Bolt Action Australian 1000pt Far East Army

I bought the new Armies of Great Britain army book for Bolt Action over the weekend.
Its nicely laid out, and has rules and armies for the entire war.  This goes from BEF early war Europe, the African campaign, Normandy, Market Garden, and even the far east is split into 2 parts, the fall of Singapore (early, 1941/42), and the Burma Campaign (later).  It also "covers" all commonwealth troops but really that's assumed in the special rules that you can give your army (so no Australian vs Canadian vs Polish special rules as FOW does).  This was by design and allows you to decide how you think the different nationalities showed themselves.

My Australian 28mm troops fit perfectly with a reinforced platoon of the Burma Campaign.
The entire army is veteran.
Probably give them the "Rapid Fire" special rule giving the a bit more firepower.

1 x 1st Lt commander - 90pts

1 x Medic, 30pts
1 x Forward Arty Observer, free for Brits

1 x Sections, 9 Men, 1 NCO+SMG, + LMG, SMG, 156pts
2 x Sections, 9 Men, 1 NCO+SMG, + 2xLMG, SMG - 176x2 = 352
1 x Sniper Team, 65pts
1 x Med Mortar Team, 65pts
1 x Med MMG, 65pts
1 x Matilda Frog, 186pts

Total: 1009pts

And I have all the parts that I need.  I would have preferred to use the regular Matilda tank with them, but that isn't allowed in the far east.  Only the flame throwing FROG/Murry that the Australians used. Really looking forward to when the Japanese book comes out so I can buy a proper tank for them.

If I find that they need some more AT power, then I might drop the Lt down to 2nd, maybe make the Frog Regular, and add a PIAT section (although technically I don't think the Australians used PIATs at all, and certainly not in the jungle).

I will say the army books seem a bit "generic", but there are some special rules in there which make it worth it.  Generally speaking, veterans are the same the world over.  And all infantry sections has an NCO, 10 guys, and a machine gun.  The real value of the books come from the vehicle section which contains all the different vehicles that each country used.

I will probably also have to do a Fall of Singapore army for Kokoda, but will give the green Aussies lots of defensive cover etc. against experienced Japanese troops, or give the Japanese hard objectives to get, and the Australians play a rear guard action.  It will also have to be a smaller army since I don't have any more.  No tanks in that one either (maybe Milne Bay)..

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.

Dice Devil's tournament at Game Summit 13

 

 Dice Devils' LW tournament at Game Summit

The other weekend the Dice Devil's put on an amazing tournament as part of Game Summit.  It was awesome!  It was a 1650 LW with all books allowed.  The tables were great, the venue was and the prize support from FDB was outstanding.  Special thanks to Ca$h from the Dice Devil's for running the event.  Here are some pictures of the tables and armies.  I didn't take as many pictures as normal so I won't be doing normal battle reports from the games but I may do something to report on the games.

Holiday Gaming at Greedo's!

Just before Christmas Greedo and I had the chance to play a couple of games with our Dad's and my Friend Ben.  We played FoW, Force on Force and Axis and Allies.  I'm not going to do a battle report for any of them but here are the pictures.  All games ended with time being called more than anything else.   Ben and I had a great talk about how to make next years even better.

Flames of War.  Germans were Grenadiers from Grey Wolf and Allies were British from Turning Tide (50th Tyne and Tees).  We didn't have enough scenery for the size of the table, but oh well.

Germans would have likely won but the game had gone on long enough and it was time for a change.

Force on Force: Marines are USMC and the Imperial Guard are Insurgents.  Special weapons are support weapons with Sgts being leaders and Orgyns are RPGs.

 Marines cut down insurgents like that was no tomorrow.  This was a hard game to get the feel for initially but has a load of potential.  Once I get better playing the insurgents I think it would be more fun.  We called this one because it was getting late and we still had another game to play.

Finally was Axis and Allies, I tried to take pictures after something major had happened but may have missed some.

Japan played by Ben had managed to destroy both the British and American surface fleets including threatening the shores of Californian.  Germany and Russia were duking it out someting feierce.  In the end we had to call the game as Ben and I still had a 3 hr drive back to Pet (as it was we got in at almost 3 in the morning).

Special thanks to Greedo Sr who hosted all this in his basement and to Greedo for all the great company and food.  I can't wait until next years!