Bolt Action Finnish Nationals and Nationalist Chinese Army

Guomindang takes victory

It had been a long while since I had played in a Bolt Action tournament, even if BA has remained one of my top 5 games through the years and recently I ran a Combined Arms -campaign at the club.

So it was a real joy to have players from all around Finland to come together and mettle their strenght in Bolt Action.

I was fortunate enough to pull a tournament win this time with three straight victoeries in my games.

Tournament was played with 4 allied players vs. 4 axis players and matching players was based on this (aka not pure SWISS)

My Chinese Nationalist Army

As we knew the scenarios of the tournament in advance (1. Double envelopment, 2.Supply Drop and 3. Take and Hold), I built my army to suit tese recuirements: many (fast) units (13 activations including 2 vehciles and a unit of cav.) to breach through and to throw bodies on objectives. Max armour 7 was allowed in this tournament.

You can see my list here

Veteran Great Swords and recently painted Conscripts

Free inexperienced squad

Regulars and support units & vehicles

More pictures of my army here

Tournament in action

In my first game I faced Marko's Germans in a desert village, scenario was Double Envelope

I was able to get some early unit kills with my artillery, Big Swords and my BA-10.

Unfortunately many of my reinforcements were delayed, but my cavalry was fast  enough to gallop through the field unopposed and score 3 VP. 

GAME 1 RESULT: CLEAR VICTORY FOR CHINA

I think I got 5 unit kills as a tiebreaker 

Game 2. Supply Drop vs. Jouni's Germans

This time we met in a French village (odd, I know) and winning the game would be decided by whom controlled the supply drop in the end. It would drop in the beginning of R3, when reserves would also become available.

Jouni is a veteran BA player and he also had a pretty mobile and more elite army.

Jouni had a good start for the game rapidly taking out my howitzer, but then I managerd to counter by destroying his armoured car with my B10. Jouni advanced his infantry from both flanks and engaded with my troops, specially the inexperienced masses on my right flank, luckily they were able to hold the Germans long enough for my Guerilla Cell and Big Swords to reach the objective in the middle of the field and win the game!

BA10 has blown the enemy armour and Guerilla Cell is approaching the objective.

GAME 2 RESULT: VICTORY FOR CHINA

Jouni got more kills, but that didn't matter, I got just few kills in this game

GAME 3. Take and Hold vs. Tero's Germans

Once again my "horde type" army with plenty of infantry allowed me to secure 2/3 already R1 and 3/3 from R2 onwards.

 So the game was decided very fast and my opponent didn't really seem to have his heart in it. Also I think I was quite a bit more experienced in Bolt Action. As mentioned, this tournament was not "SWISS", but paired Allies vs. Axis and also aimed to pair new opponents against one another.

GAME 3 RESULT: DECISIVE VICTORY FOR CHINA

In this game I also got a lot of units kills, possibly as many as 7.

CONCLUSIONS

After three rounds there were just 2 players with 3 victories under their belts, me and Markus L., whom also played in Allies with his Soviet force, so it was a double victory for Allies.

I was then crowned winner as I had more kills, as a tiebreaker, from the three games.

Winning is of course nice (with some prize support from Warlord as well), but I felt I had an easy path to it, as my last round opponent was not paired by SWISS. Anyway, a fun day and it helped me to finish more models to my Chinese army!

New conscripts and BA10