586 - More BA Gaming No.3: Col Gravis!

...by now, of course, I may even have played yet another game of Bolt Action, but the backlog posting must continue, eh?

This one was a real joy too - up against my ol' blogging mate and stalwart of the South-West gaming scene, Col Gravis: the man behind both Curious Constructs and Kirton Games.

It was a straight-up dust-up (I can never remember the names of the actual missions!) and Gravis brought along a motley crew of regular Heer to pitch against 1000pts of my 4KSLI 11th Armoured. 

Wow - three different games using three different armies in two different locations within two weeks - literally unprecedented in pretty much every way for me. Yay!

The good news is that this Torbay club is actually pretty close for Gravis (closer than for me!), so we hope to do it again before too long.

The set-up. I'm going left to right in this pic.

Gravis' stuff. All regs. A 222 and some sort
of SP-gun were my main concerns. No idea
what the SP is, by the way. Any offers?

The halftracks advance upto the centre.
One squad invests the building, but the
other stays in.

I, meanwhile, also advance to contact. 

(I didn't really worry much about this squad
on my right flank) 

The start of a long period of putting the hurt onto those
centre-tale halftracks. The mounted squad never got to
actually dismount willingly.

My super-super brave PIAT team jump out of their lorry
to take on the German armour. Inevitably, they fluff it.
They actually get a second chance.
And fluff that too.
Then get gunned down.

My Cromwell shakes off the nasty pins from that nasty,
nasty German SP gun, but fails to do much in return. 
Luckily the SP fails to hit anything after this point. 

The outflanking unit tries to join in, but will get stalled on
the bridge by my Staghound.

This is AFTER my artillery rounds came down. One of
the halftracks copped a full-on heavy artillery round...
...which now, of course, also comes with a 4" template
of hurt. Ouch.
Rather stupidly, my Staghound was also close enough to
catch three pins from the barrage. D'oh!

The endgame - this is the last of the Heer.
They did at least take brutal revenge on
my artillery spotter!

Sad Germans. With the loss of the centre ground,
they know what's about to come their way.

What an absolute blast!

Thanks, all,

- Drax.

585 - More BA Gaming No.2...and MY NEW GERMANS!

Alright?

Well, I said I'd cue up another couple of posts...and here's the next. 

Another game (my third!) at Dark Star in Plymouth, and another newbie. This time, though, I fielded my nascent German Heer Grenadier Vets...and this is their first outing on the blogosphere!

This time, I was up against C and her shiny new Fallschirmjäger. Happily, this made for a fun match for my veterans; unhappily, I forgot to take a photo of her beautifully painted new Kradschutzen motorcycle and sidecar. 

The game was really, really fun, but sadly we forgot two things: firstly, that we forgot the special rules for her Fallschirmjäger, and secondly that I forgot that in this first, 500pt round of escalation, only one of my two squads was veteran. Bugger.

C was an absolutely brilliant opponent and a joy to play against. Her recoil-less 105mm medium howitzer, on the other hand, was deeply unpleasant.

The 4x4 table from my table edge (bottom). Five objectives
and that brutal 105 is plumped right on one in the top-
right sandbagged emplacement. 

My NON-veteran squad advances on the right...

...as do my ACTUAL vets on the left. The 105 traverses.

The German lines, being thinned.

Toward the end, my brave, brave veteran sniper finally
gets some support in the shape of my 251.
6MMG shots is brutal.

It's not quite enough, and the remaining FSJ move in
but luckily fail to finish off the sniper. By this point (the
end), my veterans (on the right, here) have rallied and
started to move up. On the other flank, my other squad
assaults and kills his officer and - eventually - his last
infantry. 

Having realised our (my) mistakes in this game, we're going to strike it from the league record, leaving it as a training game. A pity, but it was still an absolutely cracking game!

Next time...


The very welcome return of COLONEL GRAVIS!

Cheerio,

- Drax.

584 - More Bolt Action Gaming No.1

Happy New Year!

Been a while - partly because accessing blogger on my new work laptop is trickier, and partly because...well, I've actually been gaming rather than just blogging about it!

Here's game one - against a newbie, helping him to prepare for Mattenbury's start-up escalation league at my new FLGS 'Dark Star'. He's a seasoned gamer, so Bolt Action came easily to him, and he gave me a run for my money.

I bought along my Desert Sikhs, knowing that he had a nascent Late-War German Veteran force. It was close, but I just pipped it in the end. Still, he enjoyed it enough to come back for more!

Pics follow...

Those plucky Desert 'Brits' again...

...and ze Germans.

Deployment, my left flank

Deployment

My Humber moves up and gets blatted by the Sdk.Fz 251/10. Damn,

The Germans advance on my left whilst I storm up the right and
fight through. Luckily, some defensive fire turned up just in time
to halt the advancing foe. Phew!

In the centre, my Crusader just embarrasses itself by getting
beaten up by a 251/10-cum-Stummel-cum-Panzerfaust combo.
It weathers it all, but is immobilised and can't hit for toffee.

THESE CHAPS, on the other hand, were just BRILLIANT!
Having shot up the right flank in a lorry, they dismounted, shot-up
 then assaulteda sniper team, THEN assaulted and destroyed his
Stummel, and THEN did the same to his 251/10.
Then they stopped for a brew. 

In the end, it was bravely fought, but the marauding Sikh
1 Section swung it my way.  

Now, let's see if I can cue up a couple more of these whilst I've got a lazy evening of babysitting ahead of me...

Cheers, All!

- D.