Back around Black Friday I picked up some of the Dragons Portes miniatures from Gaddis Games. I've really come to love the miniatures Lee Gaddis sells through his shop having painted a USMC platoon made up of his miniatures a year or two ago and these French troops continue to meet the standard I have come to expect. The sculpting is excellent with only a minor issue here and there where a couple of poses were only sculpted with one of their two ammunition pouches and the NCO has a rough patch on his right shoulder joint but those are small issues easily fixed or just not really noticeable on the table at all. All the troops wear the mechanized troops helmet, a very unique helmet which I like more then the Adrien helmet and all the troops are in standard uniforms without the greatcoat which I personally love since I don't care for the greatcoat look. All the riflemen are armed with the MAS-36 rifle which is another thing I really like about these figures because the MAS is one of my favorite rifle but I do wish a few of these guys had the Berthier carbines and maybe MAYBE a MAS-38 sub machine gun but I digress.
When I bought these on Black Friday I got a platoon deal which included three squads of ten men, a medium mortar, and an HQ section. There are 10 separate poses that make up the rifle squad, NCO with a rifle, 7 riflemen, light machine gunner with FM 24/29 and an assistant with a rifle. The HQ had 4 men but one of them who has what looks like a man portable radio at first glance more likely has mortar ammunition as France did not have a man portable radio at the platoon level like the Americans or British and as such he has been moved to the mortar section appropriately. As I said I really liked these models and they paint up beautifully but they do suffer the same fate many metal ranges suffer and that is variety. That 10 man squad is the only one available and it would be nice to see some prone figures but the only ones available are operating a light mortar (not pictured here) and the only other figures I don't own are the light mortars and a Hotchkiss machine gun team. Hopefully this part of the French range will be revisited and expanded just a smidge but in the meantime there is a whole ton of other models in Lee's French range including Alpine troops that I may use to make a French platoon for Narvik.
It's been a while since I've written an entry but who new between life and everything else it would be so hard to constantly update a blog? Any way, I attended the Bolt Action tournament at the 2018 Bugeater this year and that was a complete blast. 28 players showed up day 1 and there were absolutely spectacular tables. Which I will go on ahead and display first.
Like I said, some damn good tables to play on. The tables people set up compared to what you might find at a 40k tournament are one of the things I really love about Bolt Action. I personally dislike mirror image tables as that gets really boring. I like a lot of these tables that look more realistic if a bit unbalanced because it forces you to think a little more.
Above is a picture of the platoon I brought to the event and is organized as follows.
Regular 2nd Lt with extra guy
8 Man regular section with SMG, BAR, 6 rifles and stubborn
8 Man regular section with SMG, BAR, 6 rifles and stubborn
5 Man veteran section with 3 SMG, BAR, rifle and stubborn
5 Man veteran section with 3 SMG, BAR, rifle and stubborn
Regular MMG team, stubborn
Regular Bazooka team, stubborn
Regular sniper team, stubborn
Regular Medium mortar with spotter, stubborn
Regular M5A1 Stuart with pintle MMG
Regular M5 halftrack
Inexperienced M5 halftrack
12 order dice and 1000 points on the dot. Making this list I planned for the 5 man squads to hold back and hold objectives or secure my deployment while I put an 8 man squad in each halftrack as well as my LT in the inexperienced halftrack and the bazooka in the regular halftrack and generally this worked well for me.
Round 1 I played Pat Moline in a grudge match from last year. He was my last round opponent and I had managed to get a nice minor victory off of him. This year he brought a XXX corps platoon and if he should ever find himself reading this I want to further reinforce how dirty he is with his 2 cromwells and 2 light howitzers. His list was fairly basic with an Lt, the ubiquitous observer, 3 rifle sections with only rifles and rapid fire and the aforementioned 2 cromwells and 2 light howitzers but damn is it hard to deal with 2 medium tanks when you brought the firepower to really only deal with one.
I deployed pretty aggressively for the scenario sectors and those damn Brits did me dirty with that prep bombardment. Despite that I was off to a fairly good start as I cleared quite a few pins turn one.
I pushed this flank pretty hard with a vet squad and the inexperienced halftrack and even managed to take out a light howitzer.
Here we have the aftermath of me trying to get my bazooka to take out the cromwell and failing miserably only for the cromwell to gun down the bazooka team and destroy the halftrack.
And here the other light hoitzer turned and nailed my infantry squad killing half of them and I failed my stubborn check. The first of FOUR morale tests I would fail that game despite having stubborn.
Pat wiped me out down to 3 units, hilariously one was the M5A1 which spent the game failing to do much more than run away or rally off pins while surviving side and an ass shot. I started the day with a Major loss but I didn't let that get my spirits down as I had only just begun to fight.
Game 2 was against Blake and his Australians on what we jokingly called the alien bocage table. He brought a jungle division platoon consisting of
Veteran 2nd Lt with extra man
Veteran Engineer section, 8 men with 3 SMG, Flamethrower, and 4 rifles
Veteran infantry section, 8 men with 4 SMG and 4 rifles
Veteran scout team with 3 SMG
Regular Papuan section with 8 rifles
Regular Medic with 4 attendents
Regular medium mortar with spotter
Veteran Sniper
Regular 25 pdr
Regular Matilda II
Regular LVT-4
This Mission had 5 objectives to hold and a minor victory was if you held 1 more objective than your opponent and a major if you held 2 more. Poor Blake lost his sniper to my sniper turn 1 then his mortar spotter in turn 2. My Stuart more or less owned the crossroad seen below for most of the game, moving up and back to alternate shooting the scouts or the troops he would move up there.
His light howitzer nailed this halftrack but he played rather timidly and never moved up his troops which allowed me to get my own men moving again and take the middle.
This was about the furthest the Australians advanced and I outflanked a halftrack at the end of the road right on top of his Papuans.
Right here my halftrack moved up and fired the HMG at the mortar then my 8 man squad jumped out and fired at the Papuans killing 2 while my Lt got out and shot the mortar. Next turn the sniper killed the mortar and the Papuans charged my squad 6 to 8 and won the combat but lost 3 men. My Lt and half track killed another guy and on the following turn my Lt assaulted, flubbed the dice roll and lost combat and even though the halftrack killed them down to 1 man they stuck around causing my empty transport to die and forcing me to park my tank over on the objective to contest but since I held the objectives on my side and the one in the center to the one he held uncontested on his side this gave me the major victory.
Game 3 was against Sean Villmont of Wahoo warrior fame and this game got so intense for me that I forgot to take pictures about halfway through. The mission had me deploy half my forces within 12 inches of the table center so I put out my 2 vet squads and mortar in the courtyard and the MMG in the orange roof building. I also deployed my sniper and Stuart. Sean elected to bring on 2 LVTs full of guys. The thing about Sean's LVTs is that theyre 6+ soft skins and I managed to take out both turn 1 and it was all downhill for Sean from there. The mission was to kill and I tabled Sean while not losing a single unit.
Game 4 was a kill everything Mission against John Stentz and his Finns and the long and short of this game was that I killed his medium artillery with my medium mortar and sniped his sniper both on turn 2 since everything had to walk on turn 1 and that was enough to get his dice sufficiently angry to roll hot and table my force.
Game 3 was against Jeremy and the mission was to get units into your enemy's deployment. Half your troops got to set up and the other half came from reserve so I put both halftracks with their usual loadout in reserve and deployed the rest and then hit the neblewerfer with my mortar and killed it turn 1. My stuart also destroyed an infantry squad turn 1 by killing half of it and then they failed their test and I pinned everything else. From there I systematically destroyed everything on my right and slowly swung my forces around to kill the last of his forces.
