Earlier this month I took part in the 2nd annual Bass and Curry Bolt Action tournament at my LGS, Greenhouse Games. Since I've only ever played Konflikt 47 (and even then not much of it), I thought this would be an interesting event and give me a chance to get my head around the original game... not to mention it was part of a trade I made for a ridiculous number of painted US minis.
I'd been to the store often enough that I thought I had a good idea what they could field for terrain but I was really impressed by the six tables they laid out for the event.
From the Far East...
...to the snow fields of Russia...
...to the hedgerows of Western Europe, there was a great range of terrain types fight over. Unfortunately luck of the draw meant that no one wound up playing on the snow board but all of the other boards had at least one game on them.
For this event, I threw together a list using Easyarmy.com which is a great resource for both Bolt Action and Konflikt 47 amongst other games. I must admit that I had no idea what to expect so I went with a list that I was hoping would be able to effectively deal with a good range of different opponents.
Mobility was going to be the name of my game since I knew that the tournament would feature two different scenarios, breakout and sectors. By fielding two 6 man veteran squads, I could load both of them into my M3 to taxi them around quickly and provide some fire support. Next were two jeeps, one to carry my Chaplain (hence the Holy Rollers) and the other for my 2nd Lieutenant. Finally I put in a Sherman with a heavy AT gun and pintle mounted MMG. I felt like this was the riskiest part of the list since this put all my AT capabiliy into one unit but I was hoping it's armor would be enough to keep it alive.
For my first game I was paired off against Cameron, one of the various Soviet hordes at the event on the hill table. I believe that the other lists fielded at least some cavalry but he decided to go with lots of troops, and a T-34.
This was an intense but fun game as things really went back and forth between the two armies. The T-34 got my fully loaded M3 in its sights early in the game but my veteran soldiers were able to withstand even its withering hail of machine gun fire. I thought my Sherman was doomed shortly after that as an inexperienced mob of tank hunters charged it but the dice gods were kind; not only did it survive unscathed but it was able to decimate the unit the following turn as I opened up with all the machine guns! Ultimately we fought each other to a draw by victory conditions but Cameron scraped out the win based on casualties.
My second game was against my friend Chad with his dastardly Germans fighting on the hedgerow table! In contrast to Cameron's list, Chad was fielding two platoons in his 750 point list with each platoon containing two minimum squads, an officer, a Panzer I, and a motorcycle with sidecar. Just to round things out he also threw in a Hanomag as well. This meant that not only was I facing 15 Panzerfausts but also seven medium machine guns and four light machine guns! Talk about a pinning machine!
This game was a lot of fun with things really swinging back and forth through most of it. In the end, Chad was able to get one of his Panzerfaust toting squads into point blank and blasted the Sherman apart. At that point I didn't have a chance since both of his Panzer Is were still on the table and I'd already lost more than half of my meager infantry but even so it was a great way to wrap up the day.
This tournament was a lot of fun and I'm really glad that Chad talked me into going. While I think I still prefer the tweaks that were made for the Konflikt 47 rules set, it was good to be able to take part in this event with the rules still being familiar enough that I could get in a couple of good games. That said, I do want to get back to the Greenhouse soon to push around some more Konflikt. I just can't help it; I love the big, stompy robots!
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