I have been playing Bolt Action for a couple of years now. Though I am known more for painting than playing / strategy, many of the people I know talked up the Combat Patrol tourneys from previous AdeptiCons, so I made an effort to register and play this year.

The list requirements were simple. There were special rules for the event to keep the lists fun and in the spirit of a combat patrol rather than a full army.  A big one was 500pts maximum (here are the full event rules for reference). I decided that instead of hastily painting a new army, I would once more take my Finnish fellows for a spin. Here is the Army List I came up with:

Rifle Platoon
Platoon Commander – Veteran – 39 SMG	39pts
Kaukopartio Long Distance Recon Squad – Veteran – 5 men – 70 SMGs and ATGs Fanatics Medic Deep Strike Mission	115pts
Recon/Light Infantry Squad – Veteran – 6 men – 78 Masters of the Hunt – 6	84pts
Rifle Squad – Regular – 7 men – 70 LMG – 15 x1 Panzerfaust – 15	100pts
Rifle Squad – Regular – 9 men – 90 LMG – 15	105pts
Light Mortar Team – Regular – 30	30pts
Anti-tank Team – Regular – 25 AT Rifle	25pts
Total – 7 Order Dice	498pts

I tried to keep it simple with only one Platoon and no vehicles. I wasn’t sure if I would run into a list with vehicles, so I took the Anti-tank Team and a single Panzerfaust in case there were some sneaky tanks. Both of these turned out to be good decisions. All three of my games saw my opponents fielding Light Tanks. The AT Rifle kept them nervous, and the Panzerfaust was used in two of the games, destroying a tank in one and missing completely on the other.

Ultimately, my success was based on the large number of Infantry I had, along with the Finnish Sisu Army Special Rule of troops “upgrading” once they have lost half the original unit strength. For example, the Light Mortar would take fire, lose one man, Sisu would kick in, and the remaining man would upgrade to Veteran. Plus, the Veteran units I already had would go up to Morale 11 once they reached half strength. The staying power of these units at a 500pt game was the deciding factor in all three of my games.

To my complete surprise (and possibly the surprise of a few others as well) I went 3-0 and tied for 1st. The magic of multiple tie-breakers saw me fall to 3rd place in the final standings. I had zero expectations of doing anything close to that well, so I am still somewhat in shock.

Now there is only one thing left to do: time to paint a new army!