Colorado Military Historians (CMH) Vet Wars 2013 - Bolt Action Battle

Doug and Dave were able to put on a Bolt Action Battle the first evening of the Vet Wars event.  I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do because I actually got to PLAY in a game this time.  It is always a great time playing Bolt Action.  I played the wide open left American Flank against Herr Manley on the German side.  Jeff played the Americans against Aaron in the middle and Nate playing Americans on the far right against Rick.

Our mission was to take this small village in the middle out of German hands.  They had opportunities to hide squads before our assault.  What actually happened was that Herr Manley and his Sgt. Heinz (Squad Leader) launched a devastating attack from the German center which destroyed Jeff's MMG and assaulted and killed one of my blundering squads.

We never did take the Village but we all still had a good time.  The miniatures were all Dave Manley's which look great!  And Doug who ran the game laid out another one of his excellent terrain boards! Thanks Doug and Dave!

So here are few pictures for your enjoyment.  Dan

RECRUITS Bolt Action Board

Here I go again building out another gaming board.  A few ask why I keep building these.  Well besides the time it takes which is Therapy to me it actually is much cheaper in the long run for me.  I just hang these up on a closet wall and the next time I play it takes only minutes to setup for a battle.

Here is the usual framing.  I took two 2 x 4 foot sections, already cut from the local Home Depot.  This time I built up a 3 inch rail on three sides of each board and a two inch rail where I would join the boards together.  I will talk about that later.

After Power Grabbing the Foam sections and elevations to the board I cover with the usual Plaster Cloth.  Just shoot water and smooth it out.  I always have my vehicles, buildings, troops around for scale and to give me more ideas as to what I am trying to create.

Here is a look at the boards together.  I also added the Wooden and Pegs and holes at this point.  The concept is to be able to remove the trees, buildings, etc and place one board on the other using the pegs.   I will add the locks, handles and two wheels at the very end of the build.

I was going for more elevation(s) to make Line of Sight a little more challenging.  Bolt Action and any Skirmish Game system really takes that LOS seriously.  

Again, my new best friend is Tile Grout (Earth Color) to cover the plaster.

It goes on easy with a trowel and wear gloves!  It already provides a nice texture to it.  

Had this idea to buy some walls and then said, "wait a minute!, what about all this foam board you have laying around.  So I cut 3/4 quarter inch tall strips to create my walled fields.  You can also see the roads I put in.  That is simple Spackling putty and using some tape for the edges just smeared it on to get the paths I wanted. 

Roads got a Brown base and a lighter highlight at the end. 

Yes I wanted to get a more Spanish or Italian looking board and the Pine Trees may not be correct but I go a good deal on them at Caboose Train Store.  

The Buildings I believe are Miniature Building Authority.  Here again I am getting ideas and making sure the infantry have a good feel regarding the height of the walls.  

I got some Coco Matt from Tony Fryer, thanks Tony, using that stuff really makes a terrain board pop!

On the walls I smeared some Liquidtex Cereamic stucco available at the local craft store.  When that dried the walls got a black base and two shades of gray to give them a stone like texture.  

And then had this idea to hot glue some lichen to give it a semi bocage, hedge, vine growth kind of thing on the walls.  

Starting to shape up!  Note that the forest will be "unplugged" and bagged when in transport along with the buildings.  

This walled area will get full foliage on the walls while the other a little lighter.

The Building on the hill in the foreground was scratch built by Mr. Tony Fryer.  The interior even has wall paper and wood floors.  On this hill we are going to put the Ruined Farm that comes in the Bolt Action Normandie Starter Box.  

There is that house to the right that we will probably will not use.  Not about that dried up stream.  I saw some pictures when looking up Italy and Spain and one of those pictures gave me this idea of a dried up stream.  So I painted in some "puddles," dropped some rock and some wood pieces in there, then poured the liquid water and let it dry over night.  I also added some twigs from the backyard to make a makeshift foot bridge.  We will be creating a small forest path from this point to the road in the forest. 

A word to the wise, make sure you do your streams either before or after flocking.  Just make sure it is COMPLETELY dry.  I learned that lesson long ago.  It can make a mess when the stream is wet and you decide to start blowing off the excess flock.  Oh yeah, I did that in my early days...

Looking through the Forest from the road.  I was worried about having long open LOS.  Looking here if a tank got to that point in front of that wall it would be able to catch a vehicle coming around this bend.  Any further behind that wall the terrain drops a level or two which will make it difficult to setup that far away.  

And here is my Jedi painting, terrain, and everything hobby Master, Mr. Doug Wildfong.  He has been doing this for a long, long time and he knows his stuff.  He came over to my house with various flocking material and ideas to bring the terrain board to life!  

Doug will be running the Bolt Action games with me at Recruits.  We are also driving from Denver together, both our first time to this convention.  

As the work continues I mark the tree holes with screws so that we can flock away.  Probably a good idea to use the screws when in transport making it easier to insert the forest.

So here we are close to the final phases.  That stray field up left on that hill is where our ruins will be going.  And we are looking maybe to add some hedges or more trees on some open areas.  We should wrap this up in a couple of days.  Also note that I will be running some Napoleonic Skirmish in 28mm on the same board.  We plan to move a few things around and presto, some mano y mano skirmish combat.  

 I will update the blog showing the board hardware, wheels, handles, locks, etc.  Please stay tuned, join this blog to get the next updates over the next couple of days. 

Bolt Action at CMH

At this weekend's Colorado Military Historian (CMH) monthly club meeting Doug and I put on a couple of demonstration games.  One to introduce more members to this very nice game system for WWII and the next to get us some practice when we put this on at Recruits in September (http://recruits.mtswebsites.com/).  Pretty much everything you see on the table is from Doug's massive collection.  I think the only thing on the table that was mine were the two buildings.  

Anyway, we had a blast.  The system is simple, retains the WWII flavor and with the blind draw movement it can be a little exciting when you are praying to get the next move to either get your tank out of the way of a Tank Destroyer or you have troops rushing out in the open looking for cover.

So here are a few pictures from both games.  Note, the first game we used only infantry squads to get used to the rules and the second battle we added armor to get a feel for that too.

Nate and Doug on the American Side

In the first battle we went infantry vs infantry.  Everybody caught on pretty quickly on how the rules sequence and basic mechanics worked.  As a result of their understanding these concepts their tactics also changed..

Rob watching the sly Americans closely.

Aaron checking on Line of Sight which is important in Bolt Action. 

Line of Sight - as I mentioned it is very important having LOS to your targets.  So important that I am either going to build or order some gaming periscopes.

Warner and Aaron watching the American advance.

Move distances are pretty easy to remember.  6" Advance
and 12 inch run for infantry.

When you ADVANCE you fire with a penalty (unless you are Americans), or if you RUN you cannot fire.

Aaron (German Marder) is spotting my Bazooka Team whose is down a man.

Firing is also pretty simple to figure out.  You move (-1), over half your weapon distance (-1), terrain (-1), small team in the case of my Bazooka team (down one man) (-1).  So hitting a small team at distance and in terrain like a Bazooka, MG or sniper team is quite a difficult shot.  In this case I was able to scramble off the board with my Bazooka.  

Funny note.  I finally got my Bazooka line up for a shot.  But, they took fire from two different German squads to his front which put pin markers on him.  When I gave him the order to fire, you have to roll a morale test minus number of pin markers you have. Needless to say, he failed, he was receiving too much fire so hit the dirt which is symbolized by changing his order to DOWN.  No shot, but as I mentioned above regarding all those modifiers.  A unit under DOWN orders subtracts another (-1) to makes them even harder to hit.  So we didn't get a shot off at that Marder who was hosing us down with MG fire too.

We had one close call when Aaron's Marder stormed out of cover and took a shot at Andrew's Sherman.  Aaron hit the Sherman causing one pin marker, then he failed to penetrate the armor with a low roll.  Whew!  Andrew on his next turn was going to take his shot but since he had a pin marker he had to roll morale.  Sure enough, he failed and had to back up with a DOWN marker on his vehicle.  Next turn however, we got the first die.  Andrew then moved back up to engage the Marder.  He got the shot and destroyed the Marder into it's already thin armor.

Werner, Aaron Doug and Andrew, we all had a blast playing Bolt Action!

Each battle brought up some questions that we are reviewing to make sure we get it right next battle.  I was so thrilled with Bolt Action at Historicon at this meeting we had a Flea Market and I purchased some already painted Americans for my own forces and still looking for Germans!  

Dan

Knights Cross (KC!) Pacific Battle (2 June 2013)

Jap Zero and Corsair on fire! (Pictured: Dan C., Ray G. and Doug W.  Note the Japanese Pilots were in disgrace and refused to pose for picture)

Well today we played a game of Knights Cross.  We introduced some new players to KC! and along with the rest of us we had a blast.

For the USMC Pilots we had Veteran Capt. Doug W. fighting along side his two new wingmen Lt. Ray G. and Lt. Dan C. getting some patrol time in their new Corsairs.  On the Imperial Japanese side we had Capt. Andrew san, Lt. Aaron san and Capt. Gurulesaki san flying in their Zeke's.

Cocky Lt. Dan C., going after the helpless Bombers (Kate's just out of view on left.)

Morning Patrol
As the morning sun was rising over the Pacific three Corsairs from their base at Bougainville were on patrol over the highly contested waters.  The Japanese were torpedoing US Destroyers in the area and the Marines were sending out numerous patrols to intercept whenever possible.

My Zero looking for a target.

While on this patrol Capt. Doug. W. spotted Japanese aircraft flying on the deck in the opposite direction just off his nose on his right.   At the same time the Japanese Torpedo Bombers or  Kate's spotted the Corsairs started screaming into their radios for their escort of Zekes to attack while they made a run for it.

"Tally ho!" was heard over the Corsair Radios and it was Game on!  Immediately the Zeke's turned into the banking and diving Corsairs while the two Kate's put "balls to the wall" to try and get out of there.

The Zeke's or Zero's are deadly adversaries at lower speeds where the Corsairs had to maintain a good pace in order for them to maneuver with the Zero's.  In the early stages of the battle the two new Corsair drivers were feeling out their aircraft which gave the Japanese fighters some time to try and keep them off the Kate's tail.

The trailing two Zeros trying to help IJN Capt. Andrew san who is chasing a Corsair with two more on his tail.

As the battle waged on it seemed like the Marines were a little more disciplined and maneuvered to cover each other where the Japanese were scattering to try and stop the destruction of their Torpedo Bombers.  It was to no avail trying to hold off the Marines.  Both of the Japanese Bombers were sent down in flames into the ocean.  The Japanese took a heavy toll with the American's superior (lucky?) maneuvering and getting close range shots with their six .50's.  A Zero just can't take that much damage and the battle ended with the two bombers and two Zero's lost to no losses to the Marines.

The last turn of the battle had everyone spacing out to disengage.

Aftermath
At the end of the battle the damaged Marine Flight took it back to base while the remaining Japanese limped back to their carrier to lick their wounds. With the final scoring tally of the Japanese 4 to the Marines overwhelming 11.5 it was obvious who was the Battle victors today.  (Note: for this battle we offered battle points for hitting and destroying targets.  Only kills against actual opponents will be counted for the Pacific Campaign.)

Pacific Campaign Battle 1 (USMC Victory)
USMC Lt. Dan C. 2 Zero Kills/2 Bomber Kills (Note: 7 hits on the enemy with 4 total kills)
USMC Lt. Ray G. (Note: Devastatingly good flying and effective firing (5 hits on the enemy) just missing a couple of kills)
USMC Capt. Doug W. (Note: Old Vet skillfully taking his shots and commanding the flight.  4 hits on the enemy)

IJN Lt. Aaron san (Note: 2 hits on the enemy. Spent much of the battle either on fire or smoking.  The fire itself was burning up his aircraft but he still made it back to the carrier although he had to crash land his aircraft.)
IJN Capt. Andrew san (Note: 3 hits on the enemy.  Andrew san didn't have much help from his wingmen in this battle.  Made it back to the carrier safely.
IJN Capt. Gurulesaki san.  Killed in Action by USMC Lt. Dan C. Scored 3 hits on the enemy before going down in flames.  Close range shots ripped the wings off.
IJN Lt. Gurunaga san.  Killed in Action by USMC Lt. Dan C.  Joined late in the battle and made a terrible miscalculation on the Corsairs speed and got a close range blast that ripped his wings off destroying his aircraft in midair.