Normandie ´44 - a BA battle

Just some days after new years eve we gathered again at Bunkerkommando Süd, this time it was
Magnus who had put together a large Bolt action battle. It was location wise inspired by the battles around Bretteville-l'Orgueilleusea small french town close to Caen that was fought over in right after the D-day landings. Magnus took inspiration from a scenario that is in one of the Rapid fire scenario books.



The allied forces was
Henrik - British paras (Vet)
Magnus - British infantry (Reg)
Oscar - US rangers (Vet)

The German forces was
Johan - SS infantry (Vet)
David - German infantry (Reg)
Daniel - German infantry (Reg)

One of the allied forces was deployed and was tasked with defense of all sections marked with A, this was done by Oscar and his Rangers. The other allied forces would arrive from the B board edge in turn two and four, a third of the strength at a time.

A third of the German forces (mine) was deployed in C, another third arrived from D in turn two and the last third in turn four from E. Already here we (I) made some major errors, in my minds eye I saw the British reinforces arrived along the road, so my plan was to have a force that could both threat the southern objective while I pinned the reinforcement while my fellow commanders forces easily took care of the two northern objectives. That didn't happen as the troops they brought on in turn two and four arrived the furthest north possible. Second mistake was not to read the mission carefully enough, I thought our reinforcements could arrive from either D or E, but the E sector only was available on turn four. My third task was to start bombarding the objectives and soften the troops in them so that our other forces would haw it easier to claim them.

The battle progressed quite different from my plan, partly because of the mistakes mentioned above, and also because, well plans seldom survives contact with the enemy. I ended up capturing the objective closest to D, without any real opposition.

The objective I was planning to take though was a harder nut to crack. By the end of the battle my troops had made it to the kitchen of the house, but the main building still contained enemy forces.

Some highlights of the game:

• The tiger tank arrived just to be Pinned so much that it withdraws never really getting back into the battle.
• The massive british 25 pounders off board batteries who started bombarding the table soudnly seems to get the wrong coordinates and bombards the poor british infantry in on of the houses that are objectives.
• My PaK 40 that has been on Ambush order for the entire game suddenly sees Oscars M3 75 mm, that is moving up with its side to my gun and hits it in the side destroying it. They shouldn't really paint that big white star on their sides...

Some thought of big games in Bolt Action:

• A problem with big games and Bolt Action is the amount of dices. For me personally its not a problem as while I wait for my next dice I participate in the game, thinking about my next move. Many of the participants did other stuff while they waited for the next dice, so when they got it, we first had to bring them up to speed on what had happened and then they started to think about what to do.
• Its hard to get them right in any game. So it feels that you could achieve the objectives in time, that everybody feels involved and so on. I think the objectives was achievable, they would been easier if I didn´t botched the timing of the reserves. To get everybody involved is harder though, but I think it also comes down to the players to really themselves try and get into the game. Its not the organizers task to do everything.

In the end the Allies did win as they still held two of three objectives. I had a blast though and I would like to take the opportunity to thank Magnus once again for bringing it all together (and apologize for meddling to much in house rules).