Private Schmitt not General Guderian

Club night last night and I agonised all afternoon on a 750 point army list for the upcoming Bolt Action game against Simon's Russians, no matter what I concocted I never got what I wanted, I always felt short changed. The 750 limit was due to the game being on a club night, it is better to get a game fought to a conclusion than put on something huge which ticks all the boxes except a satisfying finish, another reason is that we are still getting to grips with the rules as no sooner did we feel we were getting somewhere than 2nd Edition landed on the mat.

The Russians get an extra inexperienced platoon because they are, eh, Russians, so I knew Simon could match my infantry and also get a nice tank, I cannot get decent sized squads and a tank, and don't talk to me about the Stuka zu Fuss appearing any time soon. So I was back with my trusty Marder, I might have to look at getting one of those half tracks with the anti-tank gun for smaller games, anyway I also gave all the squads a couple of panzerfausts, I also took a mortar to hopefully give Simon's inevitable sniper a bit of bother and keep his head down.

I didn't need to take any buildings to the club, as I have mentioned before we now have some WWII houses for use so I took all the ancillary stuff, trees, hedges, walls etc. We set up a simple scenario from the book where whoever held the most objectives at the end of the game won, I felt good and had the choice of which side to approach from, so off I set for several buildings to hide in. The Russian tank was on my right so I put the Marder behind a house to wait for a good shot at it while also hoping that it might take the odd pot shot at Soviets in buildings.

A very smart objective marker!

 Early on I had to move the Marder to get a shot at the sniper hiding in a nearby building as my mortar was dropping shells everywhere but on the pest, I thought I was safe but the Russian monster moved and got a shot on me, it missed, thankfully, as it was near the end of the turn my infantry could not attempt a shot at the enemy with their 'fausts as they had already been activated. Simon also took this opportunity to send a squad scurrying towards my extreme right, possibly to assault the house or the Marder, I needed two German dice to come out of the bag next, a big ask but my luck has to change at some point.

First die out, German! I was now left with a dilemma, reverse the Marder and take on the infantry, shoot the infantry in the open with my squad, or shoot the tank with either the Marder or the infantry, take out the tank the enemy infantry will probably shoot up or destroy the Marder, damn open topped vehicles, take out the infantry the tank will shoot again at the Marder. I shot at the infantry with my boys and wiped them out, sadly the next die out was Russian.

The Marder was indeed hit, but wait, a fire only, would the trusty crew put it out and remain in the fight, no they wouldn't, deciding discretion being the better part of valour, live to fight another day or whatever, they fled. Up until this moment Simon had had no luck, his shooting barely gave my men more than a slight cut but now the pendulum swung with a vengeance, in quick succession I lost two more squads and failed several morale throws while my men dropped like flies. I cannot tell a lie, I was a bit dejected, I was going to rush the objectives to get a good score on the last turn but that plan went south and Simon grabbed the win with two of them while I had none.

We are planning a much larger game with plenty of time to spare a week on Sunday, it may simply be a scenario I come up with or if it is points it will be much larger than 750 so that all that lovely stuff I have in the boxes can come out to play.

Elsewhere we had a LOTR game, a Roman Civil War clash with To The Strongest and some players were having an introduction to Scythe, a sci-fi boardgame, a full house just about.

I have managed to save a few quid from repairing the Batmobile to get twelve Saxon archers from Gripping Beast, a lot of the time I provide both armies for anyone I can rope into playing WAC locally so I need to have a better choice of numbers for my skirmishers, hence the new archers. Feeling the hurt from last nights game I may also have to look, as the Germans did themselves, to a cheaper alternative to my tanks, a StuG in other words, where did I put that Christmas list.