Bolt Action - First Go

Steve's Germans v. Mike's Brits

Mission 2: Point Defense, 1,000 pts on 8x6 table.

As I was the only one who actually had a copy of the rules & had read them I umpired.  The figures are the Airfix 1/72 troops from my uni days of the 60's which have been in a box for about 40 years waiting for a suitable new set of rules to take our fancy. Are they veterans, or dad's army?

The British regulars are defending 3 objectives on the left with 4 infantry squads, a 6pdr, a 25 pdr, a mortar, a MMG, a Piat & a FO for off table artillery.
The German veterans are coming on the right hand edge with 3 infantry squads, a MMG, a mortar, a flamethrower & a MkIV.

The Germans attacked on the right flank with most of their force and took one objective by turn 6, so the battle was a draw (they need to take 2 to win).

We were all fumbling about as we learned the system which lead to an indecisive battle, but the general impression of the rules was good.  It's at a different level to FOW - platoon rather than company - so there's room for both.  The rules could be used with 15mm figs, but the scope to use bigger figures opens new horizons for modelling.   While my old 1/72 are serviceable & a cheap way to try them out, 28mm WWII does look so good & you don't need so many that it would get expensive (at least until obsession set in).  There are aspects we found a bit hard to get a handle on in the middle of a battle...including off table artillery, fire effect v. guns & some aspects of morale.  But the general level of complexity seems about right and the basic system seems to work well at producing an interesting game...which I think will only become more interesting when we know what we are doing.  The mechanism of randomly selecting units of each side for action in each turn makes a refreshing change from the standard IGUO.