Bolt Action AAR

I was visiting the Bay Area last week and was able to attend my old gaming group.  Even though generally people are more pre-20th century, we do go in for WW2 every so often.  This was our first outing with Bolt Action by Warlord Games.  The pictures are not my own, and generally don't follow the action, but I figured I could give an overall idea of how the game plays.

We were playing Russians.  Our squads were split up, and we had far more armor on the table than would normally be the case.  It was 1000 points a side, with the Russians trying to take a center objective.  The Russians had several squads with Sub-machine guns, a KV-1, and 2 T-34s, including an MMG and higher up teams.

 The Germans setup to defend the objective with reserves.  The Germans were effectively a Panzer Grenadier force with a Pz IV, a Wespe armored artillery, a half track, a Pak40, a couple of trucks with infantry squads.  The objective had an MMG in the bottom of a building.

Here's a shot of a green unit of Russians trying to assault the Pz IV.  They were unsuccessful both times, but it was worth it to see the assault rules.  Assaults are very bloody.  The Russians were able to pin down the MMG in the building and shooting was able to kill the 3 crew.  Small crews are quite vulnerable as far as we could tell.  The pak40 crew also fell to shooting.  I suspect we did something wrong.

This was a faceoff between the Wespe Gun and 2 T-34s across the main road...

The Wespe nuked one for the T-34s. I do like that there are no templates to worry about.  The 2nd T-34 took down the Wespe with a stationary fire shot.  Moving and shooting gives a small disadvantage to firing.

I really like the rules.  Its like 40k in its simplicity, but without any special rules for a great many special troops. Of course there are special troops and rules, but everybody is human, and all troops have a use.  Some people might find the tank rules a bit bland (light, medium, heavy, very heavy guns, and softskin, light, medium, heavy, and extra heavy vehicles) but you definitely think like a tanker in support of infantry, and you generally only get 1 tank per 1000 points anyway.  Great stuff.  Can't wait until the British and Japanese source books come out.  I can finally finish my Australian force and start the Japanese.