Bolt Action Patrol Scenario - Roadblock!

Brit Paras defend a roadblock, aided by the thematic dice bag

That wily Herr Flick of the Gestapo is a cunning chap!  Last week he was bagged by the Red Devils before he could divulge the information he obtained from interrogating General Urquart regarding the tea and biscuit supply caches supporting Monty’s 21st Army Group.  

Now it seems that the wily Boche agent, seeing that his capture was imminent, scrawled the details of at least one of the supply dumps on the wall of the villa in which he was ensconced. A rag-tag Kampfgruppe has been dispatched to destroy it, but the men of the Airborne Brigade once again stand in their way...

This was another 500 point Patrol game - the Roadblock Scenario from OP SEALION.  I took my standard 3 vet squad British Airborne list against club buddy Steve’s German list.  This was the first time I had played BA with Steve and his list was quite atypical from what I have faced before.  He had a Veteran 5 man squad with Assault Rifles, 2 Regular Heer Squads, a wonderfully characterful though inexperienced Kriegsmarine Squad and an inexperienced MMG team in support.  It was a lot of targets to shoot at.

Stephen's wonderful Kriegsmarine squad - I had a morale dilemma shooting at them (at first)

I was set up with 2 veteran squads in position at the barricade and they would prove typically difficult to dislodge. Steve pushed hard down my right flank, leading with his cannon fodder sailor squad (which it pained me to shoot at), followed by his better troops. From the start my dice were very good, the sniper taking out the MMG and the LMG from another squad the next turn, and my medium mortar was devastating once it ranged in on Turn 3.  The handfuls of dice that the four SMGs in each of my squads threw out once in range were most useful too (very useful of the smaller 4 x 4 playing area).

Jerry grabs the road block - but can he hold onto it?

Nevertheless, Steve cleverly used the available cover (including his less valuable troops!) and in Turn 6 assaulted the roadblock, eliminating the Paras holding it to contest the objective and draw the game.  Unfortunately for him, a Turn 7 then ensued and my reserves eliminated his forward elements, while my mortar dropped a final salvo on his beleaguered regulars and routed the last Germans from the field.

A fun game but perhaps the scenario was a little unbalanced by our use of open force selection – those Brit Paras were just too tough for Steve to dislodge in an equal points game.  Perhaps another 20% of force to the Germans to account for the scenario would balance it better.

Love love LOVE this model and how Stephen painted him.
He is the ginger Captain Haddock of the Third Reich!
A lot more comfortable in his U-Boat than the trenches though :-)

While my dashing Red Devils are serving me well, I have been playing them since 2014 and I need to change it up a bit and get some variety.  I am going to play about with some lists now to do something different, drop some points and get an armoured car into the mix.  At the same time, one of the other club guys is going to try a Hanomag focused force which at 500 points will be challenging to counter.  

Overall, its an interesting shift in gaming approach for me - I have always gone with historical ORBATs and this is the first time I have ever tried to optimise a force within a point limits disregarding that entirely.  In any event, it demonstrates the utility of the BA system and simply dropping to 500 points is giving this game an entirely new feel and lease of life with us.  More to follow!