Well TundraCon 2026 is in the books. TundraCon is a very small con, but gives me the opportunity to get some con games in before the monster that is AdeptiCon. Players for both games were awesome as usual. Some repeat regulars and some new faces. I’m pretty sure everyone had fun and that’s all that matters when pushing plastic and metal figures around for an afternoon. I’ve been fortunate to have great players for all my events.

This year I ran “Hold the Line – Siege of Bastogne” – for Bolt Action with the 101st holding the line in the Ardennes. I based it mostly on the scenario from the Battle of the Bulge campaign book. I purposely left the board 4×4 instead of 6×4 and fully covered in woods to really bring home the feeling of lack of visibility and confinement being in the frozen forest. I had four players and each side had around 1850 pts.

I took some of the house rules I used for the BABAB Bastogne game I ran in September (click here to check that out) and slightly modified them with different victory conditions. The scenario takes place in late December 1944 before the arrival of Patton’s armor. Basically it’s just the battered 101st airborne and a couple take destroyers hastily brought up to plug a gap in the line.

Besides lack of armor the 101st would be dealing with ammo shortages from the repeated German assaults they had already been fending off. This would be reflected by giving the allied player 50 “ammo boxes” they needed to secretly disperse to their 14 infantry or artillery units. That meant in a potential 7 turn game not everyone would have ammo every turn. However, they wouldn’t be shooting every turn either as the enemy approached. The 101st would also have a “ammo bearer” model that counted for no points, couldn’t be killed and as it moved into contact with a unit it would give them 2 boxes of ammo.

The Germans were dealing with a lack of fuel. They had 4 armored vehicles and 17+d6 units of fuel. Each unit would be secretly allocated units of fuel and would consume a unit of fuel every time it moved. To add a bit of a curve, the Tiger II would consume 2 units every movement. This created a further dilemma for the Germans as they would not have enough fuel to get all their units into the American lines and if a unit was destroyed that fuel was gone. Decision, decisions.

The board would have an 18″ line of sight due to fog and the forest. That would mean much of the engagement would be taking place at very close range. Vehicles could only move at an “Advance” order in the forest due to having to pick their way through the trees. Infantry could move as normal. However a “Run” move would automatically give a pin marker to represent exhaustion for running in the snow. Due to the whole board being woods all units would get a soft cover save regardless of where they were on the board to abstract the cover provided by drifts, trees, etc.. Foxholes would of course give a hard cover save.

The Americans started the game hidden and dug in on their 12” deployment zone. The only exception being the tank destroyers would come on as reserve with a penalty due to the horrible communications due to conditions at the time. For hidden set up each unit was assigned a number and placed on a secret map. They would be spotted by the Germans if they fired, moved or if an infantry unit was within 12” or a tank within 6” then they’d be placed on the board. Being dug in in the hard cover of foxholes the veteran 101st infantry was difficult to dislodge.

The Germans would move on from their board edge and would get a guaranteed preliminary bombardment to shell American positions. Also if the Germans lost an NCO their squads would suffer a -2 to leadership instead of the -1 due to morale being pretty low by this particular battle.

The American objectives were to hold their deployment zone getting victory points for each German unit destroyed and victory points for each of their units remaining in the deployment zone at the end of the game. The Germans would get one victory point for every American unit destroyed and two victory points for every German unit in the American deployment zone at games end.

The game started with a less than stellar preliminary bombardment, mostly because by the time the Germans came into visible range the veteran 101st infantry just shrugged off their pins they received from two turns earlier. The Germans moved up aggressively and engaged the forward units which stalled them for a bit, then continued their aggressive approach. This would pay off later. The dug in Americans gave the Germans a bit of delay and rolls to wound were tough against veteran troops.

A few brave 101st bazookas faced off against the thick armor of the Tiger II and the Panther. Hitting never seemed to be the issue… its always the Pen roll! The Americans showed an amazing amount of fire discipline, staying hidden as the Germans were well within 18”. The Tank Destroyers raced on and had a few duels with the panzers before ultimately being destroyed by one and swarmed with infantry on another, but not before the King Tiger was made a burning wreck. It had just rumbled over the first defensive berm as infantry nervously ducked for cover in front of it.

After numerous incredibly close range firefights and assaults we decided we would need to call the game after turn 6 regardless due to time. Upon ending the game the Germans had won with enough units in the Americans deployment zone tipping the scales decisively. However had the game continued to turn 7 it was unanimously agreed that barring some sort of fluke dice rolls the Americans could have turned the tide with their units as most of German units were pretty much depleted at that point. It was a great game and solicited many cheers and groans throughout, ending in spectacular fashion.

Very fun scenario. Those of you that played, thanks! I hope to see you again next year. Feel free to add anything I may have missed in the summary. Special thanks to some of my players for shooting me some photos and my friends Evan and Ben for helping ease the miniature loadout for me with so many of their very nice models.

Next up game two of TundraCon- The Raid on Innsmouth!