TO Report- Operation Autumn Mist

The first Victorian Bolt Action League event for 2019 has now come and gone.

Operation Autumn Mist was a 1000-point event hosted at Good Games Melbourne, organised by yours truly. The event was a narrative style gaming day, where the sides were split between Axis and Allies sides to fight for glory.

I honestly want to say that I am proud of the Victorian Bolt Action community at the moment, and running this event has made me keen to play more games. Everyone has been really positive and is playing in good spirits. I had no issues with any players, and all rules disputes were resolved very smoothly.

I think that players are becoming more conscious that our events are not tournaments, but instead are simply gaming days where people can roll dice and have a laugh. A lot of the people in our community don’t play regularly, and our events every 2-3 months might be the only time they get out to game, which means they don’t want to play in a super competitive environment.

Operation Autumn Mist didn’t have a podium to encourage people to be more relaxed, and this has definitely worked. People are still playing for a tactical and strategic game, but no one is rocking up with ‘cooked’ lists or trying to ‘curb stomp’ new players, which is encouraging to see. This is reflective of my own philosophy that Bolt Action shouldn’t be played to a highly competitive level because the rules aren’t built to allow a win at all costs mentality, they are instead primarily designed to simulate historical engagements between hobbyists.

We did have some awards though, so congratulations to the following players for their efforts on the day!

Best Painted- Kate Cross/ Andrew Baxter for a great German force

Best Theme- Byron Bornhorst for his Canadian force

Best Allied General- Tristan James with his Soviets

Best Axis General- Nick Beattie with his Germans

For awards and objective marker swag, I had some acrylic cut outs made up thanks to Module-R Terrain, check them out! > https://moduler.com.au/

Adding some flavour to our games

I wanted to run something a little bit different for this one, so I decided to write some additional special rules to give the event some extra flavour. We normally play basic matched play games in Victoria, where it is simply a platoon fighting another platoon. While this is fine, there are so many cool rules in campaign books and other resources that don’t get used!

At first, my plans were to go a little bit over the top. I wanted to have a pairing system where each side had a general that would decide on match ups throughout the day. The idea was to give the feeling of each side being a team rather than a bunch of individuals on the same side. However, two weeks from the event I decided that this would be too much on the day for whoever was going to be the designated generals. We were working with tight time constraints, and from past experience it takes at least 15 minutes to complete any meaningful matchup processes between two or more people, and that was time we didn’t have. Unfortunately, this idea was axed.

My plan also involved having a map of the world to represent where the two sides were fighting, with pieces on the map moving or being destroyed to indicate victories and defeats. Unfortunately, this plan also fell through when it emerged that I needed to gumby the event as we had an uneven number of players. This was a little disappointing, however the map was always going to be a nice touch rather than a key feature.

I also wanted to add some flavour to the games themselves. I planned to do this by giving each table unique mission special rules that reflected the terrain. At first, I think I went over the top trying to put 3-4 special rules on each table, however upon reflection I decided that it would be too much, especially for the newer players. I decided to go with 1-2 special rules each table to strike a balance between enough flavour but not have anything too game breaking.

So in summary, I’ve found it difficult to add things to an event where game time and player skill are both big considerations. In the future, I know we will want to try different things to make our events different from one event to the next. We can obviously do this through changing points values or mixing up scenarios, however I’m also searching for other ways that are interesting and immersive for players. I don’t want to get to the point where events get stale because they are the same thing over and over again. The search continues!

Allies Victory

The Allies came out ahead, a total of four games clear of the Axis.

I wasn’t at all surprised that the Allies would do well. Most of the new players at the event were playing Axis, and the Allies had some very experienced players on their side. Even with a gumby list and playing the attacker in the Point Defence scenario, the Allies were comfortably the winners.

What is interesting is that all of the Axis lists were German, with the exception being Jon’s Chinese who were evening up the sides. We had some discussion about this on the VBAL Facebook page, but it seems that Germans are such an attractive army that most people flock to them rather than other Axis armies. Reasons for this include having the coolest tanks, having a diverse selection of theatres and time periods to theme an army around, and the fact that Germans have the biggest range of plastic models available. All of these reasons for collecting Germans are valid, but it would be cool to see some of the other Axis armies floating around! Where are all the Italians and Japanese at?

Another interesting point is the dynamic of having events that are Allies vs Axis on a regular basis, as I think we’ve done for the last few events. No one has done this to my knowledge yet, but you could conceivably start gearing your armies with the knowledge that you won’t be playing mirror match ups. This is particularly useful information for Allies players, who can expect to mostly play Germans when in these events (I know for the last three events I’ve played in, I’ve played eight of nine games against Germans!)

This might mean that an Allied player could take more anti-tank assets to deal with the bigger armour elements that Germans always bring. On the other hand, Axis players could get away with taking less anti-tank assets because they know that Allies typically bring less armour.

Mission Special Rules

Most of the feedback from the mission special rules was that it was interesting but didn’t impact the game that much. Maybe that is a good thing? However, I just want to discuss a couple of the feedback points.

The Rhine

My favourite scenario was the one I wrote for Jael’s board, which is a European board with a bridge and river going through the centre. I wanted to try something different, so made the bridge the central objective.

However, the twist was that the side with the most models within 3” of the bridge was the winner, rather than the most units. Also, officers counted as five models to this, making them a very valuable piece rather than just an officer tax. This scenario is taken from inspiration from scenarios in Age of Sigmar, where having the most models on objectives is key.

I received mixed feedback from this one, particularly that it naturally favoured armies with high model counts. I’m honestly okay with this, as it is a good balance to the low model count Veteran armies that we often see.

The scenario also makes for some interesting tactical decisions around when you want to commit your forces to the objective. Do you go in early to get a good position, but be vulnerable to HE and assault teams? Or do you hold back and make a play for the objective in the late game? I watched this table closely and saw players do different things which was interesting.

Having a different win condition also forced players to adapt to and move away from traditional ways of thinking about winning games of Bolt Action, which is a good thing in my opinion. Watch this space, I may be using a similar scenario to this in the future!

Surprise Attack

This was a European board playing the Point Defence scenario. This scenario is typically very difficult for the attacking player to win as the three objectives are simply too far back for them to reliably get infantry to without losing lots of their forces on the way in.

To counteract this, my plan was to have Limited Visibility rules in place for the first two turns of the game, representing a dawn assault. The idea was to give the attacking player a couple of turns of cover to help move up the board.

I don’t think this was enough however, and Point Defence is still just too heavily slanted in favour of the defending force. Not to say that it is an impossible mission, however I think it is not a fair mission in events where both sides have the same number of points (ideally I think the attacker should get additional points!). Moving forward, I think I’m unlikely to use Point Defence again in an event.

I don’t think we have ever used Limited Visibility rules in an event before, and I think there is still weight in them as something that can change decision making early in the game. Another scenario we used the rule ‘fading light’ so turns 6 and 7 used Limited Visibility, which is also an option for future scenarios. Results are inconclusive, needs more testing!

There was an interesting interaction between the Limited Visibility rules and Tiger Fear though. I made the ruling that once you activate a unit that is in line of sight of a Tiger, you must roll on Limited Visibility to see if you can actually see it, before taking the Tiger Fear test. I think this is the correct ruling, but keen to see what other people think!

Winter games

We were lucky to have a couple of winter themed boards at Operation Autumn Mist. Unfortunately, I found it difficult writing rules for winter tables that weren’t too detrimental to the game.

In ‘White Out’, which was using the Sectors scenario, I ruled that the two neutral zones counted as deep snow (rough ground). I really wanted to use the deep snow rules, but knew that having the entire board count as rough ground would slow the game too much (and cripple any army with wheeled vehicles!). The compromise was to have the neutral zones only count as deep snow, which I hoped would be balanced enough. In hindsight, I still think this slows the game too much because games really turn into a slow slog when units aren’t able to use Run orders as much as possible. I would still like to find a way to make deep snow work in a game as it is very thematic, but alas will have to try something else next time. Perhaps the board would need a few roads that help armies navigate the snow?

In ‘Ghost Town,’ I wanted to use the rules for Frostbite which are in the Soviet book. Frostbite means that before starting the game, each infantry and artillery unit takes a morale check and loses a man for each point failed by. Upon feedback from the Baconburger boys, we decided this rule was too brutal and could lead to some sad players if they get too unlucky with their dice. I modified the rule to make it that you only suffer one casualty, no matter how much you fail the test by. Again, this rule change probably went too far the other way because I think it has too little impact on the game- oh you lost one man, big deal! Maybe D3 casualties would have been better, but then small teams would be too harshly penalised. So perhaps even a sliding scale for how big the unit is?

Summary

At the end of the day, Operation Autumn Mist was a big success and it was a pleasure organising the day.

Overall, I think my attempt to add flavour to games with scenarios had mixed success. Some scenarios were good, some had little impact (in fact I spoke to one person who kept forgetting about the special rules completely!). I don’t think any of them were completely game breaking or led to negative play experiences, so at least that is a success!

We are going to continue running cool and interesting events for VBAL in 2019, so stay tuned for what’s coming up.

Also, if you are interested in putting your hand up to run an event this year, give us a heads up! We will give you support and make it an enjoyable experience, I promise!

- Lachie