a 1500 point Flames of War game as part of our ongoing Campaign. Don brought his Fallschirmjäger company from the Burning Empires rule book, and I opted to use my Australian Divisional Cavalry Squadron. Don's Fallschirmjäger stands are beautifully based with tall grass and meadow flowers from Army Painter. They were so nice that I took the photos below so people can enjoy them.

For our game we played this month's featured mission 'Pincers'. Since I was using a mechanized company and Don was using an infantry I was the attacker and Don was the defender. Don placed his Artillery, Mortars and a large kampfgroup of infantry and weapons, including a very deadly recoilless rifle on the table and kept a platoon of Pak38 AT guns (proxied by Pak40 models) in ambush. The photos below show the first two turns. With delayed reserves I thought a bull rush attack was the best approach. I knew Don's AT guns and recoilless rifle would take their toll. I could only hope I could press him off the objective before my army vaporized.....then the Stukas came!

This was an interesting game. My Desert Rats dice show a rat when they roll a 1. Early in the game I was saying 'RATS!' a LOT. This meant a lot of bailed and bogged down vehicles some of which refused to get back into action for multiple turns. Don's fearless veteran Germans didn't need much luck early on to whittle me down. The combination of their high skill and my Australian's trained status meant Don was scoring a lot of solid hits.

A platoon of Bren carriers was bailed by the Pak38 AT platoon and finished off by an infantry assault, then 2 of 3 Humber II armored cars perished and then two of my captured Italian tanks died with the third failing morale (another RATS! moment). Just when things looked lost Don started to have a few turns of bad dice as well. Stukas failed to score kills, and after killing a PaK38 and their officer Don's remaining fearless gun decided they'd rather go to the rear for ammo. I was able to call in some smoke with my artillery at a critical time, and then Don's reserve rolls for turns 3 and 4 came up empty. With one last assault from my remaining few tanks and a spray of MG fire from behind the cover of a thin ridge I was finally able to eliminate Don's infantry platoon that was contesting the objective.

In turn five Don did get one reserve unit, but it was too far from the objective to contest it. Don attempted to storm trooper move a gun from his artillery battery to contest but it failed it's skill check to do so. Also in that turn Don's Stukas weren't able to kill enough of my force to force me to company morale so I squeaked out a narrow victory on turn six. If any one of a half dozen rolls that SHOULD have gone Don's way had, I'd be writing about a defeat instead of a victory. Don took it all in stride like the gentleman he is. This is why I like gaming with friends. Thanks for the fun game Don.

Australia Day - EW North Africa Escalation League (6)

Last night I celebrated Australia Day  by going to Adler Hobby for one of my infrequent Thursday night visits to play in the early war North Africa FOW escalation league. I missed this past Saturday due to other commitments so I wanted to get in a game or two. My first game was a 1750 point game using new scenario called "Pincers" which will be in the new 3rd edition book. This scenario had my Australian infantry deploying half their force with delayed reserves against Adam's attacking German armor force.

Adam's force contains two platoons of tanks: one Panzer IVd and one Panzer IIc along with some pioneer infantry, a battery of 10.5cm leFH18 artillery and a single 88 AT gun. Very high quality, but low quantity. My Australians are quite the opposite, I had ten (10) platoons all fairly inexpensive, with the exception of my battery of OQF 18/25 artillery. To reach 1750 points I to have to use everything I have painted up for the Aussies, including much to Adam's dismay three platoons of AT guns and two platoons of light Italian tanks (which never got to the battle).

I was afraid of being overrun by Adam's tanks early so I deployed both of my infantry platoons on the table to act as a 'speed bump' delaying force while I waited for reserves. Behind them I put my artillery in a direct-fire position supporting the infantry, one platoon of captured Italian 47/32 AT guns on one flank and I held a platoon of 2 pounder AT guns in ambush. They were placed interspersed with the artillery on my first turn.

This was a tough draw for Adam as far as match ups go. My AT assets are a nightmare for a small tank force and I had early success with my 2 pounders and 18/25 artillery firing over open sights against Adam's Panzer IVd platoon eliminating it, and my Italian 47/32 AT platoon scored just enough bails and kills on the Panzer IIc platoon to cause it to take a platoon morale check which it failed. I also was VERY lucky with all my saves from Adam's artillery and 88 hits in his first turn making 5 gun saves in a row - all sixes, three in one turn shown above.

Adam took everything in stride and was an excellent sport about it and chose to continue attacking with his infantry. He knew it was a lost cause, but took the sportsmanly route to finish the game aggressively rather than concede the game early. I have to compliment him on this I can't say I would have had the fortitude not to toss in the towel. On my third turn I received one reserve unit and chose my scout patrol of six Bren carriers. With Adam's tanks all but eliminated the bristling Bren and Boys guns on the carriers made short work of the remaining infantry. For Australia day my troops were able to celebrate a victory.

Our first game finished so quickly that we finished before Gordon and Chris could finish setting up their game. Instead of sitting around Adam offered me a re-match with his Free French against my German Stutzpunkt. For this game we had to play at 1250 points as that's all the Germans I currently have painted up. We rolled in Gordon's new random scenario book and drew the "Counterattack" scenario that neither Adam or I had played before which had me defending one corner while Adam attacked it or another objective in the corner opposite his deployment. I was fortunate in that I only had one platoon with vehicles (four Panzer IIc tanks) so I was able to start with my entire small force on the table. Adam's giant free French force also started on the table and Adam wisely used his national ability to move the unguarded objective even closer to his deployment zone.

With recon moves and first move Adam was contesting that objective on turn one. We miss-read the objective and didn't realize that the objectives don't go 'live' until turn six (6) so I double timed my Panzer IIs to contest bogging two on the railroad tracks and another in the rough terrain near the objective. A single brave Panzer IIc stood between me and defeat! Adam was able to soften up my Stutzpunkt by surgically destroying my gun bunkers with his artillery direct fire and silence the rest of my static forces with smoke and pins from his copious mortar fire. My Stukas were ineffective all game so it was up to my Panzer IIs and a tiny infantry gun platoon to secure the remote objective. My MG gun pits seemed to be holding the line on my objective.

Honestly I thought this game was all but over on turn one. After 6 more turns Adam's Hotchkis tanks and my Panzer IIs were still at a standstill although I was able to dispatch his Australian Bren carriers and most of one of his AT platoons. In the end we had to call the game at 1am as a draw. This was a MUCH more exciting and fun game than the first one. I only wish we could have played it first so we could have finished it.