I made my first foray into the greater Bolt Action community at LVO a few weekends ago. It was rather impressive, to me anyway, to see all the painted armies though I wonder how many people show up to the other big event like Adepticon and Games Day. It was still a fun event with 22 players over all and the armies were nicely done on the whole. I did wind up getting so caught up in the games that I would forget to take pictures so my last game I have no photos of and only managed to get 12 of the 22 armies photographed on display.
The list I brought is as follows
Veteran 1st Lieutenant
Regular Air Observer with additional man
2x 6 man Late war paratrooper squads with 2x LMG each
2x 6 man Late war paratrooper squads with 3x SMG each
6 man veteran tough fighters squad
regular MMG team
veteran flamethrower team
regular medium howitzer with gun shield and spotter
veteran M24 with recce and pintle mounted HMG
inexperienced LVT-4 with hull mounted MMG
Below is Michael Bird's SS which won best painted
Chris Pearson's Chindit/Gurkha list, I played against this in the last round in a mission called scalps and that was quite a slog. It seemed no matter who was pulling dice from the bag Chris' army was always pulled first and those 2 Lee's were murder
This was my round 3 opponent Gerard Coffey. He brought regular squads with a bunch of veteran support weapons and a puma that did not make it into this picture.
This army isn't fully set up yet at the time of the picture either but this guy brought 2 Japanese platoons each with a light autocannon, an assault gun, and a horde of bamboo spear fighters
So game 1 was on this nice looking jungle table that actually proved to be quite a challenge to play on as a vast majority of it was rough and several clumps blocked line of sight. I played against Josh Cook on this table and he brought 2 German platoons. The real gimmick was that he brought 2 rocket launchers, the neblwherfer and I believe it was called the howling cow. There was also a halftrack mounted pioneer squad and some paratroops.
Turn 1 his launchers nail a paratrooper squad and so I start to spread my troops out
I try to deal with the launchers by throwing MMG dice from the buffalo at them
Which does manage to take out 1
I managed to immobilize his tank there but it turns out to be a good spot to lay down suppressing fire on the board
At one point an armored car came on and took out my buffalo and the squads inside either failed order tests to activate or whiffed their assault roles
My last ditch effort to move troops into his deployment which was the objective, i wouldn't get enough there to get a draw unfortunately so game 1 was a minor loss.
My poor plane circling, waiting for the call that would never come because the radio was covered in bullet holes and blood.
Game 2 was against a double Italian platoon and his 2 artillery observers kept me pinned most of the game by calling in artillery strikes on 2 consecutive turns
I was able to finally start putting some hurt back on him with airstrikes and my buffalo finally made it to the other end where i dumped guys out to contest 2 objectives but after the game the TO came back and said that one of his rulings was wrong and the way i moved a squad onto the objective to contest was wrong so I admitted defeat and let my opponent have the minor victory instead of the draw.
Game 3 against Gerard and boy that was a hilarious game. The setup was table quarters and I won the roll off and since i had already played on this table I had a slight advantage in knowing the terrain and I had mechanized transport so i chose a quarter with a road that lead to hi quarter of the table.
First thing I did was charge the Chaffee down the road and pop the puma with my 75 and take out the panzershrek team with machine guns. My tank would then spend the rest of the game tearing it up right there in Gerard's deployment zone. Gerard would shoot at it 6 separate times with panzerfausts and only managed to immobilized because of the plethora of 1's to hit or penetrate.
I had 2 airstrikes and Gerard had 1 and every airstrike he and I rolled for rolled 1's. He hit my artillery and buffalo not managing to knock out either and I hit a squad and did some casualties but thats it. Once I got the pins cleared off my buffalo I moved it up to the Chaffee and unloaded it and I had put in all my close combat squads so it was a blood bath. His army was practically wiped and the mission was board control which I had so game 3 was a major victory.
Game 4 was against Gerard's buddy Allen Shmelzel who brought a soviet foot horde which had me worried at first but as it turned out most of his 18 order dice were a bunch of small teams that he held in reserve which made it even easier for me to deal with what he deployed. The mission was objectives d3+2 and we rolled a 1 and I got to place 2 of the objectives so I definitely had an advantage in positioning. Below there's an objective against the wall that I have my Legionaries and a para squad ready to go take with tank support.
Another objective is behind the tank in the bottom right hand corner as well as one behind the tank in the upper middle of the picture. The green along the bottom isn't the table edge it's my display board on a portion of table that was never used. the squad on the bottom left would wind up assaulting through a soviet SMG squad, a rifle squad, an officer, and would finally meet their end against a light mortar who beat the last 2 survivors of 2 separate squads to death.
Most of the game I just blew away regular infantry with MMG fire, I never got to use my air support as the observer was plastered with a light mortar turn 1
The buffalo would go on to avenge the 2 squads by killing the light mortar using his 1 MMG he could use while empty despite being inexperienced, moving, small team, cover, and some pins. Since Allen brought in so much of his force piecemeal i wiped out something like 16 units out of 18 gaining me a second major victory.
As I said, I forgot to photograph my last game but it sucked, the M3 Lee's took out all the stuff that could hurt them and his infantry were tough to kill and hit hard when they charged so he got a bunch of kill points on me and I only got a few on him but I was able to get a minor loss instead of a major loss. I managed to come in 4th overall though and that feels good for my first major event with not a lot of real practice playing 2nd edition.
