The Italian Job

Pint's of coke with a pink straw give you a +1 to all dice rolls

So, after a brief foray into the Age of Sigmar, this week was back to normal and a game of Bolt Action vs Terry. For many years, I've not enjoyed this game. It's something to do with the pulling of tokens to determine who moves next. However, in the last year, breaking out my 101st Screaming Eagles has given me a new appreciation for the game.

So, we played a quick 1000 point game. Terry is busy painting a force of Italians for a forthcoming tournament. First time I've played against the Italians and they brought with them a few surprises including a plane, more of which will come later.

We rolled to see what scenario we would be playing, and the dice gave us scenario six, Demolition. We each had an objective and we had to try and destroy the opposition's objective. Terry used a vehicle and I chose my Anti-Tank gun.

We deployed half of our forces on the table and began turn one. It was a slightly uneventful turn as we moved forward and took up positions, ready for the scramble forward. The only thing of note happening was my sniper shooting the LMG from one of Terry's squad.

Turn Two arrived and so did Terry's plane. Having no flack to deal with this, it came in on my left flank and proceded to decimate an eight man squad. I opted to go down with this squad, but I still lost four men. The turn began properly and saw Terry land a mortar shell on the second of my squads. Again, I went down and Terry was able to do some damage to the squad.

In the rest of the turn, we began to bring on all of our reinforcements, and we were both able to bring on the rest of our forces. We moved up and I pushed a ten man squad as far forward as I can.

Hang on a minute lad, I've got a great idea

Turn three was the pivotal turn. Terry has moved his command squad out into the open and my ten man squad charged forward, and despite taking a casualty as they charged forward were able to engage them in combat, and wipe out Terry's commander. My men advance forward, and I could see his objective. One more turn, and I might be able to win.

However, Terry's veteran squad charged forward, from the nearby building where they had been hiding out and wiped out my men. I had seen victory and then watched it slip away. Worse was to go for me in this turn. Terry had pushed forward an armoured car down my left flank, threatening my troops. I tried to blow it up using a Bazooka and failed. I then tried to land a shell from a light Howitzer on it. I need a six, it was a long shot. I rolled to hit. It hit. I rolled to see if I penetrated. I rolled a one. It was a frustrating end to the turn.

Turn four arrived with the reappearance of the plane. It aimed at my fourth squad and did some damage to them. Again, I went down, and was able to reduce the damage caused, but it still did some serious damage to me. Having the next dice, I was able to fire my howitzer at the armoured car again. Having hit previously, I needed a 2+ to hit. I hit, with a dice roll of 2. This was it. I was going to blow it up.

Only to roll a 1 again. Two turns and two failed attempts to wipe out the tank. This was the main highlight of the turn. Terry approached one of his squads forward and wiped out the last few men from one of my squads and took cover in a building.

Turn five arrived, and I was able to wipe out Terry's squad in the building but the game ended with little fanfare. Due to the scenario objectives, neither of us had achieved our objective and so the game was a draw. Though, having done the most damage I feel that Terry takes a deserved moral victory.

To go left, when you should go right

So, what went wrong. Two things. Firstly, the airplane did a lot of damage. It did have a ridiculous amount of dice for its machine guns and quickly did a lot of damage to my men, who had little to do but die. It's an interesting unit, and one I'm going to be thinking about adding to my collections.

The other thing was my suicidal charge. I went against Terry's command unit, but on hindsight, I would have done this separately. There were three units behind the wall. The command unit, the tankette, and a medium machine gun team. I chose the command as it had the lesser amount of shots to fire. However, I think I should have charged the machine gun. I think, I would have been a bit further over and hopefully away from the veterans charge range. Then, I would have been able to make my way forward and get the objective.

Having said this, it has rekindled my interest in World War Two gaming and I'm thinking about starting a Desert Rat army. As I say a lot, to many ideas, not enough time.

Age of Sigmar - game one

So, I finally played my first game of Age of Sigmar and before I go into a short battle report. I have to say, despite playing against Liam, which meant an automatic loss, I really enjoyed the game. The rules are very different to Warhammer and come with the adage easy to learn, difficult to master. I like them. It's a game that is designed to a narrative theme. So the point of the game might be to capture a building and hold it for the rest of the game, or kill the enemy leader, instead of the traditional lineup and wipe up each other out.

There is nothing wrong with the latter game, and I often enjoy this. But the little something extra that makes me think a little different about how I play is a nice extra. So what forces played. Well, I took my High Elves and brought a Lord on a Dragon, which you can see on to the left. A unit each of archers and spearmen, staples of my High Elf forces for years. A unit of Dragon princes, a skycutter, and a repeater bolt thrower rounded up my army.

Liam took a Beastmen force and had two units of Minotaurs. A Shaman, a warlord, and some bestigors and a few razorgors. Liam won the roll to see who sets up first and then elected for me to go forward. I moved forward and tried to get my Dragon Lord into a place where he could charge. However, I was out and so the only damage that I did was a hit from the Bolt thrower, causing a wound on the minotaurs.

Dragon meat anyone?

In Liam's turn, he moved forward and my Prince and Dragon suddenly found themselves being brutally ripped apart by their giant axes. Minotaurs axes, as we both discovered, do three points of damage for each wound caused. My Dragon disappeared under a hail of axes. Liam was very apologetic about this, but things didn't look good for me.

On my left, his bestigors had charged into combat with my Dragon Princes, and had quickly killed three of them. I was able to kill a couple back, but the unit then disappeared due to battle shock. On the other flank, the Razorgors had charged the skycutter, and my spearmen were able to join in the combat.  I was able to get the upper hand in this combat and caused more wounds than Liam.

Surprise

Turn two was pretty much the same as before. Liam went first and behind my rear, some giant monstrosity appeared and charged into my Repeater bolt thrower crew. Surprisingly, he managed to leave it with one wound, and despite my best effort, the crew was not able to harm it.

The Spearmen and the Skycutter and the Razorgors carried on the battle and it went mainly in Liam's favour. Both of my units were not looking healthy but were still in the fight. Meanwhile, the minotaurs charged into the archers and decimated them. Though, this time, I was able to get some attacks in but caused little damage

In our third turn, the writing was on the wall and Liam finally killed off the rest of my forces and we called it a game.

So, despite carrying on my tradition of losing to Liam, I had a lot of fun. Age of Sigmar seems to be an enjoyable game and I look forward to playing more in the future.

Now, all I need to decide is if I want to buy more. I'm very tempted to get the starter set and go from there. I'm not a big fan of either the Sigmar force or the Chaos, but the new Dwarfs look good. So many ideas, not enough time or money.