North Africa Campaign Day - Arghhhhhhhhh

Here's the promised write up!

The basic rules were - two lists chosen from the relevant North Africa theatre lists from the army books, a single platoon at 1000 pts and 600 pts respectively. No flame throwers or other really nasty bits however you could write a third list (armoured platoon) and choose to use that in the relevant games. Oh and we weren't using the controversial dice cap (good job as my 1000 pts was 13 dice).

Game 1 (Doubles, 2000pts)

DAK Motorised Platoon (Me), DAK Armoured Platoon (Chris)

Vs

LRDG/SAS Patrol (I forgot your name dude, sorry!), US Armoured Rifles (Geraint)

Ok the mission was Point Defence with Axis as the defender. Really big board with three objectives spaced out. We got suckered by the Allies with the US advancing through the village in the centre, soaking up fire whilst the SAS and LRDG outflanked in turn 4 to capture one objective. Then in turn 5 the US advanced onto the second objective in a half track and the game ended.

Basically we had too few infantry to contest objectives or slow down the SAS.

Game 2 (1000pts)

DAK Motorised Platoon (Me) vs LRDG Patrol (Dave)

Argh, I hated and loved this. Dave’s entire force (apart from 2 trucks carrying 2 squads of 6) was Recce. This meant that I was facing 9 Chevy truck with MMG/HMG combo’s that kept dancing out of range. The mission was maximum attrition (kill everything) however my force came on to the board piecemeal (you deploy half and the rest are in reserve) with very little weapons that could harm a vehicle. So statistically I was bound to lose. Dave was great though and it looked awesome, the board had 1 road and a small building and that was it. An education in gaming on an open board.

However it’s the first time since staring Bolt Action that I actually thought a rule was broken. I guess that’s the problem with playing any force that has a significant bias to a specific rule. Dave referred to it as a Glass Hammer. Well in this case I was the glass that got hammered.

Game 3 (600pts)

DAK Motorised Platoon (me) vs Brit Gurkhas (Mario)

In quite a few wargames systems out there it’s quite possible to win the game in the first turn, mainly through understanding the rule system well and manipulating your force choices to maximise a certain strength along with getting the first turn (FoW and WFB spring to mind). With a random activation sequence rather than IGOUGO this is minimised.

Well not today it aint!

I’m actually being unfair. This mission was demolition - each force got an objective to place in their deployment which was the target of their opponent. Then we placed half our force with the rest in reserve so down went an infantry squad and truck and my HQ and Kubelwagen. First dice out of the bag was mine so I placed the infantry squad next to my objective in Ambush. Second dice was his and he called in a heavy mortar strike on them - Blam no more unit!

This was pretty much the sequence of play with his M3 Grant taking out my truck and then radio op leaving my Leutnant hiding behind a bush….and that was it.

Turn two and I tried bringing out my second Kubelwagen with anti-tank rifle only to have them vapourised by the Grant. Then next up was my second platoon who was gunned down by a combination of the Grant and an MMG.

Game over man, game over!

I did however win “Axis Player exhibiting extraordinary bravery - or more properly titled ”Rubber Spoon” 

I'm the idiot on the left!

No pictures of the event yet although I believe Gazerb will have some up soon so I’ll post a link. Also Scrivs will probably have a review over on his blog shortly.

In review, I’m glad I attended the event, I was very pleased with how my force looked and will be playing out some more games at the club with them. Playing without terrain is a very liberating and scary experience. The big learning factor for me was that my force was small and very expensive without being that elite (i.e special rules) and therefore with uninterrupted lines of sight it goes down just as easily as inexperienced troops. So I need to downgrade them from veteran, get some fire support and possibly more cannon fodder….errrr I mean troops!