Pre-Christmas throw down of dice and models!

So before Christmas I was able to go visit the lads up in Wise and get a couple games in.  It was a great time had by all and I got to test out some of the mechanics of Bolt Action!  So without further ado let's check out some of the game pics:

 Turn 2, my Brits move around to face the Americans!

So I took my standard Brits against Josh's American forces, and since neither of us knew what we were doing it was an interesting game for sure.  The mechanics were picked up rather quickly and for the most part we had the flow of the game down about mid-way.  As you can see in the above we might not have had a lot of terrain and we ended up with a large killing zone in the middle.  Essentially whoever went in first died first.

On the right side of the board...

Josh attempted to flank my right side with his half-track and for some reason I decided my Cromwell would be the perfect counter!  Unfortunately once it was immobilized my tank was stuck behind that terrain for the rest of the game.  You can see peeking from the side of the building on the left my Artillery Observer, who failed his bombardment call and the Once-Per-Game bombardment ended up landing right in the middle of the squad coming up in the middle.  Suffice to say it was hilarious and sad at the same time.

The Yanks on the left side (my left, his right)

Overall Bolt Action was a lot of fun mechanically and ran very smoothly.  There are a lot of things I will need to read up on to be more proficient but it was a great game.  I ended up losing sadly but really I didn't mind, I had more fun trying it out than trying to win.

When I went up against Josh again later that day we decided to do some 40k, so we settled on 1200 points and it was a mirror match of CSM vs CSM, and we both love Nurgle.  Go figure.  Still Josh was learning 40k so being the 4-5th game here are some snaps:

I think my Death Guard have that middle pretty much covered.

We decided on an Eternal War Mission, I think it was the one with objective having different point values.  I ran a simple list:

• Chaos Lord w/ MoN, Bike, Murder Sword, Gift of Mut, Icon
• 2 x7 Plague Marines w/ 2 Plasma Guns in Rhinos w/ Havoc Launchers
• 6 Nurgle Bikes, 2 Meltas
• Forge Fiend with 3 Ecto cannons
• Vindictator

I believe he went with something like this:

• Typhus
• 5 Terminators
• Land Raider
• 30 Zombies
• 7 Plague Marines w/ Rhino
• 3 Nurgle Bikes

The Forge Fiend was supported by Plague Marines and held the objective stubbornly

 I felt bad in a way because his list was not optimized at all for the point scale and so he had all of his eggs in a basket and as you can see in picture 1 that basket was far away from any objectives.  My rhinos were able to secure choke points on the field and in my opinion that is where Plague Marines shine is when they control those points.  With the prevalence of blast templates his Zombies didn't stand a chance and when his infantry was out in the open they were shot up by my Plague Marines and Forge Fiend.

Vindicator blasts made short work of those zombies.

Once his Land Raider was down Tyhpus had to foot slog it across the board but by then it was too late.  I dismantled everything else and in the end he had Typhus alone.  We chatted a bit after the game about list designing but I think it might take a few more games before it'll start to click.  Or maybe one really good sit-down session where we go over everything at length.

Finally I played a game of BA with my friend Mike who brought his Wermacht and it was rough.  Here are the shots!

My poor Brits shot up mercilessly

 So we played the scenario where my Brits had to run up to his table and secure 2 out of 3 objectives.  I had the chance to preparatory bombard him and I was able to get some decent pin markers on him but nothing to talk home about.  Mike's forces were small 5 man Veteran squads with assault rifles, so it was hard to hurt him and he could pump out the shots equivalent to my 10 man squads.  Not knowing any better, I took Regular infantry with no special upgrades!  Numbers over quality I say!

 

Trying to hold a center desperately

Unfortunately for my Brits, Mike breathes war and was able to hop from cover to cover and get into some good position.  Truthfully the major reason I was able to hold my own to a degree was that my Artillery Observer didn't fail me this time and was able to pin down 4 squads, including his Tank Destroyer Stug, for a good majority of the game.  Mike was not able to succeed his tank's morale check to save his life and with my pre-game bombardment and artillery shelling he had to make a 6 on 2d6, but kept rolling 10's.

The farthest I got up on the field :-\

My list was not ideal for this scenario and in the end I couldn't secure any objectives.  I got close, but that doesn't work.  The highlight of this game was that Mike's Stug had FUBAR'd his morale test and fired on one of his intact Vet squads out in the open.  A round of shelling later and 4 had fell to his own tank.  Immediately after my 6 pdr fired a round into the Stug and felled it with one shot.  I felt bad in a way but I was laughing too hard to feel too bad.

I apologize some of the pictures were sideways but that's my camera's fault.  Overall it was a great game and I enjoyed both Bolt Action and 40k.  I was a bit skeptical that I would have liked Bolt Action as much as I did but once I started playing it was amazing.  I might look into actually doing more with it now.  That's it for the game coverage, if you like the format let me know or if you want more information give me a heads up and I'll do what I can.  Until then take care and happy gaming!