Battle Report – Bolt Action: Brits and Yankees versus Germans

Forbes Hobbies is my favourite local place to game. The store has friendly staff and a huge gaming area. In tonight’s adventure, I met Jeremy and Dave for an Axis versus Allies game of Maximum Attrition in Bolt Action. The Axis had 1200 points of Germans and the Allies had an American Force of 600 points and a British Force of 600 points.

One of the three Bren Carriers that I brought to the table.

Below are the forces that we took…

I took a British Carrier section with two carriers loaded up with 5 man Veteran squads (tank Hunters) and the third loaded with a First Lieutenant and his assistant, a PIAT team and a Medic. On foot, I had my Forward Observer.

Jeremy’s 600 points included a First Lieutenant, two squads of infantry and a Sherman with a Super Heavy AT gun. The infantry were all taken from one of the Store’s armies.

Dave brought 4 Squads of Infantry (two Vet squads loaded with Assault Rifles and the Fanatics Rule and two squads of Regulars with various guns embedded in the teams). He also had a MMG team, a PaK40, a First Lieutenant, a Sniper Team a Puma and a StuG.

Right off the bat Jeremy and I knew we were in for a tough battle. I had visions of my Carriers going up in smoke due to all of the AT assets on the table. Unfortunately for Dave, that is not how this game played out. Before getting into the report, I would like to showcase some of the awesome work that has gone into the tables at Forbes Hobbies in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. The following table was built using all of their stuff. You may recognize some of the buildings from my earlier post reviewing miniature houses as Forbes bought heavily into the PlastCraft Games to field on their WW2 tables. The tables look great and are wonderful for play.

The new Church by PlastCraft Games.

We pack our tables tight with Terrain. Makes for better games.

The warehouse by PlastCraft Games.

Jeremy was playing the game with one of the store’s armies. For this army, I believe that Jeremy built the models and Roy painted them. Check these guys out!!!

The First Lieutenant and his assistant. He has pistols to both make him look cool and to reduce the targeting priority given to him by the enemy.

Multiple Bazooka Teams, but neither team was taken for this game.

Fantastic custom work done on this guy. Love how it looks with him launching a rocket towards an enemy tank.

With that out of the way, lets move into the highlights of the game.  The mission we rolled was Maximum Attrition so the winner is basically decided by straight up kills. The German Sniper and British Forward Observer started on the table. Everyone else was off and set to either come in a first wave or as a reserve. The Germans started by running out a bunch of their infantry teams. This team was a little exposed and in the open, so I brought my carriers on to give them trouble.

Run!!!

I brought on two carriers with 5 man squads to counter Dave’s Infantry. Dave had a sniper in that peaked window on the upper left.

The carrier going down the road got some good shots on that infantry blob and got some pins onto them.

Dave countered by bringing on both his Puma and StuG to target the carrier on the road. One shot missed and the other set the carrier on fire. The fire was quickly put out but both the carrier and its occupants took some pin markers. Jeremy answered the StuG by bringing out the Sherman.

This is how things were looking near the end of Turn 1.

This tank belongs to our Friend Carl, but we were using it for this game. It performed marvelously!

The driver of this tank must have been feeling fairly brave to be standing toe-to-toe against both the Puma and StuG. Later a PaK40 also turned up on this stretch of road to challenge the Sherman. The Sherman fired at the StuG and knocked the StuG’s tracks off. The StuG would be immobilized for the rest of the game.

Near the end of the turn, I called in my Artillery Barrage.

Called in from this observer, a deadly barrage rained down on the enemy’s position.

Aiming down on the Puma, StuG and group in the open was tempting, but my eyes were on something beyond those trees.

I called the bombardment down right where that coin is. It hit a total of 4 teams and outright killed the MMG team and severely hampered the efforts of the larger team outside of the houses.

Turn two was pretty much about Maneuvering. The StuG missed the Sherman and the Sherman took out the Puma. I lost my first casualty of the game to sniper fire as one of my squads jumped out of a carrier and into a building. The sniper was on over-watch.

Jeremy takes out the Puma. Notice the PaK40 is now out and there is not much left to the Grenadier squad.

I snuck my carrier past the tank battle.

My first casualty. A squad leader. Good thing I have an assault focused army with Up-And-At-Em. His lost was not sorely felt.

On the opposite side of the table, a serious infantry battle unfolded. My third carrier entered this side of the table on the flank and helped pin down that German infantry squad b-lining it for the house occupied by the Americans.

In turn three, things continued to get worse for the German army on the board. My infantry platoon that was dropped off in the building, a turn earlier, assaulted and killed Dave’s sniper team. To help rally his troops, Dave ran his commander over to a heavily pinned squad. This would prove a deadly mistake as his troops would mow down his commander in a hail of machine gun fire. The Sherman tank continued to dominate the battlefield on the right in a way not seen since the movie Fury.

The First Lieutenant came to help his German Comrades, but his men thought he was a Brit and laid waste to the poor Commander.   Order’s check result… FUBAR!!!

“No matter what you do Dave, Don’t roll a one or a Two.” He rolls a one and his men mow down his First Lieutenant with machine gun fire.

The Sherman slides past the immobilized StuG and gets a good shot at its rear flank.

The StuG goes up in flames. The PaK40 has not been performing well and will be in trouble next turn. It seems that there is no stopping the Sherman.

Turn 4 and the Germans are in some serious trouble.

The Sherman took out the Pak40. This tank was unstoppable!  Too bad Carl wasn’t there to control it. Under Carl’s command, this tank usually dies pretty quickly.  😉

Some Americans were flanking the other side of the PaK40, but the Sherman took care of the business.

Turns 5 and 6 where pretty much just the Allies mopping up. Any Germans left were seriously pinned and ultimately eliminated.

A Carrier and Sherman killed what was left of this squad.

This final German squad did not have much of a chance against all of the firepower coming down on it. Each transport in the picture above was also loaded with teams that had not yet acted.

Despite being heavily outnumbered and heavily pinned, the squad held on.

It took the shots of some infantry to finally take the unit out of the game.

Jeremy and I had a blast playing this game and Dave was a very good sport to play it to the end. Sometimes the dice just aren’t with you. The game ended with the Total Annihilation of the German forces with no full unit loses on the side of the Allies. Below are pictures of the casualties.

Total American Loses… All from the same squad, but the squad stuck with it and never ran away.

Total British Loses. Two troops from one 5 man squad.

Total German Loses… Total Annihilation. Absolutely no one was spared.

Aside from being a good sport, Dave is also a good painter. Below are some close up shots of his forces.

The Puma and StuG.

MMG Team that died too early and some other cool models.

We had a blast playing this game. We play fairly casually at Forbes and all three of us were all able to really enjoy the story that unfolded on our tabletop through painted miniatures.