Miniature Wargaming with Spudnick: AAR: Bolt Action: Shermans In A Winter Wonderland!

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

AAR: Bolt Action: Shermans In A Winter Wonderland!

After all of the chaos in this month for my area and a large part of the Southeast of the U.S., the weather has kicked into full gear towards Autumn. It is one of the few things I like about hurricanes; when they hit, the next day is the prettiest day for Autumn weather. At least, this holds true for the Carolinas. However, there has not been the same amount of games like the previous months. For a while, I had be playing against my friend, Danny on Tuesdays. Due to weather and fallen trees, we had skipped a bunch. So this time, he wanted to play at his house, since he had finished up his snow table.
Now, oddly enough, I never really played too many snow themed games. In most cases, I do not have that much interest in them, which can be looked at as a little strange. In all reality, I think that most historical wargaming tends to skip the winter like the plaque. I seem to only really see these winter wonderlands played during conventions and for a themed planned events or campaigns. Even, modelling seems to be lacking for winter games. And I think there are too reasons for this. One, it is harder to make winter boards impressive. Sure, it can be done, but the combination of tons of white comes across rather dull. Also, to really make things look right, you have to add snow to other terrain and have winter themed troops. That is fine, if you are modelling it for your own troops, but it is not common for other players. The second reason it is not as common is that there are a lot of rules and restrictions with snow themed boards. Both you and your opponent can agree to ignore this rules and restrictions, but that defeats the flavor of playing this scenario based seasons. And I guess this is probably why I have not made the great plunge into the snow board. However, Danny decided to make his own using similar techniques I do for my other boards. I think it did a pretty good job for his first board. However, getting killed on it was an whole different story!
For the moment of all year, Danny has been rolling like a champ! And I mean this in a nice way, but other people would have been questioning his dice. I know the exact problem. He rolls in a dice box that is hexagon-shaped. It is not like it is an outlawed object in the gaming world. Hell, I roll better in it. But it is as disheartening as Bill's evil cardboard box lid! I can go on a whole tangent about dice, luck, and rolling surfaces that a few people have said that it is all in my mind.
What was not in my mind was how quickly, Danny had dispatched my force in four turns. Now, to be fair, this was not exactly fair in points and value per unit. There were four squads of Airborne, with a 1st Lt, a medium mortar, and nine Sherman Tanks versus four squads of Fallschirmjager, a Panzershrek team, 1st Lt., two Pak40 AT Guns, a medium mortar, a squad of Kreigsmarines, three Panzer IV H's, and a Tiger I E tank. Now with six AT guns and everyone armed to the teeth with Panzerfausts, this was not that bad. What makes it bad were the Shermans D6 HE rounds and they are still good with AT. Round one, kill on Pak40, and a Panzer IV; no losses for the Americans.
Turn Two: The rest of the Panzer IV's and the Pak40 with infantry having a bad day; one Sherman is killed by a Pak40, Mortar round hits and kills two men in a squad. Turn Three: Tiger is helplessly pinned to death. More German infantry die. German Mortar is taken out by the American one, Panzerfaust team flanks and dies after missing at point blank! Another German squad flanks and kills one Sherman and dies from an assault. Another German Squad assaults the American assaulting squad and prevails! Then, they are killed off! Another German squad is killed by tanks alone!
Turn Three/Four: The Kriegmarines are sent in to do nothing, but die! The last squad of Fallshrimjaegers runs in an kills a tank, but not enough. The Tiger withdraws after have nine pins! The 1st Lt. says F this, and runs just for the sake of it! Danny was mad that the Tiger survived throughout the game, because of bad rolls. I had to remind him that is D6 hits were rolling 6 kills every time with the exception of two. I am sure that Version 2 might change some of these results.
I have got a notification that it is in the mail! Maybe, we will test them out next week.