The Battle for Bastogne Part 2 of 2. Bastogne was the focus of our 2025 Big Ass Bolt Action Battle (BABAB). We played with roughly 4,700 pts of Germans vs. 4,300 pts of Americans on the outskirts of Bastogne. Despite it being a warm and sunny fall day just outside my garage I attempted to convey the cold of the Ardennes with the terrain.

The American 101st Airborne, backed up by a small contingent of tank destroyers and Shermans valiantly defended the town from dug in foxholes in the woods and the crumbled buildings and farms at the edges of town. Breaking through the fog a motley collection of German forces lined up to make a big push and break the defender’s backs.

Please enjoy a smattering of photos in no particular order!

The German commander demanded the surrender of all defending forces. This was returned with a response on a post-it note by the American commander player saying “Deez Nuts!”! In addition to our modern take on the response of “Nuts” by General McAuliffe we did take few other creative liberties such as German SS forces assisting in the assault and a few other non-factual bits so don’t judge too harshly rivet counters out there!

As usual for our game, I divided the nine players into two teams and they appointed an overall commander. The commander would help guide decisions and would be provided with special strategy cards to hand out as needed. I make up special decks for our games every year to add some additional strategy. I also made out little “nameplates” for each unit that corresponded with their stat sheet. This helped add a lot of flavor in addition to helping keep track of units on the field. Order dice would be drawn and two units would activated a time with the caveat being they couldn’t be in adjacent sectors so we could keep things moving.

The annual BABAB always starts by me reading the briefings/ objectives for each side, a little history of the actual battle and all of us sharing a toast to those that fought and died. Even though it is a game we want to show due reverence. My wife likes to take part as well and prepared a great lunch of schnitzel and sauerkraut as well as some snacks and pastries as specific as she could to the region. This is of course in addition to all the snacks and adult beverages we enjoyed throughout the day. We also had a couple spectators who stopped over to hang out and enjoy the camaraderie.

The battle VPs were based on 9 objective points worth anywhere from 1 to 5 victory points. In addition, for every 5 units destroyed, 1 additional victory point was awarded. There were several special rules in play as well; low fuel for the Germans and low ammo for the Americans. I wasn’t sure how much of a hindrance it would be to each side. The excellent dice rolls on both sides unfortunately made this a non-issue eliminating the drama these situations may have created.

The Americans were dug in and the Germans sent in a preliminary barrage (rather late as I totally forgot in the beginning… whoops) In addition the Americans had two minefields (one real and one dummy) and roughly half their forces were in reserve at the start. There was a heavy fog which also randomly lifted on turn two giving the Americans air power and the Germans losing the ability to move up under cover. I made a ruling for snow as well and simply made it if you ran in snow you gained a pin marker to simulate exhaustion.

The game was a blast, but unfortunately for the Germans they never really gained much momentum. From the get go they struggled. By the end of turn three the Americans had already destroyed 11 units and the Germans had only responded with 2. A devastating American artillery barrage effectively wiped out several German units, delayed advancement to the objectives and some great dice rolls taking out some big cats early on. A very coordinated effort by the Americans saw the Germans on the backfoot the entire game.
By the end of turn 5 the Americans were at 16 units killed (worth 3 pts) and the Germans were at 7 (worth 1 pt).

We eventually called the game after turn 5 as there was no chance the Germans were going to muster any significant comeback. Objectives were lopsided as well with the Americans claiming 14 pts worth compared to the Germans 8pts. (Though it might of actually been 5pts …I’m questioning my memory now…) After it was all added up the final score was Americans 17 to 9 (or maybe 6 if I was wrong….). Sometimes our games are close, but this one was a major victory for the Americans. Currahee!

In my opinion had the dice gods looked down more favorably on the Germans in offense/ defense (or even threw them a small bone to offset their horrible luck!), if the fog and low ammo had actually favored the Germans and had they been on their game (the Amercians operated much more cohesively and the German players…. well it had apparently been a long war already …… lol) the end result would’ve been much closer I’m guessing.

Regardless it was a super fun day. It sounded like everyone had fun, with good food and drink and lots of tense dice rolling and laughs. That’s a wrap. Looking forward to next year’s BABAB!