First game of Bolt Action

On Friday night we all met up at John's place for a couple of games. This was to be an all World War II affair, with one table running Germans vs US Flames of War, and the other table trying out the Bolt Action rules. I was nominally playing Germans with Paul in the Bolt Action game, but as I was volunteering to be the one reading the rulebook I virtually ended up being an umpire. Michael and John took control of the British airborne opposite us. Chris and his son Connor commanded the yanks against Shane and Jeremy with the Germans on the other table.

Bolt Action

The Germans begin their initial advance

British 6 pounder looks for targets

German mortar prepares to deal with the enemy

The British arrive in the yards of the buildings only to find them occupied by a German flamethrower team!

They do however manage to occupy the house next door 

On the British left flank things are not going so well.

The Germans rush out to try to assault the Brits in the building across the road. This is the last we will see of this section...

The German left flank is well supported by a Panzer IV and a StuG. Well, it was until it ran into a Firefly...

And the StuG fared no better.

A Panzershrek team bursts forward and manages to get a lucky shot on a concealed Sherman. Pity it wasn't the Firefly.

The sad state of the German left before the Brits launched their rather devastating assault.

This was a big game - about 1500 points aside, which made it quite slow moving as well were just getting to grips with the rules. Having said that, we covered a lot of different situations: fighting assaults in the open and in buildings; firing mortars and HE at buildings, doing tank to tank combats. Reaction of the players towards the rules was overall very positive, but next time some hedges or extra cover of some sort would be very useful. The units on the flanks in particular suffered very heavily from being quite exposed. The pile up of pinned markers on units in the open (see the picture above) effectively paralysed units until they rallied, and was quite a cool game mechanic. The Brit paras really had an advantage with their veteran status, being harder to kill and easier to rally. In a way we were also victims of not knowing the rules and trying things for the first time just to test what might happen in various situations. The result was that historical tactics were rewarded and gung-ho 'Rambo' moments suitably punished. Weapon ranges have been criticised in a number of reviews that I've read, but thinking of ranges as effective rather than total range makes up for this somewhat. Nevertheless, I wouldn't realistically put artillery on the table in this game unless playing an infiltration scenario where the artillery is an objective.

Flames of War

No need to talk about the rules here, as we have played them ad nauseum. The game resulted in a German victory, although I wasn't close enough to the game to work out why. I did take some photos for a bit of eye candy, though.

Fast Flames Early War Tournament

This event was actually held a fortnight ago, but I've lost my blogging mojo in amongst the amount of work coming my way at the moment.
In a repeat of the tournament set up from February, we had eight 800 point early war armies squaring off against each other in one hour games. No aircraft or heavy artillery or tanks with armour of 6 or above were allowed. Allied players were John (last year's winner) and Jeremy with Brits and Chris and I with French.

My French stalk the streets

Chris' French advancing

Jeremy gets an armoured company

John's infantry supported by Matildas - wait - what was their armour again?

Axis players were Terry, Paul and Shane (who didn't turn up but was ably replaced in one game by John's wife Rose) with Germans and Michael drew the short straw with Italians.

Paul's infantry advancing

Terry's motorbikes led by a man on a horse

German armoured army of Shane

The deadly Italians

Three rounds were fought, with three objectives placed across the centre line of the table. Each objective was worth 3 victory points and each destroyed enemy platoon was worth one victory point.

The end result was a narrow Axis win, and the top two armies were Michael's Italians and my French on 21 points each (this despite being beaten in my first game by Rose who was playing her first game - ever!!!).
So the decision was that Michael should receive the newly made trophy as he was on the winning side. It was duly presented by the previous champion, John, in an elaborate ceremony.

John looks much happier giving it away than Michael looks to be receiving it.

 It was a lot of fun, and I think we'll look at it as a biannual fixture.