Bolt Action: a bridge too far

First Combat Jump with 101st Airborne

Bought the BA 2nd edition starter set ”Band of Brothers” when 2nd ed. was released, but hadn’t gotten around to play or paint the US Airborne force.

Naturally I had bought some extras too ;-).

So, when Juha, our club’s MC for Bolt Action, called out for players to join in on a Market Garden themed day of Bolt Action, I volunteered.

So then  I just had to paint 1000p. worth of America’s finest.

Luckily they are an elite army.

Few more pictures on my painted forces

The Battle

Our forces needed to secure both ends of both bridges on the battlefield. 

The bigger one crossing the mighty river Rhein.

We got to nominate 5 drop zones on the battlefield and two of them were already secured by

Pathfinder units. That would reduce the amount of scatter our units would “suffer”.

Germans would then deploy forces, excluding their reserves, some motorised Panzer Grenadiers still in training and a mighty Tiger tank.

Deployment

After seeing how Germans had deployed, we decided to focus first on two zones: one near the smaller bridge, quite far from enemy and one close to the town centre, with quite a lot of Germans. We believed, we could overwhelm them with our elite forces. Some units where left in reserve.

Most of my units deployed here

Mikko’s 82nd Airborne dropped near the town center. I dropped a few units to help them out.

My sniper supporting the 82nd

Early stages

German HQ got a not of enemy activity and ordered reinforcements to be deployed - not just boys and old men!

My forces started to move forward towards the smaller bridge and also to bring their support weapons to bear on the enemy positions. Our artillery support barraged the enemy positions with pretty good effect too.

First and only element of the British XXX corps also moved in

Thickest fighting right from the beginning started in our middle dropzone, where

our elements were under heavy fire, but still pushed on and charged the enemy positions

One of my units was actually the first to engage the enemy in 

close combat. They destroyed the enemy, but suffered some casualties too,

as we struck our blows simultaneously.

Elements of the 82nd stormed this ruin full of SS elite troops (I had done

some scorching with a flame thrower to pave their way)

German armour and motorised infantry soon deployed 

and started to move towards the centre of the battlefield.

German units closest to my deployment zone started moving towards my forces
as they needed to get the hell out of their positions targeted by an artillery observer!
While dashing trough the open space they were still caught by light artillery fire! (Yes I rolled a six on an indirect shot).

Mid Game - into the thick of battle! 

Inch by inch our forces were gaining ground in the town, but

it was paid with blood! Our boys were also faced with enemy armor, they bravely attacked! 

My Glider boys had cleared the enemy from my side of the field

- only sheep and a lone sniper remained.

And then the Tiger rolled in...

Fire, fire, fire!

And more armor rolled over the bridge... reaching the 

goal started to look bad now!

End Game - desperate moves

While the battle for the town centre raged my units had very little resistance in taking the smaller bridge -half of them objectives achieved!

But now it was time to try and push for the other bridge! We finally dropped the last of our reserves to a drop zove at the far end of the battlefield

I hd brought a flamer team to support the attack, but at the critical moment they fubared their command roll! Damn it!!!

On the other end my units pushed towards the other end of the larger bridge. My armoured

jeep pushed forward a bit too rashly...

My bazooka team tried to help his compatriots fighting in the town and fired at the German

armour peeking from this narrow slot - a miss!!

Desperate fighting: close combat with a Tiger!!!

Leg it boys!

But the Tiger holds it own and fries the poor airborne

Battle field as the fight draws to an end...

Outcome

The smaller bridge is held by allied forces...

...but the larger bridge is far from being captured

One can hardly call this even a draw, but it sure was an awesome game. I don't know if we had any realistic changes to achieve all of our goals, but who cares, we had fun!

Maybe we should have not focused so many assets to those two areas, but then again our reasoning was quite sound I think...