The French War Machine Rumbles On

I still haven't lost interest in my Bolt Action French force.

Following the poetic justice of my last game, Pete was keen to have a rematch and attempt to regain some dignity.

I managed to find the time to get a couple of additions to the force ready, in the form of a light anti tank gun, and a medic.

I used a similar technique with basing the AT gun as I did with the light howitzer previously - one crewman is glued to the base, but the other is held in place with a magnet so he can be removed as a casualty.

In this case, I gave the second crewman a small base, which gave space for a larger magnet and seems to work much better - I think I'm going to have to redo the basing for the howitzer crew at some point.

All of which has so far been slightly pointless, as the only effective fire against either gun has completely wiped out the crew!

I need to add the foliage to the bases, but these were finished enough to be used on the table.

This still moves my totals for 2015 in the right direction - I'm now at:

Painted - 43
Bought - 22

So, the game. No pictures this time, so I'll keep this short.

I was able to report to Pete on the day of the game that we could now go up to 600 points as I'd done some more painting. He decided to add a tank, not realising that half of the extra 100 points I had ready was now an A/T gun.

We used the same 4'x3' table setup as last time (with the same terrain in place, we just changed ends), and this time rolled Envelopment as the scenario. Pete chose to defend, so my very defensive army with two field guns would need to cross the length of the table.

I set up so that the guns were in the middle, aiming up the road, and two squads would go up the right flank with the officer and medic. My final squad went left. In both cases I intended to use a building as cover and then go through it to reach Pete's half of the table.

On the right, I had a disastrous assault which cost me a squad (even though I should have had the advantage), and the survivors assaulted and killed my officer, although he did avenge himself and wipe out the remains of the German squad at the same time. I had reached the building on this side with the second squad, which were then able to move up through another building, and eventually make it off the table despite taking some heavy casualties. The artillery observer was also able to make it off in the same way, but the medic wasn't so lucky and was cut down as he tried to make his escape.

On the left the SS reached the building first. I backed off from the building rather than assault the SS, but they left the building and gunned down all but the NCO at point blank range. The NCO ran for it, sneaking around the building into Pete's half of the table and even shooting one of the German mortar crew. He was eventually caught and killed by the SS, but this did take them another 3 turns of shooting, tying them up to allow the others to escape.

My big guns weren't as effective this time. The howitzer eventually managed to take out Pete's machine gun, but this took a long time, and eventually it fell victim to the German mortar. The anti tank gun only managed a single hit in the whole game, but fortunately this was enough to wreck Pete's tank, which had been lurking at the back and failing to hit things.

In the end then, I'd wiped out 4 of Pete's units and escaped with 2 of mine, for 10 VP.
Pete wiped out 5 of my units... for 10 VP.

A draw! Not as good as last time, but Pete has still failed to beat the French, after all his big talk...