Bolt Action AAR – Point Defence – Soviets vs British 1,000pts

I finally made it down the club for the first time in ages in the New Year, December saw me have plans every single weekend so it was a no-go. I played Jim again at 1,000pts of Bolt Action. I used my tried and tested Soviet list and Jim ran his Brits. We played Point Defence and like normal I was defending (every time we’ve played this mission I’ve played defender and HATE preliminary bombardments!). I used my two Zis-3 guns to defend either corner of the board; the best thing about these is while they’re medium AT guns they can also be utilised as light howitzers so are effective on both armour and infantry. I packed two objectives filled with troops and left my T34, another squad and some of the team weapons to come on in reserve.

Jim’s Sherman entered the battle and immediately took out one of the Zis-3s looking across the board from him. Thankfully though I retaliated with the T34 and managed to immobilise and then destroy the vehicle. Jim had a SAS truck that he had been banging on about all week filled with a huge SAS squad. Unfortunately for him he outflanked onto the road on the left, the truck was blown up and pinned the squad in position and my flamethrower team came on the same edge and burnt the poor Brit specialists into a crisp. 

My Green squad was dug into some rocks on the left hand side and stayed there all game holding the objective.  For a free inexperienced squad they have been my MVP every game I’ve played with them. They’re expendable men who seem to refuse to die no matter how many shots they take, and for inexperienced guys they’re shooting is pretty top notch. For once my dice rolls for everything were coming up trumps; even my mortar was ranging in quickly and wiping squads out left, right and centre.

As Jim was using his force to try and get the two objectives I was defending, I ran my third squad onto the non-defended objective and kept them in cover to hold all three objectives without much threat. By turn 6 we rolled and there would be no turn 7, to be fair I think Jim’s minimal remaining men wouldn’t have made it across the table anyway. Was a well fought match and pleased I picked up the victory. Will have to try a different Soviet list at some point and maybe pick up some different models, really wanting to try the Soviet Engineer Squad with Body armour, can only be killed on a 6+ and veterans with a flamethrower…yes please!

Build Up To Welsh Open - AAR Reports

So the Welsh Open has been and gone and what an amazing event it was! I'm going to be covering the event in another blog post in the next couple of days so this is the build up to the Welsh Open.

As you can tell from the lack of updates, work and life has kept me busy the last month or so but I've had some good time to do some hobby and get the Japanese battle ready for the Welsh Open. I had organised a 1,000pt game with my Tournament list against Jim the week before the event however we only got to Turn 3 before we had to call it due to time.

I also took my Soviets out for a League game against league leader Dom and his Italians, we played Maximum Attrition and while it was very close I came up just short mainly due to his Recce armoured car which seemed to dodge everything in sight. Though the car's shooting was pretty poor failing every turn to take out the Zis-3's crew which was pinning down the left side of the table. I was lucky though because he decided against his flamethrower car which has been the thorn in many people's side.

Thankfully I've only got 3 games left of 500pts which I'll be looking to get done next weekend hopefully, don't get me wrong 500pts is ok for beginners to get into the game but it does limit what you can do and playing on a 4 x 4 table isn't the greatest. Bolt Action is really alot better at larger points and I'm counting down the days until the League hits 750pts and we can use armour. I'm not sure whether to use the Soviets or Japanese for 750pts, I might mix between the two. I was wanting to do a German army at some point but having attempted to assemble the Plastic Late War Germans with all the loose weapons my interest has wained a little bit. I'll probably do them as my next army but I'm going to probably look at doing a fully metal army, maybe using a mix of the Waffen SS Box Set, Fallschirmjager Box Set and some models from Artizan Design. Don't expect anything until Christmas at the earliest!

So yeah some images from the league game and 1,000pt game against Jim. I can't really remember what happened in either as it was so long ago so I'll just get these up and then crack on with the Welsh Open post.

500pts vs. Italians

1,000pts vs Brits

 

AAR - Soviets vs Japanese - Bolt Action

So as mentioned I hosted a training game for Craig at the club as he's just getting into Bolt Action with Japanese. We decided to keep it at 500pts for his first game on a 4 x 4 board and for ease of playing we played Maximum Attrition, it's my least favourite scenario in the Rulebook but when you're just starting out it's easier to just aim to kill the opponent while learning the rules than worrying about objectives and the such.

I ran a 500pt Veteran List, a first for my Soviets and Mort ran a mix of Vets, Regulars and Inexperienced (Heavy Mortar) including a nasty horde of Veteran Japanese Infantry that proved to do any significant damage to. As already mentioned I was easily wiped off the table, Mort used Smoke really well to block my Sniper hiding in a centralised building and then used his Sniper to take him out in one shot.

His Sniper continued to pick off units including my Lieutenant and Medium Mortar. Funnily enough my MVP unit was my free rifle squad who seemed to shrug off any incoming fire and even wiped a squad of Regular infantry too. At the end of the game they were the only Soviets left on the table and seemed to be the only thing that wanted to kill stuff. My two Vet squads both assaulted the large vet squad and failed miserably and were wiped. After that it was down to the teams and the free squad and I knew that I wasn't going to get anywhere with that.

Here's some pics I managed to get, I need to remember to get more pictures in the future of my games;

Beginning of the BA League/Infinity Painting

Ahoy, it's time for another update! I'm fresh from kicking off the NAG Bolt Action League and I managed to hold onto a draw against Jim's Veteran British. I've only defended a couple of scenarios now but I hate it, prep bombardment is really annoying especially with the British rolling two dice and choosing the highest. It can instantly put hurt on your army before you've even activated an order!

We rolled for point defence and had to cut down the distances of the 3 objectives due to playing on a 4' x 4' board for the 500pts. We used three of my 15mm StuGs as objective markers (really need to build some 28mm WW2 objective markers now) and I had my lieutenant, a regular squad and Zis-3 defending the far right objective, left the middle objective free and defended the left hand objective with a Medium Mortar, AT Rifle and Sniper team. I left an inexperienced squad and regular squad in reserve to bring on from turn three depending on where Jim's reserves came on. My regular squad I brought on easily on the left to support the weapon teams, but my Inexperienced squad refused to come on (needing a 6 on two dice) until turn 6 where they rushed the middle objective and reclaimed it from a two man Brit team left taking that objective.

Zis-3 and Lieutenant Defend The Motherland

Regular Squad Defends the Left Objective

Pinned Squads with Reinforcements Coming On

Pesky Heavy Mortar Wouldn't Die

The Brit Vet Squad Moments Before They Were Killed by the Zis-3

As the game ended I held one objective, Jim held one and we were contesting the other. A draw. Not bad for our first league game. Jim took more points than me, I learned killing vets are a tough job to do and can see why the majority of people use vets in comp lists. Going from killing people on half of the dice rolls (4+) for my Soviets to killing them on a 1/3 of dice rolls (5+) for Jims really makes a different. Sure I can hit them easily enough to cause a pin but trying to kill the buggers well that's a different thing. Thankfully the Zis-3 luckily landed a shell straight on the Vet squad coming up the right. The +2 Pen really helps against Vets as you're then killing them on 3+, alot better!

I ranged in on his heavy mortar knocking it down to one man, but then my Medium Mortar couldn't finish it off for the full game, to the point the Heavy Mortar took a pot shot on my Lieutenant (needing a 6+ to range in) and managed it in the very last turn! This left the contested objective on the right was now easily in Jim's control. It was a great game but I cannot wait to attack in a scenario with prep bombardment! Jim went onto play a second league game against Dom's Italians and managed a marginal victory so leads with 4 points. We've already had a couple of extra guys sign up and another couple are showing interest, hopefully we can have even more people join!

So the progress of my Japanese for Bolt Action has been halted for a bit, I was burning myself out doing the same paint scheme over and over! I want to get them finished soon (just 10 men and the weapon teams left) but I needed a bit of time away from them to not get completely bored.

In light of this I've been painting my Infinity Combined Army! I've got another couple of training games with my Morat on Sunday going to be taking 250pts with me so I'm really looking forward to that. I really enjoyed my training game against Mike in June so looking forward to learning the more advanced rules on Sunday. I should be having a couple of games so hopefully I can learn from the first game and then implement it in the second game. Earlier this week I had the Yaogat box set delivered and I've built them along with my Morat Vanguard Boxset. I'm waiting for my bases to be delivered from Element Games which should be tomorrow so I can base everything on the bases and get them all primed grey for Sunday.

So far I've finished two of the Morat Vanguard with Combi Rifles and almost finished the big Suryat beast and got another Vanguard with Combi Rifle as a WIP. I'm not the greatest painter and still learning but I really enjoyed painting these guys. Hopefully once they're all finished and completed and look uniformed together they'll look ok for tabletop. I'm hoping with the others being primed I might be able to make some more progress on them but it all depends on time and whether the weather holds out.