AAR: Holy Cow: A Bolt Action Game Booby Trap!

  

          It is less than a week before my wife, Kalissa's Bolt Action Tournament at this year's Siege of Augusta. I am looking forward to seeing lots of long lost friends, since Kalissa and I started war gaming in the Atlanta Metro Area of Georgia. So at this convention, we get to see a mix of both worlds of war gaming friends. It will be fun!
   As for today, we both went to Aberdeen, NC to a place called Hit Point Hobbies to meet up with a fairly new player of Bolt Action named Joe. I do not post last names normally for privacy issues, though, I have for someone who does painting services. Honestly, if it is a good game for both players, it is probably not a issue. If it is a completely one-sided affair, I usually don't post the game. Why publically rehash a terrible game for someone? Besides, I would like to have rematches. Most people I have met are pretty awesome.
   With today's game, I was excited for two reasons. One, I always enjoy meeting new war gamers, especially when they play a game I play. Two: Kalissa told me that Joe was running a Partisan Platoon. It is corky, different, and has a potential challenge. Between, our friends, Kalissa, and I, we have been mainly Western Front of WW2. Sometimes, we pull out our North Africa stuff, but it is rare. So to tackle some Partisans on the Eastern Front is awesome. And out of a recent purchase, I just got a bunch of Partisans from a recent sale at Black Tree Designs. This will be a good way to see how they work for Bolt Action.
     Joe brought a bunch of Partisan goodies. From what I remember, he had a Lt. with two men with the famous PSSh-41, two 12-man regular squad with rifles and shotguns, one inexperienced squad of 8 men, a Veteran Guerilla Squad of 8-men (three rifles, the rest SMGs), a regular medium mortar with a spotter, a regular MMG, a regular sniper, and regular PaK38 gun (looks like a PaK40), a regular civilian car as a transport, a regular truck as a transport with a pinnacle turrent MMG, a regular air observer armed with SMG's, a regular BOYS AT rifle team, and an inexperienced, unreliable Stuart tank. This was a rather threating sight, since it was a lot of action dice. There was 14 dice for a 1,000 pt. army. In addition, Joe's force had booby traps that could be deployed in his zone. I won't lie, I was very curious on how they worked. I choose a 2nd Lt. with two rifle men, four 11-man squads of Fallschirmjager with one LMG team( four had SMG, two had Assault rifles), one medium mortar with a spotter, one medic, one Sd Kfz 222 armored car, and one Stug H42. All of the Germans were veteran across the board.
   We decided on playing the "Hold Until Relieved" mission. Since, Joe had limited games, and he was going to play in the Tournament at Siege where this was one of the missions, this was a good practice on what his troops can do.  We rolled off to see who was attacking. He won the roll and chose to defend. In this mission, the attacker can deploy anywhere 18" away from the enemy and objective. He deployed his booby traps as well as his HQ and his inexperienced squad.  I surrounded the objective in a sort of semi-circle deployment. The pictures below will somewhat explain the game.

Left Side of the board.

Right side of the board.

The whole battlefield.

Joe's Partisan's. I love the truck! The slogans on the sides are suppose to be Bosnian! I think it was "Kill Fascists!" Something like that!

These are the evil booby traps! One evil statue, one dead cow, and drunk guy who has no idea that he is a indirect suicide bomber!
 

Great painted army!

One side of the semi-circle attack!

The other side of the semi-circle attack.

Happily drinking away!

Sniper and spotters!

The AT gun just pins the 222!

 

Germans advancing!

I love this truck!

I made it to the building! The burning statue is a result of vaporizing a full German squad with a booby trap!

Partisan line.

Germans advance down the road while taking sniper fire.

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The car drops off the AT team.

This Stug 42H has missed every time.

Germans gun down a threatening truck!

Partisans advance!

         In the end, we had a draw, due to us leaving. Technically, I won, but we call a Draw when incomplete in a friendly game. It really could have gone either way, since it was only the beginning of turn five. All I know is that I kill six units and lost three with everyone on my side understrength at the end of the game. It was a fun game. I hope I will be able to face Joe's Partisans again in the near future!