No idea when I will have time to build and paint all this
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Dwarves, ogres and goblins (or snotlings?) versus skaven and dark elves...Comment
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TLDR: I took a torrid anal hammering...
Well, in my first Bolt Action game of the year last night my Royal Marine Commandos got absolutely destroyed by a mixed force of German Gebirgsjagers (mountain troops) and Ostruppen. Playing a 6 turn objective based scenario, we only got to turn 4 before I was completely "tabled", meaning that all of my units had been removed from the game. I'd effectively lost about halfway through turn two due to some incredible dice rolls on both sides.
I had a veteran force and my opponent's was a mixture of regular and some inexperienced troops, which was reflected in the order dice difference of 12 vs 18, meaning that I was always going to be struggling to get the initiative. My disadvantage was soon even greater when one of this two snipers took out a light mortar team first shot. My other light mortar tried to extract instant revenge by landing a round on the sniper but missed by a mile.
My artillery observer called in the coordinates for an off board artillery strike, hoping to place it in between the two German multiple rocket launchers and, with a bit of luck, also hitting their heavy mortar and the squad of Ostruppen that was sitting on one of the objectives.
His Howling Cow multiple rocket launcher then managed to suppress my Churchill tank, needing a roll of 6, which resulted in the crew being stunned, effectively suppressing it for the first turn. This was crucial as he didn't have any armour and precious little antitank capability, so one of my few hopes was for it to run rampant with very little to get in it's way.
In a bold/foolish move, towards the end of the turn, I floored it with a truck, to get it as far up the table as possible, carrying a large unit of Commandos, with the intention of disgorging them early in the 2nd turn to "f**k some shit up", this prompted a German motorcycle sidecar to whizz around the corner and spray it's machine gun at it. I wasn't particularly worried as the truck was still a distance away and in soft cover meaning it was a reasonably tricky shot, also soft skin vehicles are only damaged on a roll of 6 so the odds were that I'd take a hit or two but only take a "pin" (which is the game's way of simulating "suppression", which makes it progressively harder to get your troops to follow your orders).
My opponent rolled his 6 dice for the machine gun and scored 1 hit, which was one less than expected, things looked okay, until, of course, when rolling the damage the next roll came up as a 6... The truck was reduced to a smoking wreck, two of the Commandos inside were killed and the rest took several pins for their trouble. This was the second dice I'd lost in the first turn meaning that it was now 18 to 10 order dice in my opponents favour.
At the end of the turn, I rolled to see if my artillery strike would come in and in one of my very rare successful dice rolls, it did. Although it didn't destroy either of them, it did put several pins on both rocket launchers, effectively suppressing them for a turn or two. I also scored a direct hit on the unit of Ostruppen, killing four of the unit of ten, unfortunately not quite enough to force a morale check, you have to kill 50% of a unit, which they would have probably failed.
So, at the end of the first turn, I'd killed a handful of inexperienced men, put some pins on the rocket launchers but, more crucially, lost two order dice and had my ace card, the Churchill tank, temporarily neutralised.
The start of turn two, started slowly with a few units trading shots to little effect. One unit of Commandos were caught out in the open but, somehow, managed to avoid taking any casualties. On one flank a German kettenkrad, a weird halftrack motorbike, came on from reserve carrying a flamethrower team, squaring up to my jeep which was also carrying a flamethrower team. The next order dice would be crucial as we were effectively going to have a flamethrower duel. Whoever got the dice was going to be able to disembark their flamer and shoot it at the other.
I crossed my fingers, hoping that despite the odds not being in my favour due to the order dice difference my dice would come out of the bag. My opponent, who was pulling the dice for that turn, reached in and, miraculously, it was my dice. Here was the turning point, finally the Brits could get back onto the front foot.
My flamethrower team jumped out of the jeep and moved into pointblank range of the Germans, I held my breath as I rolled to hit and their aim was true...this was it. Flamethrowers are deadly in Bolt Action, its almost impossible to not do a massive amount of damage with them...
I rolled a dice for the number of hits, getting a 2. Not great but meaning that I got to roll two dice needing 3 or greater on one of them to burn up the Kettenkrad and do some serious damage to it and the flamethrower team. I rolled the two dice and they came up 1 and 2.
Okay, not great but I still had to roll for pins and they had to take a morale test. A flame-thrower does d6 pins, so I rolled and got another 1. So, with one of the deadliest weapons in the game I'd managed to hit but had done the grand total of 1 pin, absolutely the minimum I could have done. Needless to say his flamethrower team passed their morale test and with the next order dice got off their transport and showed my team how to use the weapon by thoroughly barbecuing them, effectively causing a further 3 order dice swing as, instead of killing two of his units, he'd killed one of mine.
My one remaining light mortar then got a second chance at landing a round on the sniper but, again, missed badly. The sniper didn't give them a third chance and put them out of their misery. Another order dice lost.
My tank, with 4 pins on it from the rocket strike, successfully rallied, allowing it to remove d6+1 pins... of course I rolled a 1, leaving it still fairly effectively suppressed, although the nearby presence of my 2nd Lieutenant, who'd managed to survive the carnage of the truck explosion, did mean it had a chance to activate in the next turn.
The second turn ended with me 18 to 7 down on the order dice, effectively meaning that I needed a miracle. In Bolt Action, once units start getting suppressed and, especially, once the dice count gets really unbalanced you completely lose the ability to be proactive, you end up just having to react to everything your opponent does until you get destroyed.
Turn three started with a brief stay of execution as the German rocket launchers both failed their morale checks and remained inactive. The second German sniper however fired a shot at my 2nd lieutenant, who was crucial for my plan to activate the hapless armour, and killed him outright.
In a rare moment of forward momentum a 7 man squad of Commandos rushed in to assault one of the sniper teams, unfortunately this triggered an ambush by one of the covering Gebirgsjager squads meaning that only 5 of the Commandos made it into CCQ. However 5 veteran Commandos vs 2 regulars still left things heavily in my favour.
I rolled my 5 dice to see how many kills I could score, bearing in mind I needed 4+ on a d6 with each dice and any successful ones could be rolled again. I scored one kill out of six rolls. He then rolled his 1 remaining dice needing 5+ to kill and, of course rolled a 6. Not only a kill but also potentially "exceptional damage" if he could roll another 6... Suffice to say that the resulting "exceptional damage" meant that the unit lost their NCO, giving it a permanent -1 morale. It also meant that both units had 1 kill each so the assault went into a second round. Thankfully this time the Commandos finally got the job done and the four remaining guys killed the lone sniper. Finally I'd taken a German order dice, although even this had come at a serious cost.
Just as there was finally a very faint glimmer of hope, the German heavy mortar decided to have a potshot at my pinned Cromwell tank. Not having ranged in yet it needed a 6 to hit and, you guessed it, my opponent rolled yet another 6, landing a round straight onto the weaker top armour, scoring another glancing blow (needing a 5+ he rolled a 5...). This, again stunned the crew, meaning they couldn't activate this turn and, to add insult to injury added another load of pins, taking the total up to 7 pins, meaning that if I was to activate it next turn I'd need to roll 2 on 2d6...
At this point I pretty much conceded and we played out only the units which could have any real effect, my artillery observer and his buddy poured some fire into the Gebirgsjager squad killing a couple of men and were then, subsequently charged for their trouble and wiped out. My last remaining squad died in a hail of bullets and my tank, sat impotent, not having so much as moved during the game and, theoretically would have been destroyed or overrun.
We called it with barely 4 turns being played, adding up the victory points, the score was a grizzly 33-2. My opponent was suitably humble and I think I controlled my saltiness fairly well.
They say that you learn more from your failures than your successes, all I can say is that I must've had a complete three year undergraduate course in one evening.
Last edited by Tratorello; 05-01-2022, 17:56.Comment
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Thankfully my second game of Bolt Action of the year was a completely different kettle of fish, with a fairly comprehensive 17-6 point win
My new US Armoured Infantry list went up against a friend's experimental inexperienced French "horde" army and kicked some Vichy butt. My favourite moment was when my two man bazooka team assaulted an eight man French unit who were sat on the objective and, contrary to all expectations, won.
I did have a worrying moment when my Sherman 105mm was immobilised by a French artillery shell and nearly pinned out of the game but, fortunately, although it couldn't move for the rest of the game it was able to use it's turret mounted howitzer to good effect.
The game was still in the balance going into the last turn, which made it exciting but in the end I was able to secure a major victory as my opponent's inexperienced troops got whittled away and bogged down through suppressing fire from my M3 halftracks and 6 man squads, one of whom did some great work after, sacrilegiously, holing up in a church and ambushing anyone who went past on the adjacent road.
Great fun and I learnt some good lessons about my new list, in that it's highly mobile but a bit light on manpower.Comment
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Oh and to actually post something related to the title of this thread, I foolishly made a bid for an Orc Bloodbowl team on eBay which I never thought would win, so I now own an unpainted Bloodbowl team...Comment
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Decided to take a break from WW2 stuff and start on the Orcland Raiders.
Couldn’t find a painting guide so kind of winging it.Comment
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Wow, I'm on a terrible run of Bolt Action games, with three big defeats in my last four games, including a ridiculous thrashing today where I lost an objective game (one central objective where you claim points equivalent to the turn number from turn 3 onwards,) 27-1, with my Soviets facing a friend's French.
Things were fairly even until turn 3 when my dice rolls went to absolute shite and my opponent just started running rampant, with Soviet squad after Soviet squad getting liquidated left, right and, particularly, centre.
We called it at the end of turn 4 as I'd run out of units that could contest the objective. Was a fun game despite the complete hammering.
I'm playing in a tournament early next month and I'm starting to worry...Comment
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Continued my terrible run on Tuesday night by getting an absolute thumping using my tournament list... which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence for Saturday. Think I've now lost 5 of my last 6 games and none of the defeats have been anywhere near close.Comment
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The new Norse team has been revealed for Blood Bowl. The team's mascots are "Beer Boars". I don't need any more Blood Bowl teams but... Beer Boars!!
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A quick update on last weekend's Bolt Action tournament, my terrible run continued with three minor losses although, to be fair, every single game went to the wire and on a couple of them I, literally, lost on the last dice. Great fun but super frustrating as I made a few costly mistakes which were punished accordingly. Can't wait till the next one!Comment
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Having just had a birthday I now have an omnibus of the Blood Bowl novels to read, courtesy of Mrs Thistle. My mum gave me a "skirmish case" for me to transport figures in. But the real highlight was being given a kroxigor to bulk out my lizardmen team. It's a forge world casting. A friend bought it off my wishlist.Comment
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So, through a curious set of circumstances I've got myself into a position where I'll be running some demonstration Bolt Action games at the SWW festival in July organised by Al Murray and James Holland through their podcast, We Have Ways...Comment
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I bought the Norse team. And the latest issue of Spike Magazine which is all about them.
(I used the birthday money Mrs Thistle's grandad sent me)Comment
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Played a game last night. Orcs (me) versus dwarfs (my mate). I won 2-0 thanks to a comedy disastrous dice roll when a dwarf tried to blitz my ball carrier and fell flat on his face instead. It was the kind of roll that is hilarious when it happens to your opponent. Less funny when it happens to you!Comment
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I've tried googling this and am getting Shetland Wool Week.Originally posted by Tratorello View PostComment
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Inspired by the York City retro third kit I decided to do some of my human team in chocolate and cream to see what it looks like. (I doubt Jobi1 wants to see what he hath wrought but I'm tagging him anyway.) I've made this difficult for myself by not using Games Workshop paints. The reddish brown is a Revell one I bought years ago and I mixed the cream myself. I'm reasonably please with the colours. Just the skin, face guards and boots to go.
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The halves work really well I'd say, something quite Victorian about the outfits!Comment
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I went for halves because stripes are really hard to get right.Originally posted by Jobi1 View PostComment
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When the paint dries I have some incredibly shiny Lizardmen players to show you. The paint shade is absinthe by Turbo Nerd. It's incredible.Comment
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Bit of a change of plan. I went to my favourite local games shop to buy some paint. I wanted a creamier cream but ended up with a mild yellow. I'm not totally sure about it and might do another coat of something else. However for now the team is chocolate and custard.
I also briefly watched three games of Blood Bowl being played. One day I'll summon up the courage to take a team and play a stranger.
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(The picture is halfway through painting before I redid the pinky ones. Just for contrast.)Comment
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