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

To view this battle report in chronological order hit “View Oldest Entries First” on the left.

First of all a little update on the painting. I manage to finish painting the first squad of 101st Airbourne and the snow table. Sven managed to finish almost his entire army of winter germans. Now. Onto the BatRep.

So. We finally finished the “prelude” scenarios and now actually get into the Battle of the Bulge. The first mission depicts the battle on the 17th of december for the crossroads at St. Vith. So we are on the second day of the “Devil’s Charge” and the Germans (18th and 62nd Volksgrenadier) are trying to capture the very important crossroads at St. Vith. The defenders are – of course – Americans, I believe they were the 422nd and 423rd regiment of the 106th ID. Very inexperienced troops.

Scenario

We used rules for Fog and Mud. We are playing on a quite snowy table, but in these parts only a bit of snow has fallen already which made the ground really muddy. This means every vehicle had to check for it’s movement distance (unless travelling on roads) and the maximum viewing distance was 18″ due to fog. The later could change during the battle. The Americans (played by me) had to set up in the village of St. Vith. They would score victory points for each suviving units and the end of turn 3 and the game. The Germans (played by Sven and Andre) would score points for destroying Americans units and by pushing through the enemy lines (leaving the table over the opposing edge).

Also every American unit has to be rated “inexperienced”.

The Table

Mainly we placed the crossroads and a few buildings in the centre of the American deployment zone. The rest of the table are snowdrifts, woods and a few craters.

Deployment

The Americans deployed in the Village of St. Vith. The first row of defence was a squad of non-combatant troops. Followed by a “normal” squad of inexperienced GIs and the First Lieutenant. They are covered from the buildings behind them with two bazookas and 3 medium machine guns. The right flank (from the Germans perspective) was covered by another normal squad and a minefield. The left flank respectively was covered by the third normal squad and a dug in Sherman M4. To the back was a dug in howitzer to provide some fire support where it would be needed.

The Germans didn’t deploy anything. They had to nominate at least half their troops as their first wave. They decided to go for a full scale attack and put everything they had into their first wave.

End of turn 1

The Germans decided to only push with a few veterans through the middle and go for a big push on the right flank (minefield). The idea was to circumvent the Sherman entirely as it was dug in (can’t move) and could see only 18″ (due to fog).

The opening bombardment killed 3 GIs and pinned the entire US force. So the Americans spent their entire turn rallying, while the Germans got into position.

Most note worthy for turn one is that the fog thickened. Reducing visibility to only 12″.