Operation Valediction Bolt Action Tournament – 21 September 2024
By Kreighton Long
On 21 September, twenty-six players gathered at Titan Games and Hobbies in Timonium, Maryland for another Bolt Action tournament (2nd Edition) organized by Michael Kehs. Mike was pleased to see his tournament crowd grow since the last tournament back in April to include recurring players from as far away as Ohio and a new player who ventured down from Connecticut. Mike credits a level of his growing popularity to his success in reaching out to vendors for prize support. In addition to healthy rewards for the top finishers, Best Painted Army, and FUBAR, players also can look forward to raffle drawings between rounds. Well-earned credit needs to go to the Assistant TOs, Rob and Chris, for providing invaluable support with setup, break-down, raffles, and pictures.
The three scenarios chosen for this tournament were Meeting Engagement, Key Positions, and Sectors. This tournament included a new gimmick from the previous one. While last time players could find their turn ending prematurely if two odd colored Order Dice were pulled from the bag, this time players needed to keep an eye on Secret Objectives distributed prior to each game. The Secret Objectives forced players to adjust strategies and to think more tactically to score up to an extra ten points, five per objective, each round. From what I was able to overhear, the feedback from the Secret Objectives was mostly positive, and Mike confirmed that he will look into incorporating them at future events. One improvement he plans on making is to specifically assign certain objectives to pair with certain scenarios and to balance them with each player receiving one hard and one easy objective. In my three games, the Secret Objectives did present opportunities for me to play the game differently than I normally would, and added an extra level of intrigue to the game. For example, in my final game, I had an opportunity to finish off one of my opponents units but instead moved my unit into my opponents half of the table to accomplish my Secret Objective of finishing the game with all my surviving units on my opponents half of the table. While that choice had no true impact on the outcome of the game, the choice I faced did make it a little more interesting for me and bagged me an additional five points to my overall score.
According to Mike, most of the typical challenges of running a tournament are lessened by establishing and maintaining a good timeline for reaching out to vendors, announcing the event, requiring registration and lists, and organizing logistics for the event. Having helpful Assistant TO also make life easier for the TO. An unforeseen challenge appeared during the final round when a few players earned complaints from their peers. Mike was able to handle the complaints in such a way that the players at my end of the store had no idea there were issues until after the event was over.
After three rounds of gaming and scores finalized we found ourselves in the presence of the Maryland State Champion – Aaron Kamakawiwoole! Aaron finished with 163 points and rode his way to victory among his core of five squads of Polish Lancers. His MVP however, went to his TKS Tankette. This little guy and his equally little autocannon put in serious work running up an entire flank in Meeting Engagement, pinning down an Italian tank in Key Positions, and held the center in Sectors. For the affordable cost of 90 points, this tankette punched above its weight class and managed to survive all three games without sustaining any damage. Aaron also benefited from experimenting with a modification to his standard Polish list where he dropped his standard eight man cavalry sections to seven men and invested the points in a Regular Artillery Tractor and two Regular Trucks with MMGs. This added more long range cover fire to suppress and soften targets before his cavalry charged in as well as added three more order dice to his list to help him gain initiate when it was needed.
Aaron’s highlight from the tournament was when his opponent and he were rolling for Preparatory Bombardment for the second game and his opponent rolled six direct hits versus Aaron’s one. While the number of direct hits did little to alter the game it was certainly an exclamation point to start off the round.
Congratulations to Aaron!
Following up Aaron with a score of 161 was Joe Lint with his British Eighth Army. Joe brought a fearsome list with double medium howitzers, double M3A1 Stuart IIIs, and two Gurkha squads. Joe’s MVP ended up being one of his Medium Howitzers that destroyed a Sherman with a direct side shot on turn two of the first game rolling a 6 to hit. While the howitzers racked up multiple infantry kills throughout the day, eliminating the Sherman certainly stood out. For anyone interested in upping their Bolt Action competitive game, Joe recommends players dive into as many events as they can. Not only will enhance their skills but will allow players to connect with new and veteran players and to forge friendships through the game we all love.
Joe’s highlight from the tournament was finding success with his double howitzers and double tanks. Deploying his howitzers together in the middle of his deployment zone and his tanks on either flank forced his opponents to deploy their own tanks against one of Joe’s flanks creating opportunities for side shots.
Congratulations to Joe!
I had the honor of finishing third with a total of 151 points. I brought a Soviet list that heavily featured forward deployers with three Scout Squads, three Tank-Hunter Teams, and a sniper. Being able to forward deploy in two of the three games helped me to secure key terrain features and objectives turn one and to take the fight to my opponent. My MVPs were my Anti-Tank Squads. These two-man, Veteran, forward deployers, armed with two SMGs and a Panzerfaust found success in distracting and harassing my opponents all three games. While my dice let me down with three separate 1s rolled on panzerfaust penetration tests throughout the day, these small teams continued to be a thorn in my opponents’ side that tied up larger units that were needed elsewhere. And when confronted by larger units, being a Small Team and choosing to go Down helped to keep them in the game longer than they had any right to be.
The highlight of my day came towards the middle of the second game when my engineer squad hit my opponents engineer squad with a flamethrower reducing it to a single man. My opponent somehow managed to roll two snake-eyes, one for the flamethrower reaction and one for the break test for losing over half their men, to stay in the game. My next dice I charged the lone survivor with a seven man Veteran Scout Squad and missed all seven attacks. The fear that this one crispy survivor would wipe out my full-strength Scout Squad was intense! Fortunately for me, my opponent missed his one attack back and my dice redeemed themselves by pulverizing the resilient trooper in the second round of combat. We both had a good laugh at the ridiculousness of the entire series of events.
The Best Painted Army was well earned by Kris Johnson and his thematic British army. The army was based on the Kohima relief column of April 1944 where Chindits from the 23rd Long Range Penetration Brigade and regular army troops from the British 2nd Division rushed to relieve the surrounded British and Indian troops of IV Corps at Kohima, India. Kris didn’t start out with that as the theme but wanted to find something where you would reasonably find the Chindits supported by all that sweet Royal Artillery.
Congratulations to Kris!
Thank you to all the sponsors who generously provided prize support. Sponsors included Warlord Games, Badger Games, Rubicon Models, Micro Art Studio, Osprey Publishing, Game Envy, Marauder Industries, and Mike’s father who provided the ammo can for the Champion trophy and Mike’s wife for embellishing the vinyl lettering.
You can look for Mike’s next tournament come spring where 3rd Edition will be the new law of the land. Mike is still in the planning phase but March is the current goal. Keep your eye on the local Bolt Action Facebook pages for advertisements in the months leading up to the tournament.