Battle of the Bulge - Bolt Action Campaign by Andre77 and Bothi

The Scenario

The first day of gaming was nearing and our goal was to get everything built. Although we would not use nearly all of the minis this was achieved by everybody attending. Unfortunately Jan couldn’t make it so we were only 4 players. Onto the BatRep.

In this scenario playing in the Fall of ’44 the Germans are tasked to break out of the Mons Pocket and escort a truck full of stolen art and other important things to safety. Unfortunately a band of Belgian Resistance has other plans and want to get some payback for all the things that has been done to their country.

The German list was 1000 pts, was played by Andre and Christian and contained a lot of infantry, a bunch of SdKfz transports, a Puma and the Opel Blitz transporting the stolen arts.

The Partisans also had 1000 pts and where played by Sven and Bothi. It contained about 20 French Intelligence and SAS Veterans and about 50 inexperienced Belgian rifleman. The French were quite well equipped with MGs, SMGs, a Bazooka and anti tank grenades and we imagined that these are the guys working behind enemy lines and training the Belgian Resistance. Unfortunately nobody had any French or Belgian models so we decided to proxy these with Americans.

Table and Setup

As you can see the table was set up with the Germans starting on the western edge and a Y-shaped road running across the table. The partisans had a huge deployment area between the roads.

The partisans deployed with a lot of riflemen  to the front and the flanks to soak up the brunt of the German attack and the veterans to middle and back to act as a counter force.

The Germans decided to to have a few troops here and there and a huge strongpoint on their left flank with all the armoured transport. This is where the break through should happen.

End of Turn 2

The Germans decided to start the game dismounted to deal with the upfront resistance fighters. During the first two turn they started advancing slowly an putting a lot of fire into the two upfront resistance squads. Those two squads took heavy casualties (over 20 dead) and only managed to get some pot shots in killing 2 Germans.

But the Partisans managed to quickly advance a Free French squad through the far field creating a choke point to delay the Germans even further.

But also the Germans triggered the booby traps set by the resistence. The lighter one was in the German deployment zone and managed to kill a single MMG gunner. This did less damage but was sure to go off.

The other two would only go of on a 6. The Puma trigged the right on which naturally turned out to be a dud. But Sven managed to roll a six for the one on the left side nearly wiping out a German grenadier unit and giving a bloody nose to the main German advance.