A game of two halves

Last night Fred (Mog junior) and I had a game of Bolt Action. It is very much our joint game of choice of late. 

We had forces of around 790 points for this game - Russian and German, both based on the 1944 lists found in the respective army books.

Figures are nearly all Warlord and mostly plastic. I really like the Russians in particular, I'll post more on them soon. 

Scenery is a little makeshift, but I recently scratch-built the buildings and the fields and this was their first outing.

We played the 'Point Defence' scenario. Russians (Fred) opted to defend. His force consisted of;

HQ - Regular 2nd Lt

One Inexperienced Rifle section (Green)

One Regular LMG section (an infantry team with 2 LMGs)

One Regular SMG section

Supports came in the form of a Mortar, MMG, a sniper and a T34/85. Off table in reserve was an AntiTank Rifle team.

In attack, the Germans fielded;

HQ - Regular 2nd Lt with two men

Artillery Forward observer (two men)

One infantry section with Hanomag - Regular Heer

One infantry section 'zu fuss'

Supported by MMG, Med Mortar team and a STUGIII held in reserve.

The game started off fairly well for the Germans (me). The preparatory artillery bombardment put some pin markers on most teams and wiped out the HQ straight away. Then in the first few turns, a confident advance and fairly effective fire took care of the Green rifle section. On the Russian right, FOO directed artillery fire took out their mortar team, but the SMG section bravely moved forward, avoiding most of the barrage.

By the end of turn 3, Fred had started to lose faith and I could tell he was feeling that he'd lost already. Some fatherly advice about not giving up was about to prove right, although I'm not sure that being able to say 'I told you so' was much comfort!

The Russians finally managed to get the LMG team moving (they had been struggling to shake of the effects of the initial artillery bombardment), and some very effective fire cleared the woods of the Heer section in front of them.  The sniper on the hill also found his aim, crippling the MMG team which had so far done very little in the fields in front of the Russian left.

With slow progress being made on the German left, and no hope of capturing the central objective, much hinged upon the arrival and effectiveness of the Stug. Finally on turn 5, the Stug arrived - perfectly positioned at the foot of the hill behind the sniper. At this point, the T34 which had been on 'Ambush' orders, turned his turret and fired off one perfect shot, hitting and destroying the German armour before it could do anything.

An enjoyable battle which definitely illustrated how fates can turn within a game. Things to look up - transports. I need to understand how to better use the Hanomag. At the moment it's an expensive bus.