Ahhh… Gaming again and a batrep

By Troy Hill

I didn’t realize how much I missed other gamers until I had to go about 18 months without seeing them.

True, we stayed connected on social media. And a lot of us used TableTop Simulator, or Roll20 to get in virtual games.

But there is nothing like being back in person. Seeing friends (for me, new friends that I barely got to know last winter. I forget if we had a March game day (maybe?)

This technically wasn’t my first game back from the great distancing. We had one of those in June. Back then we had four players at our North-east Indiana Bolt Action day. Our group gets together once a month for Bolt Action on the second Saturday of the month, and again on the fourth (occasionally the fifth weekend if there is one). This Saturday we had five players for Bolt Action. Not bad. We’d had a few drift off to other games, or still ensconced in catching up with family. Five is a good number. Except someone has to take on two opponents…

Yep. That someone was me. And mistakes were made.

Seems like everyone wanted to pick on the new guy. Since I moved to the area in January of 2020, right before the great distancing began, I was a fresh opponent for everyone else.

So, Eric and Nick decided to gang up on my Germans (mostly painted for DAK). We decided to go with two platoons each side. Eric ran his Russians, and Nick his Americans. I had a list of lots of Regular grenadiers with a 222 armored car, and, my favorite, a Nebelwerfer, as well as the usuals of mortar, mmg, etc. I had let everyone on the Facebook group know that I needed to werf some nebels, and they were happy to oblige. Funny, no one wanted to go into buildings with that on the board.

But, I only had 1,000 pts in my platoon. I was facing 2,000 points between Nick and Eric. Their suggestion was to throw a second platoon together with whatever I had left in my bag, and not worry too much if it was “legal.”

So, some veteran Grens, a Panzer III Aus M, a PaK 38, mortar, and some incidentals. I had a lot of late war models left with Panzerfausts modeled, so they got added to the platoons. Due to color coding on my bases, four ended up in one platoon. Which turned out to not be a bad thing.

We rolled and got Demolition. We had to try to capture the other side’s base. We rolled off for table sides. And both rolled ones. Great for our first competitive roll of the day. Another roll, Eric scored a two, against my four. The board was fairly even, but one side had a larger open area farther from the road. I chose that side, and dropped my HQ into the open space at the back of the board. Eric and Nick dropped their HQ in the diametrically opposed corner.

I chose to leave my 222 and PzIII in reserves, and set to outflank on my right. That was away from their objective, but I hoped I could use them as reinforcements to drive the enemy off my HQ, or to mad dash across the table  as needed. Ah… the best laid plans…

Nick was unfortunate to get a big run of order dice drawn early in the deployment phase, and it looked like he was going to have most, if not all of his units on the table before I had to deploy much. But the dice draw evened out. My units seemed to be on an average draw schedule, but my opponents averaged a run of four dice in a row. We ended up with sniper in opposing buildings. Basically, that negated each until one scored a kill.

Eric dropped his KV-1s on the road, ready to drive into my side of the table. So I parked my PaK just off the road, with a woods to the left of it.

Now, I normally lose games in one of three ways: bad deployment, bad first round tactics, or bad dice rolling.

Which would it be this time?

 

Well, turn one began with all three of us moving troops forward. Since this mission had no first wave, we had to wait until turn two for a chance at reserves.

So, we had maneuver, and some shooting. The sniper duel commenced immediately from one building to the other

My PaK-38 got first shot on the KV. A miss. The platoon bristling with fausts moved up behind building where his sniper hid. I was hoping to move them into the building and eliminate the pesky threat. But, with his tank there, the fausts did more good as a movement deterrent. That basically nailed it to one spot, more than 12 inches away from the fausts. Long range shots for the PaK, and for the KV to fire back.

Nick charged forward with his Sherman, then followed with his infantry.

I werfed some nebels at them, and rolled a one to range in. They werfed off to wherever lonely nebels go, instead of where they should have.

For round two, I moved my infantry around the building and lit up Nick’s infantry near Lucky. Would the tank help them? I managed three kills, but not enough force a morale check. On his dice draw, Lucky the tank aimed its main gun at the nebs, and pounded my upstart infantry with machine gun fire. Three dead on my side, and a pin. Nick charged his wounded group into my grenadiers. Much hand to hand was had. Nick did more damage, and away my grens ran.

The Soviet Green squad advanced through the trees, and my troops took position near the buildings on my left flank.

Eric rolled to see if his trucks full of troops would come one. One made it, but the other truck was still frozen from the thick Russian winter. That driver muttered much cursing, but there was little threat that direction at the moment.

Again the PaK and the KV traded shots. The Soviet medium mortar ranged in on the PaK, but only pinned it. The German MMG in the same patch of woods as the Mortar redeployed to face the oncoming Soviet horde instead of guarding the road. Smart move. The next turn, the MMG lit up the green Soviets at the edge of the woods. A few casualties were had, and they made their roll to advance to Regular status.

Eric’s driver got his truck unfrozen and another Soviet vehicle came onto the table. The first dumped its troops to cover my potential outflanking  toward the objective.

The other truck took position to gaz up my infantry with its machine gun.

Over on my right, Nick tried to get shots at my flame thrower, but could only hit my screening infantry. He lit them up, and they failed their morale check, fleeing the table.

 

My flamer crew darted around the building to eliminate the threat… only for me to roll another one. Must have been a kink in the hose. They were point blank… and we still missed. Good news. I rolled high when it time to see if I kept gas in the tank.

On turn three, I decided to roll for my outflank. First up, the 222 made the roll, and came on my right flank at 24 inches in, right in front of Nick’s Lt. Much machine gunning, with the H-buzzsaw rule, and only the sergeant fell. The LT still stood.

Nick was able to charge his shocked, and un-singed GIs into my flamer crew. Despite having gas in the tank, they were still trying to unkink their hose, and got hosed right off the table.

Lucky the Sherman fired both MGs and main gun at the Nebs. The big gun missed again, but the bullets took out crew on the Nebs. They were limping along, and still firing to no effect. I had a lot of lonely neb rockets whooshing off into never-never land.

More rounds were traded between the KV and PaK, neither damaging the other. Although the PaK did put a pin on the behemoth at the end of the road.

My grunts in the buildings pounded the empty Gaz truck in front of me with MG fire and a Faust. It took pins, and failed it’s morale save after catching fire. The burning wreck fled from the table, the driver unsure if he’d be in more trouble with the Komisar should he abandon the truck, or drive it back to HQ.

Finally, I brought my PZ III-M onto the table right next to the 222, angling it to stay out of the front arc of Nick’s big AT gun. Fortunately, the woods between us just barely protected it. Now for a shot into the rear armor of Lucky.

Just my luck, I rolled low. Lucky survived.

Turn four and things didn’t look good on my side, but I was only a few order dice down on kill points. I got dice first, and took another shot at Nick’s Lucky.

My dice were mad that I hadn’t used them. Another low number. That close, how could I miss?

Lucky used an advance to pivot, showing his side, not his rear, and pointed the turret right at my little kitty. I started crossing fingers… and Lucky missed with his main gun. My cat lived.

Unfortunately, he also unbuttoned his top. The American tank commander knew his crew could handle a single tank now that they had their eye in. So he sprayed pintle mounted MMG into Neb crew.

No more nebs to werf.

Nick was able to turn his big AT gun with an advance, and got line of sight on my Panzer III. Even with soft cover from the woods, he scored a hit, with two rolls on the damage chart. Burning wreck warmed the American gun crew’s hearts.

On the Soviet end of the table, the mortar took out the German mortar (they were basically ineffective the entire game). Then it shifted it’s focus to my PaK… and ranged in. The second round took the rest of the PaK crew out.

My infantry near Eric’s now dead sniper, advanced. A single Panzerfaust was able to get a shot on the KV. Boink. The next turn they advanced into the open, more fausts fired, and the KV went up in flames.

By then, Nick’s GIs were dancing in the German HQ, Lucky joining them.

Game was called. Final consensus was that much fun was had. Even if our dice rolling was terrible on both sides of the table.

Post-mortem, I managed to lose because I chose the wrong table side, and positioned my objective in the open. And then didn’t leave troops to cover it. I advanced them to form a front, instead of hunkering in cover, and shooting whatever approached.

And my dice all hated me. A loss because of all three of my usual reasons. Poor deployment. Poor tactics, and upset dice.

If you haven’t been able to game in person yet, get your dice warmed up before you do.

 

Troy is a long-time gamer, a retired journalist, and an author. He recently returned from the wilds of Los Angeles, to his home state of Indiana (and of confusion, but he never left that state). He is currently staring at a pile of plastic he swore he was going to paint during the Great Distancing… French Line Infantry, Lots of WWII Armored Vehicles, A few more WWII armies, a bunch of Warlord’s Epic ACW… ah… well, who needs to sleep.