LvL Up - Bolt Action 1 day Tournament...

So last Saturday I headed down to the city of Bournemouth to play a 1 day tournament of Bolt Action. Some might remember the battle reports from last year where my Japanese took over the local gaming club in a sweep of fire and bloody hand to hand combat.

I can honestly say that this account of actions will not be anything like that as it seems that some elite players, and Bob, arrived to the tournament to spice things up :) And handed me my rear end time and time again :) Oh and it seems that my dice completely abandoned me throughout the first 2 games to the point of me going WTF?!?!?!!??!!

My first opponent is also a sculptor and miniature wargames manufacturer. Young Mad Bob, from Mad Bob Miniatures.

He brought a very nasty list of Russians that consisted of more flamers and mmgs than one should have at 750 points. Really.. I mean this.. how the heck someone can get this into this list is beyond me.. but it was a strong tournament list. Heck.. he came second with it ( which begs the question of how hard the first place list was ;) ).

Our scenario was Secret Mission, and the mission crate was just off center from the mega hotel building sitting int he middle of the table. With his truck filled with 2 units of 5 veteran engineers in body armor, and flamethrower each, vs my truck filled with inexperienced militia.. it was an interesting set up for that objective location. And of course my Ho-Ro, which is the bane of all armies.. decides that he doesn't like killing anything anymore and fails to do anything at all. Even with only a -1 to hit ( so needing 4s ) which normally is not a problem. Ah dice games.. and how they taunt us so!

As you can see, my truck didn't last too long, whereas the shooting from my side did sweet nothign against him. But most of my troops and units were on the table at this time at least. Now with another truck with another 2 units of the same engineers bearing down on me, and the inexp free troops setting up for charges as well. I do believe that I was able to kill one of the units in close combat here, but there were still 3 more kicking around to cause me havoc.

Turn 3 sees me capturing the objective, and running down towards my side of the table with it, but also seeing my lose 3 of my units, another truck, and have the objective contested with his last 2 engineers. Though the rest are now fully dead, but he still has a huge unit of free troops, and 2 trucks, and his 2 trucks with quad mmgs running around. Cause my Ho-Ro can only pin and cause fear to one of them instead of blowing it up like he should do!

Turns 4-6 are pretty easy to see what happened. I lost the first dice, and thus lost my unit, and he then proceeds to set up on how to take the goods away. My Ho-Ro doing very little, if anything, to stop them with their abysmal rolls.

So I lose my first game to Mad Bob.. and he doesn't look too surprised.. does he?

I think when I began to puff up my chest at him this face was made.. but I can't be sure.. was a good learning experience though, and there were a few things I could have done differently to turn the game around. Not that Bob would make any comments on what those were, or give me advice throughout the game, but that is another thing..

In the end I got 3 VPs vs the 8 I gave Bob.. not a good start...

Game 2 was against a great guy whose name I have forgotten. I think it was Tom.. I can't be sure. But he had an epic beard that my camera refused to capture properly due to how epic it truly was.

This time I was up against the Brits, with their free arty observer. Normally not scared of them as they typically misfire back onto their own troops.. let's see if that happened here..

Scenario here was Annihilation. So kill the enemy, and gain points doing so. I figured a good en-mass approach would do wonders against him.. WTF was I thinking here???!?!?!! though all came on nicely, and the trucks were intimidating to him to say the least. And the ho-ro on the other side did kill 3 guys on his side immediately, but did very few pins in the end.

Still no arty here yet, but only cause the guy just came on second turn. Meanwhile I am locking up some pins on my units from small arms fire, no biggie. And my ho-ro begins to regret coming out it seems. So he forgets about how to fire..

BOOOOOM.. WTF???!? So the artillery comes down, as planned, and takes out both trucks! His only 6s he rolls.. expect when he wants to place pins on my units! Pretty much screwed here, and the shooting on them makes them worse. Oh and at this point the ho-ro gets put under with pins from small arms fire ( go open topped vehicles! ).

I begin to regret even more taking the trucks, and not having more troops...

Again basically at Turn 4.. things go downhill for me. Everything is pinned to the point that I cannot do anything, and he plays smart enough not to get into my charge range ( though earlier in Turn 2 I had forewarned him about how bad of a choice that would be..

Only highlight is that my Lieutenant is a sniper. Taking off a man from the right most unit each round until the end.. only failing to wound even though he was needing 6s for a while there to hit! Everyone else will be standing trial for how badly they did, and then put to rest I believe!

So another major loss for me.. I think I killed 2 units total here. 2.. and he got 6.. Not doing great on VPs either atm..

Game 3... again can't remember his name, but it was a hilarious game in the end.

Many things died in the first turn.. and the objective this time was Demolition.. so get to the enemy Vodka, touch it, and be touching it at the end of a turn. Neither one of us stuck around our objectives to defend it, and instead got stuck in the middle here to beat each other with sticks.

I honestly do not remember what happened each turn as most of the memory of the turns was spent on making fun of each other, and calling each other names in silly accents. Great fun! More so when near the end he only had his quad MMG truck ( need to find one of those!!! ) which was running around the table killing me. With his fully loaded truck of doom failing to arrive even though it only needed a 8 or lower to come on! Probably didn't help that I kept calling out numbers higher than 8, then him rolling them, and cursing me from speaking again. As he began to roll whatever I called out for their reserve roll :)

Only game I won, and honestly at this point I shouldn't have! Since if I had lost it I could have gotten last place, the coveted Wooden Spoon award, but alas the objective was right there and taking that away from him would have been too much.

So in the end I got 5th out of 6 places. But I did have at least 2 great games ( Bob looking at you for that first game.. grrr... :) ). But a major piece of insight came out from playing in the tournament.. I am not a tournament player. Would prefer to have fun, throw some dice, have a laugh, and teach or learn how the game is played more than worrying about if I win/lose or draw. Sad that another player in the tournament ( not Bob.. though.. with his list... ;) ) did not understand this concept and forgot that it was just a game. Oh well.. good luck to them in the future.

Though seeing the gaming store ( LVL Up in Bournemouth, UK ), I hope to be able to head down there every so often for another game or 2 against some of the locals ( or store owner ) to catch up and get in some laughs! Now to get back to painting this force to make them look nicer.. and see how that goes!