14th Army take on the Tojos

Japanese advance through the jungle

Yesterday evening at Maunsfield Gaming we had another bash at Bolt Action pitting my 14th Army against my Japanese. Adie and myself would play the 14th Army while James would take on the Japanese.

I created two forces of just over 600pts each:


British:

• 1st Lieutenant plus Platoon Sergeant
• Artillery Forward Observer
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Thompson, Bren gunner & loader, 7 Riflemen with Lee Enfield
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Thompson, Bren gunner & loader, 7 Riflemen with Lee Enfield
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Sten, Bren gunner & loader, 7 Riflemen with Lee Enfield
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Sten, Bren gunner & loader, 7 Riflemen with Lee Enfield
• Vickers MMG with three crew

Japanese:

• Rikugun Choi
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Type 100, M99 gunner & loader, 8 Riflemen with Arisaka
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Arisaka, M99 gunner & loader, 8 Riflemen with Arisaka
• Rifle Squad: NCO with Arisaka, M99 gunner & loader, 8 Riflemen with Arisaka
• Type 89 light mortar with two crew
• Type 89 light mortar with two crew
• Type 89 light mortar with two crew
• Type 92 MMG with three crew

The terrain this time

This time we rolled up the I set up a table of terrain again, I had been busy over the last couple of days and had managed to bash out another 16 bases of jungle terrain so had even more thickets on the table. As the whole table is meat to represent light jungle, the brown felt areas represent thicker parts. Our house rule is that you can fire through one piece of felt counting as soft terrain and two pieces counting as hard terrain. Again a clearing was laid out containing the village, the village tiles were butted together this time and the 'open' areas on the tile represent the only clear piece of the table.

A shot from the other side of the table

We rolled up a mission and would be playing Maximum Attrition, so at the start of the game, all that was deployed on the table was the British Forward observer. In the first turn, both sides made small advances onto the table, both jockeying for advantage. Both the British and Japanese were obviously concentrating towards the village, although wary of the Forward Observer, the Japanese were spreading out a bit more than the British. As the last order of the first turn the Forward Observer placed his fire order and called in the guns.

The advancing British, just before the 25pdrs start landing

At the start of turn 2 we rolled for the effect of the barrage and it came up a '1', James duly moved the aim point and placed it just in front of our troops massing near the village and an 11" diameter blast zone was rolled up. The British had their HQ, three Rifle sections and the Vickers under the template, apart from the HQ they all acquired two or three pin markers from the bombardment. That is twice in my only two games that this has happened to me!

It was pretty much game over from here, with only a single un-pinned Rifle section the British were soon getting shot to pieces by the Japanese, the Vickers was shot up completely and two rifle sections soon ratcheted up nine pin markers through accurate light mortar bombardments and small arms fire and were duly removed.

Tommy sees off the Banzai charge

Only one bright spot for the British was that one Rifle section occupied the village and first shot up a Japanese Rifle section which then Banzai charged them and was destroyed in the following combat and then shot up a light mortar. However, by turn six, along with the HQ this Section was all that remained of our force and in the sixth turn they rolled a double six for their order and FUBAR-ed out of there.

Really not a good day for the British at all. At the end of the game, the Japanese have only lost one Rifle Squad and one Light Mortar, all the British have left is one Rifle Section and their First Lieutenant.

Things are not going well.

Another shot of that Banzai Charge