Bolt Action AAR: Red Devils and British infantry vs. Fallschirmjäger

I had another game of Bolt Action again this week. More or less an improvised game with whatever people had with them. This time we had a small Red Devils detachment played by me holding onto a crossroads against a larger force of Fallschirmjägers. Reinforcements were coming later in the form of a platoon of British infantry fresh off the beaches of Normandy.

Fallshirmjäger:
- HQ
- Medic
- 3 Squads
- Mortar
- 37cm Flak

British:
- 2 x HQ (Airborne and regular)
- Medic
- Forward observer
- 2 Squads of Airborne
- 1 Vickers MMG
- 3 Regular infantry squads

The table had quite a lot of heavy cover in the form of Bocage and some buildings. In the background you can see another table that had a game of Chain of Command between Soviets and Germans going on.

Most of the British Airborne were in position in the Bocage surrounding the crucial crossroads.

Some very lucky dice rolling on my part managed to bring in an artillery strike on turn two straight on top of the majority of the Fallshirmjäger force causing large amounts of pins which slowed their attack down.

One squad of Fallshirmjägers makes it to a house overlooking the crossroads, but starts taking casualties from British fire and quickly becomes fairly ineffective due to large numbers of Pins and losing their MG's.

Shooting intensifies across the road and the British start taking casualties. The sergeant of this squad managed to evade death 3 times in a row thanks to the Medic being close by. Still he succumbed finally when the German Flak arrived and started shooting 37mm HE ammo at the Bocage.

Things are starting to look a bit bad for the Airborne as one squad has already lost over half it's men and the commanding sergeant and the rest are taking pins.

Luckily the relief force starts to arrive and quickly makes its way towards to crossroads.

One Fallshirmjäger squad moves to their flank to discourage any attempts at attacking through there. They eventually shoot up one of the relief squads, before moving back towards the rest of their force.

The Flak team has been harassing the British flanks for quite a while already so I deem it is time to put it out of action for good. The final Airborne squad moves out of their position to attack and destroy the gun. Success, but at the loss of 3 men.

The Germans are getting desperate and assault across the road against the British regulars wiping one squad out. However their victory doesn't last long as the remaining Tommys blast away killing most of them and the rest break off after failing a morale test.

In the last moments of the battle the final regular infantry squad still left standing assaults across the roads to destroy the last German squad. They are successful in the task, but lose most of their own men.

Victory for the British again, though with a much closer fought battle. In the end the Germans had their HQ team, medic and mortar still left standing while the Brits had the remnants of two Airborne Squads, a MMG, their HQ and medical section and some regulars. My lucky artillery strike really slowed the Germans down and gave more time for the reinforcements to arrive. By the time they arrived my right flank was pretty badly mauled and would probably not have lasted for another turn. However reinforcements forced the Germans to split up more and they couldn't concentrate their fire too well.