A Bolt Action Campaign, part 2

Last week, we played our second battle in the Bolt Action may 1940 campaign we started. This time the german invaders came to face the first real defence line: the Peel-Raam stelling. Though the line was supposed to be abandoned, the troops arround the village of Mill found themselves engaged on the 10th of may and unable to withdraw. 

The dutch defence consisted out of pillbixes along a water filled anti tank ditch (defensie kanaal), then minefields and barbed wire defences and subsequently two lines of defensive entrenched positions. The germans managed to cross the defence lines early on in other places through the use of an armoured train and at other sectors of the line where the dutch forces had already been ordered to withdraw.

As a game scenario we used a modified attacker-defender scenario(breakthrough) from the main book. The german objective is to get troops behind the dutch defensive lines, the dutch need to prevent that from happening. Because of the german breakthrough's they are allowed to outflank.

We used our homebrew hidden setup for the 750 points dutch forces. The germans had 1000 points of attackers availlable. They put an officer and two infantry squads in outflank. Then they advanced their artillery, mortar and free air observer into the area with the small woods, since that offered virtually the only cover for the germans. The preliminary barrage caused a fair number of pin markers.

The first turn of the game the dutch used to rally as many of their units, except for the pillboxes who opened fire on the advancing german infantry. The germans used their panzer 2 tank (represented by the pzr4, due to a lack of an appropriate model)to screen their infantry. Because hidden units can only suffer pin markers (house rule) the deadly accurate mortar fire did not yet wreak havoc, but pinned the  units that Michael thought would most likely be the dutch light howitzer present.

The second and third turns saw the germans suffer casualties due to fire from the dutch pillboxes. A dutch artillery barage failed to cause any lasting impressions, but the german luftwaffe airstrike did cause a considerable amount of pinmarkers. The dutch inexperienced captain proved a worthwhile investment, his +3  within 12" on morale and order tests allowing me to rally and keep putting units on ambush. 

The deadly german mortar and light howitzer managed to virtually destroy a dutch infantry squad defending the lines. Luckily for me this was my 'free' squad, so i would not have to replace them in the post battle campaign sequence.

By the fourth turn the germans had, at a cost, taken the three dutch pillboxes. The dutch however, despite the accurate german artillery, still firmly held the trenchlines with multiple units on ambush. A few fluke dicerolls had even enabled them to save two of the three pillbix crews from destruction and retreive them safely behind the lines. 

On the fifth turn the first german outflanking units showed up, unfortunately, the veteran pioneers failed to show...the remaining german infantry unit was badly mauled by the dutch artillery piece in ambush, and the german officer first lost his aide and was subsequently taken down in assault. 

On the last two turns the pioneers heroicly managed to save the day by showing up and destroying the dutch artillery piece in assault, winning the game for the germans. Because we are playing a campaign and casualtues can be hard to replace, both sides conserved their forces. In the last turns there were no last ditch assaults that would have occured if this was a one-off: the risk of losing a lot if troops without gaining significant advantage was just to great. 

The germans suffered quite few casualties, but because they won the game were able to tend to their wounded and received enough reinforcements to recoup their loses. The dutch however could not replace al the lost infantry, starting to feel the strain of a campaign game. The homebrew scenario felt balanced and the battle was a tence affair right untill the last turns. The hidden/fog of war markers worked well again: the germans focused their fire on a unit they thought was the dutch artillery piece, while in truth it was the dutch medic, and the artillery was safe behind the lines in ambush, waiting for the outflank.

Next time, the dutch are going to try to retake the lost positions in a counter attack, switching the roles of attacker and defender.