Southern Offensive Bolt Action Tournament

This was a one day 3 round event with 1,100 pt lists hosted by Good Games Battle Axe.  There were 5 good looking tables for 10 players. All games were Axis v. Allied.

I took my usual veteran Grenadiers.  Chris took Soviets.

The first round was Double Envelopment.  My opponents were British with lots of small vet units.  I like this scenario as there is more than 1 way to win.  I gained a lot of VPs by killing off Brits & some for getting units into enemy deployment zone, but I couldn't stop 2 bugs transporting small squads over my base line, & the end result was an entertaining draw.

Round 2 was Key Positions with 5 objectives.  My opponent had a Romanian horde which made excellent targets for my MG42's.  Despite huge losses  the Romanians snuck a unit round my left flank to dispute an objective at the end turn 6.  At the stage it would have been a draw, but dice gave us a turn 7 & the offending squad was mown down to give the Germans a decisive victory.

Round 3 was a Meeting Engagement against an Indian force.  It started badly when one of my big infantry squads was destroyed by the British Bombardment on turn 1 & the ARVE blew up another unit in the house with one shot.  A duel between a Marder & an armoured car also did  not go well.  The Marder hit the Armoured car 4 times, immombilising it & setting it on fire without destroying it.  But the car rallied & popped the Marder the first time it got to shoot.   The Germans managed 2 VPs - the immobilised armoured car was finally destroyed by mortar fire & the MG42's mowed down some infantry.  But a Gurka charge loaded with special rules was unstopable, giving the Indians 4VPs & a decisive win.

My contribution to the Axis cause was 1 win, 1 draw & 1 loss, but I still came last Axis in what was a clear Axis win overall.  Chris had no luck, but avoided the Allied wooden spoon.  The only chnage to my list from last time was a Marder instead of a MkIII.  In game 1 the Marder was popped by a 6pdr in 1 shot before it could do anything.  In game 2, it survived & did good work blasting Romanian hordes.  In game 3 it hit every time it shot, but then didn't kill. A MkIII would have done the same in each case, so the change made no difference.

It was a well organised event & as always played in good spirit.  The lads had made a big effort to match the standard of terrain set by our Devonport Conrades.  The next BA event will be in Devonport in March.