Retreat! A Bolt Action scenario

Today I did a play test of a Bolt Action scenario. The idea is to have one army retreating from another, while a column of refugees are fleeing down a road. We played the game as a blitzkrieg scenario, with British and French against the invading Germans, but it should be usable for all parts of the war. In this play test we used what models we had available, and what felt right. We didn't count the points very carefully (both sides had 1100-1200 points) and we didn't optimize. Our test  game ended in a 18-18 draw.

Retreat

version 1.1

A group of refugees are fleeing the attacking army down a road. The Attacker is trying to wipe out the Defender's units, while the Defender is trying to retreat off the board, while protecting themselves and the refugees. 

The Refugees

The refugee group start 36” from the Defenders board edge on a road going from long edge to long edge. At the start of each turn they will move 1D6+6 inches towards the Defenders board edge. When they reach that edge they will be removed from the board.
The goal of the Defender is to move off their own board edge before the game is over. However, they will not be allowed to do this until the refugees have moved off the board.

The Geneva Convention

The refugees can not be attacked, and are treated as a friendly unit when it comes to shooting (so you can only shoot 1” away, like normal). If a unit is in the way of the refugees when they move, that unit is pushed away.

Setup

The Defender sets up at least half of their units 12-24” from their board edge, the rest in reserve.
The Attacker have at least half of their units in a first wave, coming in on the first turn, and the rest in reserve.

Preliminary Bombardment

The Defender is hit with a Preliminary Bombardment on a 2+.



Six turns, 4+ for a seventh.

Victory

The Defender get 2 victory points for each friendly unit that gets off the board.
The Defender get 1 victory point for each Attacker unit killed.



The Attacker get 2 victory points for each Defender unit killed.
The Attacker get 1 victory point for each unit within 12” of the Defender's board edge.



A unit which never gets on the board counts as destroyed.

The last of the WWII Swedes (for now)

I finished the truck a little while ago, and have now finished the mortar and the MMG as well. The truck is a plastic Warlord Opel Blitz (that's easier to find than a Volvo or Scania in 1:56 ;) ).

For the weapon teams I replaced the Polish bodies with their square cap with two plastic guys, the kneeling ones with binoculars. As before these are mid war German bodies with Japanese heads.

We'll end with a preview of what's coming; WWII Chinese! I've bought a bunch of Copplestone Castings Warlord Chinese, but since these come in packs of ten and should be arranged in units of fourteen I need to fill out the numbers a bit (as well as converting some LMGs later). Here to start with are some levy troops. They are made from dark age plastic bodies, with German arms and mainly Soviet heads.

Even more Swedes!

Here are some more WW2 Swedes in 28 mm.

First we have a Bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun. Seeing as Bofors is a Swedish company, at least one of their creations was a must-have, and I opted for some anti-tank capabilities. The model is a Polish one from Warlord Games.

Next we have some infantry, this is based on a Polish squad with greatcoats. All non-helmeted heads were replaced with plastic German heads with forage-caps. Some of the kit is wrong for Swedes (the entrenching tool for example), but all in all they're a quite good fit.

 Then we have another squad, based on converted plastics. The fourth guy from the left in the back row has a converted kulsprutepistol m/37-39 SMG.

Return to the Mansions of Madness

Here are some painted cultists, thralls, zombies and some various others for the Mansions of Madness board game. A few more scenarios should now be playable with fully painted miniatures.

Painted Stridsvagn m/41 (the Swedish Panzer 38 (t) )

The Stridsvagn m/41 I converted two weeks ago have now been painted. It is in the quite cool Swedish camouflage scheme which, unlike most others, used quite a lot of black. The real look was probably a bit more drab than this, but I like the look, and it's more visible on the table top.

The Swedish made Panzer 38(t): Strv m/41

During the 1930's Sweden hummed and hawed about whether to buy tanks, and if so which type. As so many other countries they got worried in the latter part of the decade, and finally ended up ordering a number of Czech tanks. These, however, were ceased by the Germans before dispatch, but they did agree to let Sweden make their own tanks from the drawings as compensation. In total Sweden made about 200 of the now renamed Stridsvagn m/41, most of them by the truck manufacturer Scania in the town of Södertälje.

It still looked remarkably like the Czech variant, the differences partly hidden or not visible on a model. The weapons were Swedish instead of Czech (so I've turned the main gun upside down and I'm still using the wrong machine guns), and the motor were Swedish. The Swedish tower had two periscopes instead of one, some small parts are different (most of them I don't know what they are), and the Swedish tanks always had extra road-wheels behind the tower. I've also turned the front plate upside down; hopefully it's such a good conversion you can't even see it.

You can read more about this tank here and if you read Swedish I recommend this excellent site.

The French Char B1 bis tank

This is a French Char B1 bis I bought at the same time as the Schneider P16 and the 222 from Warlord Games. It's a plastic kit, made by Italeri, and I must say that I prefer it to both resin kits. The only thing I'd complain about is the construction of the turret; the slots stick out too far to the side, so it can't actually rotate! If you want to shoot to the left or backwards you actually have to take it out, turn it 180 degrees, and then put it back backwards...
The guns came with pre-drilled barrels, a technique I hope Warlord takes after any year now. ;) 

This was the first time I experimented with putting mud in the tracks (oh, and that's another complaint, the tracks look quite flat in between the wheels and the tracks). It's just made with mixing fine sand and brown paint, easy peasy, and looks quite good I think!

At first I tried to replicate a brown and green camo pattern I saw online, but when that didn't look as impressive as I'd hoped I changed my mind and added the beige as well. Looks much better now. Hope you like it!