Well my 10th game of Bolt Action was possibly my favourite so far.
I played my US Airborne against a friend's US Marines (lets call it a training exercise) list with three multiple rocket launchers. We played a scenario with 5 objectives spread across the table.
Fortunately for me his three multi-launchers couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo despite having the potential to absolutely shred my infantry. Early on one of my bazooka teams took out one of his transports on my left flank although the squad inside managed to survive albeit slightly ruffled. On the right flank all hell broke loose, my light howitzer was an early casualty, with the three man crew all getting gunned down before they'd even had a chance to fire a single round.
I managed to play fairly cannily and just as my right flank was looking rocky I brought on a squad of engineers, complete with a flamethrower, from reserve. They raced up in their little truck, jumped out and proceeded to absolutely plaster one of my opponents units, although my flamethrower still managed to miss and I immediately rolled a 1 meaning that he ran out of fuel. So far, in 10 games, he's only managed to cause damage once!
It was all fairly close until turn 4 when I seemed to be edging ahead, I was losing troops but not whole units where as my opponent had lost quite a few order dice (when you lose an entire unit you lose an order dice which has implications for being able to activate and control the initiative) and many of his remaining units were pretty well pinned. This meant that as long as I could hold on the left flank I could push on on the right flank in order to take one of the contested objectives.
It was all looking good until one of his multi launchers finally hit something and pinned down on of my squads that was moving for an objective. He then managed to activate one guy, who'd lost the rest of his squad and I'd basically left because I didn't think he posed any threat, and was able to run him onto the objective close to my deployment area. This meant, going into the last turn, that unless I could kill him, he'd have control of two objectives to my one (with the other two contested i.e. both of us had units within 3" of it).
Despite directing as much fire as possible at him and having one last chance with a single guy who needed a 6 to hit, I couldn't kill him and, unfortunately for me, my engineer unit who were on the objective in his deployment zone couldn't get rid of a pesky inexperienced machine gun team who, despite having done nothing else of note during the whole game, were preventing them from holding it.
In the end, tallying up the points (5 per objective, 1 per unit killed), I lost 17-15, purely because of that one bloody marine!
It was a cracking game which was really tense right up to the very end.
Positives, my squads really do have staying power and the added mobility of my engineer squad in their truck paid dividends. Using my bazooka teams as a pair rather than splitting them up meant they could concentrate firepower, although it does mean that they can only control one area they seem much less vulnerable. It'd be interesting to see how they do against a list with proper tanks rather than the jeeps and transports my opponent had. If I can deploy them correctly they have the potential for area denial even if they don't actually blow anything up.
Negatives, my sniper and mortar team were once again absolutely useless, my light howitzer was gone before I could even use it and I took my eye off the ball at the crucial moment meaning that I managed to snatch a minor defeat from the jaws of victory.
I played my US Airborne against a friend's US Marines (lets call it a training exercise) list with three multiple rocket launchers. We played a scenario with 5 objectives spread across the table.
Fortunately for me his three multi-launchers couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo despite having the potential to absolutely shred my infantry. Early on one of my bazooka teams took out one of his transports on my left flank although the squad inside managed to survive albeit slightly ruffled. On the right flank all hell broke loose, my light howitzer was an early casualty, with the three man crew all getting gunned down before they'd even had a chance to fire a single round.
I managed to play fairly cannily and just as my right flank was looking rocky I brought on a squad of engineers, complete with a flamethrower, from reserve. They raced up in their little truck, jumped out and proceeded to absolutely plaster one of my opponents units, although my flamethrower still managed to miss and I immediately rolled a 1 meaning that he ran out of fuel. So far, in 10 games, he's only managed to cause damage once!
It was all fairly close until turn 4 when I seemed to be edging ahead, I was losing troops but not whole units where as my opponent had lost quite a few order dice (when you lose an entire unit you lose an order dice which has implications for being able to activate and control the initiative) and many of his remaining units were pretty well pinned. This meant that as long as I could hold on the left flank I could push on on the right flank in order to take one of the contested objectives.
It was all looking good until one of his multi launchers finally hit something and pinned down on of my squads that was moving for an objective. He then managed to activate one guy, who'd lost the rest of his squad and I'd basically left because I didn't think he posed any threat, and was able to run him onto the objective close to my deployment area. This meant, going into the last turn, that unless I could kill him, he'd have control of two objectives to my one (with the other two contested i.e. both of us had units within 3" of it).
Despite directing as much fire as possible at him and having one last chance with a single guy who needed a 6 to hit, I couldn't kill him and, unfortunately for me, my engineer unit who were on the objective in his deployment zone couldn't get rid of a pesky inexperienced machine gun team who, despite having done nothing else of note during the whole game, were preventing them from holding it.
In the end, tallying up the points (5 per objective, 1 per unit killed), I lost 17-15, purely because of that one bloody marine!
It was a cracking game which was really tense right up to the very end.
Positives, my squads really do have staying power and the added mobility of my engineer squad in their truck paid dividends. Using my bazooka teams as a pair rather than splitting them up meant they could concentrate firepower, although it does mean that they can only control one area they seem much less vulnerable. It'd be interesting to see how they do against a list with proper tanks rather than the jeeps and transports my opponent had. If I can deploy them correctly they have the potential for area denial even if they don't actually blow anything up.
Negatives, my sniper and mortar team were once again absolutely useless, my light howitzer was gone before I could even use it and I took my eye off the ball at the crucial moment meaning that I managed to snatch a minor defeat from the jaws of victory.
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