Saturday's game was a big success though we had to modify our original plans a little.  We were not able to run Jim's rules but luckily Daniel had brought along his copy of Bolt Action and we also had enough figures between him and John to set up our first game with these rules.  This was a late war battle we set up on the fly where German Fallschirmjagers  were defending vs. a British attack.

Overall the rules worked pretty well.  We made a few errors, like close assaults.  We played it that the assaulting troops could only roll to match the number of defenders which led to a superior platoon being destroyed by a defender very quickly.  We should have allowed the units to roll for all of their figures involved in the close assault.  The end result may have been the same but our version indicated that you never wanted to close assault!  This was of course wrong.

We also played the rules for unit actions when they were pinned.  We did not make pinned units pass an order test to move etc.  This makes some of the things I have read about Bolt Action make more sense.  I had read that you really needed to roll off your pins or your units would become next to useless.  If we had played this rule more correctly we would have found units to have not been able to execute orders nearly as readily as they did.

Thanks to Daniel for running the game on short notice.  We decided that we would be willing to play these rules again at some point in the future.   When we do all of those who own the rules be sure to have familiarized themselves with the rules so we minimize the errors as we play.  Considering this was an unplanned pick up game with a set of rules none of us had played it went very well.

I will attempt to give a AAR report on the game along with some photos.

 

 

These are a few of the over all shots of the table at the beginning of the game.  You can see a few Germans skulking around n the woods.   The Germans were defending the long wooded ridge and a line that stretched on to a ruined building, a barn and a series of woods.

The next shots are of the British starting their attack with 2 Bren carriers, support mortar (2 inch I believe),infantry and a 6 lb gun with carrier.

 

 

 

 

 The next photos show Germans in position and advancing on the right flank and into the wooded ridge.   The Brits start to take hits on the right flank from the wooded ridge.  The German MGs start to fire.   The German assault on the British left fails, most likely due to our misunderstanding the close assault rules.  The outnumbered Brits destroyed the German unit as an effective fighting unit.

The British 6 pounder searches for a target, decides that the reports of a German armored car on their left flank dictate limbering up and moving to that flank.   The German armored car, sorry no photo, ended up holding down the German right flank after the infantry on that flank was destroyed in the above mentioned assault.

 

The British attack on their right flank starts to stall due to hits and pin markers but they are able to eventually destroy the few Germans to their front and just as they are ready to start moving forward again the only reserve German figures take up positions on the ridge.   The British infantry advancing, sneaking?, along the road and the hedge with support of their Bren gun appear to be ready push through the enemy lines when 2 hidden MGs open up on them and the advance goes to ground.  The MGs were the only German units on the right center of their line as the infantry had shifted left to cover that flank as mentioned earlier.

The British pounder was not able to complete its redeploy before we called the game so neither the gun nor the German AC were able to really engage each other.

The British had about 6 or so less casualties than the German Fallschirmjagers but they had been  hit hard enough that it was safe to assume their attack would go no further.

I am sure our next Bolt Action game will prove to be an even better game with some of our rules questions cleared up.   We will also have more troops available as not all of the available figures were brought to the game.

 

A special thanks to all that attended.  In no special order this included:  Josh, John, Greg, Daniel, Rob and Titch.   Hopefully I did not forget anyone.

 

Our game in August will be the postponed WWII early war scenario with the French counter attacking the Germans.  The date for this game will be August 10th, 2013 and should provide an interesting comparison between Jim's rules and Bold Action rules.