Iron Forest Club Days 01/03/2015: Did I Say North or South of the Smoke?

This weeks dose of gaming goodness at Iron Forest Games must of seen one of the most shockingly bad but hilariously tragic performance from myself on the tabletop battlefield.

The game in question was Bolt Action, involving myself, Leigh Phillips and Jason Molyneux. It was a 1,000pts a side, Leigh using his Russians while me and Jay had two smaller forces of 500pts of Germans, Me fallshirmjager, Jay Heer Army.

NOTE: Please excuse the unpainted nature of our figures - we are sorting this out ASAP as we only purchased these figs a few days before the game :P

The game was played on gaming mat I have built (see previous post) with 4ground buildings added from Leigh's own collection. The pics below are the battleground before deployment.

Leigh deployed his Russian forces upon top left corner on the pic above, between the far left trench and the row of terraced houses, his KV2 was positioned directly in the centre of his deployment formation. Jay deployed his panzer grenadiers in truck on the right flank - hoping to come around and engage in crossfire with my fallshirmjager infantry unit that moved towards the terraced street. Below is a more detailed shot of Leigh's deployment.

My MMG team was positioned between the centre boccage and the tudor house - hoping to catch some advancing infantry or those sneaky enough to try and move around and flank a left position.

next along to left was HQ unit, behind the large barn, than next along was my other fallshirmjager infantry unit and medic hunkered around the ruined cottage.

Than it was Jay's Panzer IV, tucked around the thatch cottage to the left of the infantry unit, hoping to break through the Russian line and flank their tank.

Lastly on the far left was my Medium Mortar team - hoping to catch some enemy units as they break through the boccage.

With the deployment complete and the Order dice in the bag, the battle began! Leigh got the initiative first and managed to push forward his infantry and tank, the tank scored first kill, hitting and wiping out the MMG team.

Meanwhile my Fallshirmjager infantry unit pushed into the terraced street, occupying the ruined building on the end. At the same time Jay's Panzergrenadiers raced off ahead, ready to disembarked and take the top right side of the terraced street.

The turn ended with Leigh's infantry pushing left, Jay's Panzer IV advancing up to the boccage and my Mortar firing but missing the approaching infantry.

The turn began with my fallshirmjagers leap frogging from the ruin into the next terraced building, unfortunately Leigh had a russian anti tank rifle team positioned at the end of the road on ambush, managing to inflict a single casualty as they clambered into the next building. Just to my fallshirmjagers right, Jay disembarked his Panzer Grenadiers who moved around the right flank of the anti tank rifle team, hoping to catch them out.

Leigh then moved his infantry and tank forward, the tank fired its heavy howitzer at my infantry near the ruined cottage, turning them into burgers.

To try and recover from the heavy casualties, Jay's Panzer IV broke through the boccage, letting rip with his MMGs into the Russian Infantry, while my Mortar team managed to score a direct hit on closet infantry to Jay's Panzer IV.

Finally my HQ unit, before being torn to shreds by small arms fire, fired a flare in the midst of Leigh's forces to call down a artillery strike.

But at the beginning of the next turn. the deities of dice wasn't favouring me and I managed to scatter the artillery strike on the terraced street, directly on me and Jay's infantry, dropping a punishing amount of pin markers on both our units... Ooops!

Meanwhile the left flank was faring better, the combined fire of Jay's Panzer IV and my Mortar team inflicting heavy damage on the closet Russian infantry unit.

The final turns didn't pan well for me and Jay, our right flank was pretty much suppressed out of the game, with Leigh's tank coming in to finish off my fallshirmjager in the terraced house and his infantry on Jay's Panzergrenaders out in the streets.

There was some glimmers of hope. the Artillery barrage managed to scatter back onto Leigh's tank, dropping a healthy amount of pin makers. and Jay's remaining Panzergrenadier unit managed to ambush and destroy a Russian infantry unit.

Soon enough the left flank folded for us, with Leigh managing to outmanoeuvre the Panzer IV, taking out the Mortar team and than charge the tank and set it on fire, inflicting major pinning!

The game ended with what was remaining of me and Jay's forces heavily suppressed, a decisive victory to Leigh! It was a highly enjoyable game and thanks to my blunder - one we won't forget in a very long time - much to my misfortune lol.

Thanks for your time - cya soon ;)