Bolt Action - Soviets and Germans AAR

On Sunday at the League Mark ran an introduction game of Bolt Action, mainly to show off a lovely building from Crescent Root Studio (http://crescent-root.com/index.html), this time a laser-cut MDF warehouse.

The setting was the Eastern Front, late in the war. 1000 points a side, with German and Soviet forces being controlled by three players each - Jan, a Horvat brother and myself for the Germans, with Tyler, the other brother and Mark commanding the Soviets.

From memory the Soviets had 3 squads of infantry, a squad of sappers, a squad of raw recruits, a ZiS AT gun team, a mortar team, a leader and a T-34.

The Germans had 3 squads of infantry, a squad of Fallschirmjäger, a PaK team, an HMG team, a leader, a medic and a StuG.

The objective would be the taking of a small, sleepy hamlet in the Ukraine:

Deployment was by selecting dice (either marked as German or Soviet) blindly from a cup to see who had to deploy a squad (initiative is also determined this way unit by unit in a turn). The Germans came on from the west, the Soviets from the east. Both sides massed their forces on the southern flank:

The German forces decided to throw caution to the wind and run to the cover of the buildings as quickly as possible:

It also quickly became apparent that the armour would try and nullify its counterpart if possible:

The Germans continued their objective of taking the buildings, streaming into the warehouse:

On the northern flank both sides were a little more cauitous, with the German squad having to avoid mortar and AT fire:

The German advance continued, with no expected ambushes from the Soviets occuring:

The Soviets were a little slow in advancing, but this allowed their support weapons to be set up earlier to cover the advance and cause damage earlier:

The Soviets were reluctant to leave the cover of the tree line, taking some casualities (but dishing it out to the exposed Germans as well):

The duel between the armour was eventually won by the T-34, much to the cheering on their side:

 This also gave the Soviet infantry some confidence, storming across the open ground:

They were quickly dispatched by the German infantry in the woods and the PaK (which was also doing a good job of keeping the T-34 sulking behind the woods):

The northern flank saw the Soviets refuse to seek safety in the buildings, instead this allowed them to inflict heavy damage on the German infantry (who were in the building, and not the open):

The Fallschirmjäger risked the open ground to try and take out the HMG, as time was getting close. Unfortunately this gamble didn't pay off and they were gunned down:

The final turn saw the HMG, Leutnant and an infantry squad finally make it to a commanding position in the top floors of the warehouse:

They were able to suppress multiple Soviet squads and cause some damage, but it was too late - as time was called and the Germans had sustained more losses than the Soviets.

A fun system, which definitely has me thinking about painting my 28mm WWII miniatures that haven't been inspired to get a game happening.

After the battle Mark noted that one of the highlights was when one of Tyler's sole surviving sailors from a badly shot up Naval Squad went beserk (i.e. he blundered by rolling double 6 on his order dice) and opened up on the Russian Lieutenant killing his aid!