So back in the Spring of last year, I painted up a mess of Soviet troops in 28mm for Bolt Action games. Since then, they've never made it to the table and I've fallen in love with Chain of Command for small action WWII games...and the scale of choice for the guys who play that is 15mm.
BUT! Last Saturday my gaming group had their belated Holiday party and ran Bolt Action games all day. In the morning, my Soviet soldiers made their tabletop debut... We rolled up a scenario and my job was to defend a set of three objectives spread out over my side of the table. My opponents would be trying to wrest away as many as they could in six turns. I had the pleasure of setting up first:
Here you've got a long shot of my line at set-up with my left flank at bottom and my right flank at the top. We were spread out over a long ridge that overlooked a small town and some forrest area. The Germans have to push up the hill and take as many of the objective markers as they can.
In Bolt Action, the Soviets get a free squad of Inexperienced troops to bulk out their forces. I placed that squad on my left flank along with a 2nd Lieutenant and his flag bearer to help rally the troops. I also gave them some confidence by placing my T-34/76 tank. It was also the only place with a break in the hedge line that would allow the tank to get out onto the road before it and move where it needed to be. Those barrels mark the position of an objective.
In the center of my set-up area, I placed a regular infantry squad and the mortar team. The tank in back isn't functional and acts as another objective point.
On the right, I looked out over a small town. This provided the most cover for an approaching enemy so I bulked up on this side. There are two squads of infantry, a machine gun team, a sniper and a Captain to help provide morale and activation bonuses to the various groups. The crate on a silvered disk marks the final objective.
The game began with an artillery bombardment. This kind of artillery bombardment can be deadly, but most of the time it's just an annoyance. It puts a few points of shock on your groups and this can make it harder for them to activate (or you can waste a turn trying to rally it all off of them). Considering how far the attackers have to run to get at you, it's mostly a nuisance. The only real effect the barrage had was to kill the sniper. A small bit of irony there. The loud booms also scared the tankers who botched their activation test and froze up for a turn.
For most of the turn I just put people on overwatch. I did send the machine gun team down the hill to take up positions behind some crates near the crossroads in town. I also started feeding a squad in from the far right into the building next to it and got the mortar team's forward observer into a building to try and direct some fire.
The Germans had small squads of Veteran troopers with lots of machine guns and almost all of them started moving into the town with one squad on my left moving behind some woods to approach the town from that direction.
The also sent a Stug down the street right towards the MG team.
By the end of turn 2, things looked like this:
The tank was finally rolling forward, but I was worried about the German squad swinging in wide from my left. The machine gun team was drawing a lot of fire, but hanging in there. The squad in the house next to it kept growing as its members dashed down the hill to jump in. They exchanged a lot of fire with the German squad just up the street from it. And still the Stug closes....
On Turn 3, the machine gun team finally succumbed. The Germans sent a squad around the right side of the town and tried to bring down the forward squad in a withering hail of fire. They did catch a few brave soldiers trying to reach the safety of the building but the squad (in the building with the blue dice next to it) was largely intact. They returned fire and crippled their assailants. Up on the ridge, the whole Soviet line began to shift over to the right in order to gain a better angle on those Germans in the open and get some reserves ready for the inevitable losses that are soon to come.
Near the start of Turn 4 things are looking a little better. Continued fire on the open German squad has whittled it down pretty sharply. My Forward Observer was driven out of his post by a German rush, although he did manage to kill a couple of guys on his way out (doing more damage than the mortar team ever did). Still, there's that Stug to deal with, my tank is out of position and the Germans are prepared to rush behind it and take my positions.
But my brave Soviet troopers have a nasty surprise for the Stug. Every man carries anti-tank grenades for just this purpose. The squad rushes from their house, swarms the tank flinging grenades at it, and then retreats back into the house leaving the Stug shocked and immobilized for the turn. This is exactly why I purchased the anti-tank grenades for the troops and I'm so very pleased I got to use them to such effect on the first game. I suspect future opponents won't drive up so close to me, but making them worry about every knot of dug-in infantry will almost always be to my benefit.
By Turn 5, the fight's gone out of the Germans. That open German squad on the right was wiped out to a man, the Stug either has to retreat or get brutalized by the troops in the house and if it goes forward, my T-35/76 will get a nice shot into its side. In the meantime, it can spray the Germans in the nearby buildings with machine gun fire. If all the Germans rush forward, they'll be cut down rushing up the hill and the survivors are not likely to overpower the large Soviet squads (Close Combat in Bolt Action is pretty decisive). They don't believe they'll be able to get one of the objectives so we call the game there. Victory to the People!
So, I'm quite pleased that in their first battle, my little dudes acquitted themselves so well. They were pretty well set-up for the defender role. Although my casualties were light (eight men total), I had plenty of extra guys to soak up losses. I was just able to spread pretty thinly across the width of the table, but once the Germans committed, I was able to shift guys over to where they needed to be. If I had been on the attacking side, I'd like to think I could rush a mass over the top of the defenders, but it's always a gamble.
The only thing that really didn't work out for me was the mortar team. The way mortars work in Bolt Action, you want to attack the same target over multiple rounds (because your odds of hitting get better as you "dial-in" the range). It's designed to make people shift out of their positions as the fire gets more and more effective. Here, the Germans were almost always on the move so you could zero in on them. The mortars would be great if I were on the attack since defenders usually want to stay close to one position. I should look to see if I can swap out the mortar for something else (another machine gun would be nice but I'd also take a small squad of SMG-equipped maniacs).
So it was a fun game and although I'm shifting away to another system/scale, I think those Soviets will hit the table again in the future.
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