A new obsession

      As I said I would do in my new years resolutions, I have got into Bolt Action properly. I knew there was a community of players at Wayland games, I just couldn't seem to find them, so I hatched a cunning plan, sign up for a Bolt Action tournament held at the same venue and use it to drive the other players out of the woodwork. This plan turned out to be an unrivalled success. This post is a random collection of photos taken at the tournament and in another game since, and is going to be a gentle introduction to what could take over this blog for a little while (although as I have the attention span of a gnat, I can confirm there are a couple completely unrelated projects sitting on my desk still).
       I entered the tournament with my basic late war German army as seen in various posts over the last year, the army was originally built to be both Bolt Action and Chain of Command compatible, so my infantry squads were built as the full 10 man squads, panzerfaust on the sgt and a lmg on a squad member. While the squads didn't turn out to be terrible, one actually did me really proud as you'll see later on, they couldn't stand up to a couple of the more specialised squads that roam the board.

My SDKFZ 222, has quickly turned out to be one of my favourite units to use, its on that strange line between being not quite dangerous enough to be a kill priority, but can make so much of a nuisance that it has to be dealt with. In this case I made a dash for the objective, figuring with a bit of luck I might be able to win the game on turn two, but a bazooka team to the rear soon solved that problem. On the other hand, when you know your opponent only has two units that can comfortably kill your panzer 4 and one gets deployed at the back of the board turn one, its actually quite comforting.

About ten minutes after deploying the bazooka team, and feeling a little to confident himself now, my opponent remembered why he had been hesitant to roll his buffalo as far forward as it could go. A panzerfaust to the side at point blank range didn't turn out to be something he enjoyed.

This engagement went on for 4 turns, both tanks were immobilised fairly quickly and were stuck facing each other. There was really only one way it could end but it was lead to some nervous turns for the both of us.

 

This is something we have now done a couple of times, extended the board and shoved a couple more players on per side, while keeping individual armies small. I have to say I prefer big multi-player games like these, it becomes a much more social game than a one on one, and it tones down the power gamer as there is only so much they can do.

Not my Stug but it was just a great photo, of a tank doing exactly what it should be doing.

These last two are just of two of the armies I played, I was just really impressed by how nice they both looked. In the group of players I have now joined, there are only a couple of unpainted armies, a fact that I am finding immensely refreshing, there is nothing quite like being able to take a photo of something that has just happened and not have to worry about that model in the back ground.

Normal service will resume next time with more newly painted stuff.

Thanks for reading