AAR: Bolt Action: First Game, And the Romanians had a Cold.

       Well, it was officially the first game of the year 2017! My friend, Danny came over to play on our usual Tuesdays despite the fact that the holidays and such interrupted that schedule. It is amazing enough that there is any type of scheduling amongst wargamers on off days. In either case, the plan was to originally plan and Iron Cross game, Danny was going to bring over his arsenal of tanks to challenge my wife's, since I am not going to purposely play a German versus German tank game. However, those plans fell through, so we opted for a Bolt Action game!
      This was another test of the Romanian force that I am going to take to my wife's Bolt Action Tournament. So far, there first time out, they were crushed by my wife regular American infantry. This time was against American Paratroopers. As it were a surprise, they were also crushed under by these Americans under Danny's command. It does not take much of a push to sense that these Romanians may, if fact, be allergic to winning. This is not to say that this is true after two games, but I know my own troops. I know it will take a couple of years before they start winning. It seems that the only force I have untarnished by loss over multiple games are my Japanese Samurai in the game of Ronin.
     Anyway, we just decided to play a killfest type game. There were no official scenarios going on. Some of this has to do with the fact that I keep discovering new rules with the Version 2 of Bolt Action. I need to know some of these answers to these random game questions to help out in Kalissa's Tournament. I am sure that there will be quite a few confused players that are still not used to the newer and changed rules. The neat thing is that Danny and I are players who really don't care to much about rule issues, but will look up the interesting questions.
      As for the game, the Americans were rather cautious in this game. And I was as well, but I did not put anyone in reserve for flanking except for my Panzer IV. Danny had a bazooka team, a Sherman tank, and a squad of Airborne in Flanking. Most of the troops on both sides spent time in the woods. The actual violence did not really happen until turn four. This was rather late that most games. Then again, this table had the most woods that I have had for a Bolt Action game. The Romanians did fairly well with the shooting. The American shooting was about average. They took way more pins than I did. However, they had more concentrated fire on one of my squads. I lost an assault. The Sherman survived a Panzerfaust that recovered to kill a Pak40 and the Panzer IV. The toll was four units on the Romanian side with no losses on the American. Danny just did some good last turn shooting! It happens!

The Board.

The Board.

The Board.

First Turn, Romanian positions.

U.S. Airborne marches through the woods.

Another unit advances to the Inn.

More woods movement!

The Romanians move in!

More Romanians cross a snow field.

The Americans meet them from a tree line.

An American spotter finds targets for a medium mortar.

The Romanians fire into the tree line!

A Romanian mortar shell hits nearby. Anger rifle fire kills an American trooper.

The Americans are not playing around! Main Romanians are killed in a firefight.

A Squad is killed and small heroic Romanians shoot at the large squads of Airborne!

A Panzer IV G tries to be a game changer and shoots up the Airborne squad.

The Romanians shift fire to the Inn.

A Sherman flanks! The PaK40 gun and the Panzer IV miss the tank!

The Sherman wreaks havoc on the Panzer IV and PaK 40!

End Game!