Hello all,
This past Sunday I got a chance to play Bolt Action at the
TGS monthly get together. They decided to go with a Halloween theme so that
meant the supernatural. Specifically Zombies! The forces were US Airborne vs.
Nazis with French partisans and of course herds of Zombies. The standard Bolt
Action rules were modified to allow a role playing feel and one of the TGS
members took the role of GM and ran all the encounters (and the Undead.) I was given command of three support US medium
machine gun (MMG) squads as well as my squad leader representative miniature.
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| That's my team in the front by the river. |
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| My boys don't like bridges. They are too easy to destroy. |
The Game ran for 4 hours and our mission (or at
least mine as several of the players had different “objectives” to attain) was
to stop the airplane located at the other end of the board from taking off. Others
had the mission to take the town. None of us were expecting Zombies (ok all of
us knew Zombies were going to be there but that is the whole role playing thing.)
Things were going fine until we got closed to the town having only encountered
1 Zombie and losing a couple of guys to bites. We soon learned that once bitten
a model converts to Zombie status within 2 turns. Soon things got crazy when we realized that
the Germans had been ravaged by the starting Zombies and now the Herds were
more like hordes. Worse they were really hard to kill! The Zombies had several unique rules that made
them very much like modern depictions of the undead.
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| Covering ground field by field |
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| Moving up the trucks |
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| About the point where things got weird |
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| Things seem normal... A little too normal |
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| My team again. Notice my rep is laying down on the job. |
As for my squads we pushed forward with our mission even
ignoring requests for aid from other squad leaders. Did I mention that I was directly under the
command of the overall CO for our side and did not fall under anyone else’s
structure. I am also convinced that my squads and “The Major” were Army Intelligence
and not main stream . There is that roleplaying again. :)
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| We started taking sniper fire from the marked building. |
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| Our first encounter with the undead did not go so well |
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| TAKE OUT THAT SNIPER! |
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| Drop a mortar round on the building?... |
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| BOOM! |
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| No more Sniper. |
While the rest of our force pushed into the
town (or at least tried to) I (Squad leader)
commandeered the heavy truck with a 50Cal. and opened up on the plane that was
preparing to taxi and leave (ending the game I think) My shooting was
ineffectual and while doing this the MMG support squads were attacked by former
US paratroopers now Zombies. One of my squads were bitten several times before
defeating the attackers.
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| Zombies are attracted by noise |
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| he GM makes a call |
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| We changed out the "explosion" marker (a wadded up paper bag) with a smoke marker |
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| A zombie herd moving across a field |
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| Advance to the town. |
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| More zombies in town |
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| Oh Crap... |
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| About to snag me a ride |
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| Super Zombie!!! (kind of like Resident Evil) |
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| Plane is about to taxi. Shoot it! |
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My squads after facing their former allies (note the red
bitten markers)
The Major is on the far right and is about to take action!
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The next turn the Major rushed forward with his Sub-machine
gun and was able to do what the 50 could not. He took down the plane (let’s
just say an amazing amount of 6’s were rolled) and prevented it from escaping. As
it was after 5PM we called the game there. Lots of other stuff happened but I
would like to leave the details to others who survived the encounter.
In the end the Super Zombie escaped and the Major ordered the rest of the town cleared and all witnesses (including anyone not under direct command of the Major eliminated. I would assume the town was torched and all evidence destroyed.
Over all the game was amazing. Bolt action is a lot of fun though I did find the machine gun rules a little underwhelming. I will definitely play it again. Thanks to the TGS (you know who you are) for putting this on.
Also...
I forgot to mention that we had food. lots of food.
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| Mmmm Pie |
Later
RGH
