"Bolt Action Test Game #2" Topic

All,

Greetings, hope all is well! Just a quick update on what the boys and I have been getting up to. We played a game, but I shouldn't really call this a battle report; there's not much much in the way of a narrative, or a real scenario, or a plan… hell, there's not even many photos! What we did have was lots of learning and lots of fun, which is a great thing to report, and should lead to some actual batreps.

Last time we played on a 3' x 3' table using a skirmish version of Warlord's "Bolt Action" rules, whereas this time we used a modified (simplified, by me) version of Bolt Action version 3. The simplified piece consists of a few things I changed to speed things up and/or season to my tastes, but the guts of the game are still there.

The table, again somewhere in Normandy. Let's say it's June 8, 1944, on the eastern edge of the Allied bridgehead. Ground forces have linked up with British 6th Airborne Division, which is now attacking south against 21st Panzer Division. North is left, buildings and stone walls are hard cover, fields and trees are soft cover, attacker comes from the left and mission is the village at the crossroads (center-right), a super simple "attack-defend" scenario.

You can see I've "opened" up the table a bit, hope it looks more like a conventional Bolt Action/Battlegroup/Chain of Command-type table this time. Last time it really felt like I had too much terrain on the table, really more suited for skirmish gaming rather than reinforced-platoon level gaming (at least in my humble opinion).

The British assault force:
-a three-man command element
-4 x eight-man rifle sections
-a two-man PIAT team
-a Vickers MG team (three men)
-a 3" mortar team (three men + two-man FO team)
-2 x Sherman and 1 x Firefly tanks

I made the Brits, played by my younger son (who played Germans in the last fight), keep two rifle sections and all three tanks off-table to begin the game, coming on when an appropriate dice was pulled and they past an availability check (4+ on Turn 1, 3+ on Turn 2, 2+ on all turns thereafter). There were a lot more failures to come on than I predicted, which led to quite a bit of laughter (at least by me)!

Despite "opening" up the table, I was still worried that it was too much forces for too little table, was worried it was going to look like a Napoleonic attack going in with troops shoulder to shoulder, so I only used 8-man squads/sections (also because I wanted to see what 8-man companies in Rapid Fire Reloaded would look like). In the event, I was quite happy with the troop density, I thought it looked ‘right' and never had the feeling that stuff was crowded or too close together.

The German defenders, played by my older son:
-a three-man command element
-3 x eight-man rifle squads (each has 2 x panzerfausts)
-a two-man panzerschreck team
-a three-man sMG-42 team
-a Pak-40 ATG with three-man crew
-2 x Stug-IIIH

The Germans were required to keep one rifle squad and the two Stugs off-table to begin the game.

A couple action shots:

The Sherman (top left) and Stug (bottom right) continue trading ineffective shots as the German reserve squad comes on and dashes up behind the rear building (center) and the MG team hops a wall and moves up to the next wall (at the intersection). Meanwhile, the panzerschreck team (center top left, just visible on the other side of the wall next to the far building), prepares to dash through the gap between the building and chicken coop, looking to smoke the Firefly…

But as the German panzerschreck team dashes forward (between buildings at top left) they are spotted by the Vickers MG team (in building at bottom center right), which promptly opens up and mows them down!

A young PIAT gunner trying to win himself a medal.

To see more photos and read a bunch of blathering about rules, tactics, and game planning, please visit the blog at:
link

And I'll throw this in here on the off-chance that all of you don't visit the blog ;)

Now I need a good mini-campaign to run; still not sure what they're called or how exactly to describe it, but you start at a central geographical location and move back and forth in a linear method based on who won and lost the previous battle. KISS Rommel did it like this:

Start at Tobruk, move left or right based on winner of previous battle report.

Track: Tunisia – El Agheila – Benghazi – Gazala – Tobruk – Mersa Metra – El Alamein – Alexandria – Cairo

I'd like to work mini-campaigns that have maybe five locations, and are much more tactical than that, I.e., you could probably do a five-step mini-campaign just for Gazala, Tobruk, or El Alamein, right? Or Stonne, or Dunkirk, Sicily (either the British track or American track), Salerno, Anzio, Caen, St Lo, various Market Garden locations, the Bulge, probably a million of them on the East Front, right? Anyone have any ideas?

Anyway, thanks for taking a look, I appreciate it.

V/R,
Jack

Great looking figures and table.

Jack, that's the looker just for play-testin' (and most enjoyable to view and read about too)!

I like that you're tweaking as you see fit.

After lots of BA 1st/2nd edition platoon-level scenarios, I also felt fit to tweak the rules – and also modded it to a squad-stands variant (Blitz Action), where each squad stand functioned/activated within their platoon's single order pull.

TMP link

Just seemed the next step, to have a handful of tanks and AT Guns on a side, working in the framework of these being in support of a company of infantry (to me, a tank with a crew of 4-5 and having a couple of MGs & main gun, is much closer to a "squad/platoon" as far as unit scaling and firepower….rather than AFVs around pickin' off single infantry figs).

Keep your excellent AARs coming – this play-test looks very refined Just as-is.

Thanks, 79th!

Dave – I appreciate it, and you're right in terms of the "logical next step," I was thinking about that myself, pretty cool. I'd even had the crazy idea of multi-basing my 28mm rifle squads, Flames of War-style (I see you did three guys on a round base).

Do you have anything written down for Blitz Action?

V/R,
Jack

Jack, I do.

I've moved away from the random sides activation (dice pulling), to players having orders they pre-program/place during the top of the turn sequence. This gets all players thinking about their upcoming actions at the same time (actually saves game time too), then they have latitude to choose which platoon-size unit gets priority for the early activation(s) – all proceeding IGOUGO (Action – Reaction.)

Having the activation markers 'flipped up' still serves the same purpose of record keeping as BA dice do, so later enemy actions are informed of the state of an opponent's units already ordered in earlier parts of the turn.

Programming the order placement this way encourages players to think ahead, to coordinate their unit actions – to be thinking of "a plan", there's still important decisions as each turn plays out, as to the priority sequencing of a side's activations.

As BA is now (and has been), the Warlord random activation "system" of dice pulling, largely negates any need to have "a plan" – it also confounds multiplayer teaming.

You know there's countless times I've watched a player side receive an order dice, and they just look at each other – "do you want it, I dunno, do you have anything you want to do?" Of course this naturally occurs when moving away from 1 v 1 tournament style gaming, to multiplayer scenarios…….where you want a player team thinking about a battle plan, or maybe even simple divisions around combat support/tactical roles using the team's combined forces.

I'll not bend your ear anymore Jack, as this significant change of the rule sequence requires 'transition'. Think about it as you're playing your next game, and see if this resonates…..

EDIT: Jack, I just saw TaciticalPainters' good work on his recent thematic order counter crafting, his thread -

TMP link

You'll see the Blitz Action order markers/action types I made there too ("pics I do"). :)))

Dave,

Thanks for sharing, very interesting! We don't have the multiplayer issue, it's just the boys facing off against each other with me umpiring (or else nothing would get done!), and I'm just generally not a fan of IGOUGO, particularly in face to face games, I like something in there to throw in some friction, and it's certainly provided me with plenty of laughs! ;)

I am still thinking about the multi-basing piece though, very interesting.

V/R,
Jack

Jack, havin' your young warriors facing off across the table is friction enough, eh? :)

I would be intrigued to see what you come up with your multi-basing ideas.

This little Blitz mod uses step losses per element (whether they're a basic rifle squad [4-hit strength], SMG squad [3], separate/supporting/outposting LMGs, MMGs, HMGs [2] or for smaller specialist sections – AT Knackers).

I have to mark the stands to track hits – as with those cubes seen in the linked thread above, and I'm probably using different trackers now also – believe I went back to the BA Pin markers for this. :)))

Being able to remove figs from a multi-stand (rare earth magnets perhaps), or some other immersive, clever method might be fun to develop. (?)

Another good AAR and table, Jack. I've only played BA once or twice, a fair while ago. As for mistakes when playing/umpiring a new game system, isn't that compulsory?

Dave – YES, keeping those two in line is all the friction we need ;)

Regarding Blitz Action, when I play 1 base = 1 squad games I don't usually play with step losses. I'm a simple man, so it's either in the fight or knocked out, with allowances for morale (pinned or suppressed).

The biggest obstacle to me doing this is re-basing all my troops (or buying more and painting/basing them)…. Your magnetized bases is a cool idea but, for me, still quite a bit of work, and I'm not a huge fan of the sabot-type bases, mostly because they tend to get so big.

Dal – Thanks a bunch, I appreciate it! Regarding mistakes being compulsory, they certainly are on my table! I thought I was being clever, sure outsmarted the hell out of myself ;)

We certainly had a great time, looking to do it again today. From my perspective, nothing really wrong with Bolt Action except the ranges (and even that's just a case of the ranges being short/not looking right due to the figure scale), so all you have to do is flip it to "everything is in range, if you can see it you can shoot it." The only range I worry about is for infantry anti-tank weapons, which I hold to 12". Not really fair, but I like forcing them to get really close ;)

The other thing I'm thinking about with them is coming up with something for hidden movement, maybe a blinds system.

V/R,
Jack