Bolt Action

For last night's game we tried out Bolt Action, a WWII skirmish level game. Bryan provided the lovely 28mm figures, whilst Lachlan adjudicated the game. Bryan and Caesar had a force of French Resistance who were tasked with breaking through a German cordon, run by Ralph and myself. Somehow they had acquired allies in the form of a lost American tank. Their objective was to get off, or at least close to, our board edge. Ours was to shoot them down.

Here's the table - A house, a road and some low rises, plus a few scattered woods. The Germans were already in position along the nearest edge.

The French cautiously advance around the farmhouse, although an accompanying tank provides a big boost to their confidence. As the Germans we had a single AT gun, plus a panzerschreck and a few panzerfausts. Unfortunately the panzerschreck was lost very early on, leaving us somewhat vulnerable to the tank.

Germans skulk in the woods.

The Resistance had a very dramatically posed sniper. She didn't shoot much, but she kept our AT gun in hiding for most of the game.

Caesar advances his Resistance fighters into the teeth of the German fire.

Ralph advanced one of his groups into a position where it could be seen by an enemy artillery observer. Here's his group after the fire was resolved.

My troops were now in the wood and the orchard, but the tank was causing us some difficulties.

One squad had a medic.

The French shot us up with the tank, then charged in to finish off the survivors.

Leaving the medic all alone.

He recognised a university rival - the medic for the resistance. They killed each other.

The German AT gun continued to hide.

The French artillery observer was one of the figures they got off the table.

The Resistance won a major victory. Although we inflicted a fair number of casualties on the Resistance we didn't actually destroy that many units. In return we lost lots, mostly because we had to expose ourselves to risk in order to stand a chance of knocking off that bloody tank. Once there were gaps in our line the Resistance made a run for it and got off or close to our board edge.

The rules worked well; not too hard to play and relatively sensible. I think the game suffered from having too many open fields of fire, but that's easily corrected by adjusting terrain density for future actions. A fun evening, even if the wrong side won.