Baby's First Bolt Action Game: Regular Americans vs Rooskies

I had a BLAST. I only have 623 points of Americans, and one of the guys at the shop was gracious enough to match me for points and throw down.  Let's jump into it, shall we?

Americans:
I've mentioned my list in a previous post. Add in a 75mm Sherman with all the trappings.

Soviets:
1st Lieutenant equivalent, I think.
x5 SMG, Regular
x9 Rifle with a LMG, Veteran
x9 Rifle with a LMG, Regular
x10, I think, of their free squad of Inexperienced Infantry
T-34/85.

What a gorgeous board. The bocage was made by another gamer with store-bought lichen, 8" jumbo tongue depressors, some rocks, hot glue, spray adhesive, and leaf flock. Tons of pieces for about $20. And damn does it look good. I'll have to make some, it's pretty easy. Expect a post on that!

Anyhoo, we rolled up the demolition mission. My opponent picks his officer, Inexperienced squad and a Regular Rifle squad to start on the board. I started with my officer and both squads of rifles/BARs/smg NCO.

 Quickly painted last night and this morning to not look like total garbage on the board.

The Soviets lie in wait...

His T-34 rolls on the board. I bring on my bazooka team. He brings on the SMG squad. I bring on the Sherman.

 Boop! Wrecked the T-34. I felt a bit bad, because I felt like this swung the game hugely in my favor.

 I move a squad up to the bocage in case he tries to come down the middle for the objective. I should have known better... I'll wind up dancing the squad around a few turns trying to stop these two squads advancing on the right.

 See? Dancing.

Here they come...

I stick my sniper in a corner of the bocage, waiting for someone to pop out. The other Rifle squad scoots behind cover to the left, looking to flank.

Here they come! Closer than 6", so I won't get defensive fire if he gets the first order die on the next turn...

Womp womp. My men make peace with their god.

Yikes! I didn't grab a picture of the aftermath, so here's the gist of it. We both swung with 10 dice (9 models plus one for NCOs with SMGs) and both at Regular. I scored seven hits, him... six. WHEW.  I still lost all the rifles.

The Sherman scoots up and lays some MG fire down the Inexperienced squad. The next turn I was able to pivot to get all the MGs firing. Brutal. They wound up failing their morale after losing more than half the squad.

A fun moment on the table next to us. The German player had FUBAR'd ordering the Stug, so it fled... with it's butt to a M3 Stuart. Well waddya know, the Stuart chased it down and murdered the poor thing. Keep in mind the Stuart bounced a round from the Stug in the previous turn. Bounced! 

On my right side, the SMG squad gets within 6", meaning they now hit my guys on 2+. Huh. Predictably, with 10 shots needing 2+'s to hit and killing on a 4+ he took out 6 out of the seven guys, forcing morale, which the NCO failed. Fine. I still had a bazooka team holding down the objective. 

By this point I was able to movemy Lieutenant and 3-man Rifle Squad up to the objective, laying down BAR fire that killed the Soviet officer. With his last Rifle squad too far away and my guys touching the building, the game was over. 

Six turns of Bolt Action goodness! I really loved it. The order die system has converted me. That's not to say I won't play other games that don't use it (Mmm, Flames of War....), but it is damn good. Which you know already, and is what Mart has been telling me for ages. You're right, you're right....

The saturday of D-Day's anniversary there is going to be a Bolt Action and Flames of War event going on, which I am very much looking forward to! I want to find a scale cruiser model to sit at one end of the shop. Maybe one of those models that fires BB pellets? Ha!