Reply To: Poland 1939 – Preparing for 80th Anniversary of World War II

[oriskany 60771xp 7]

Zooming in to the command-tactical level, @yavasa and I have already live-streamed some Poland Panzer Leader on the Sitrep Twitch Channel.

This was basically a playtest of the new counters and armies, but did try to take a very summery try at recreating part of the Battle of Borowa Góra.  A quick note, the map is rotated for better viewing on a landscape format, “north” is to the right.  German inits include the lead echelon of 1st Panzer Division, Polish units include 146th Regiment / 44th Reserve Division and 1st Light Tank Battalion.

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Ah, the “mighty” German Panzerwaffe of 1939. We’re looking at about 40 tanks here, roughly one battalion, or about 1/8 of 1st Panzer Division’s armored fighting power.

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Yavasa gets bold, wiping out a platoon of “Pioniere” assault engineers while they were still in my trucks. The nearby platoon of SdKfz 231/6s tried to break up this tankette attack, but failed.

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The Germans invest Polish tanks, and set up for their set-piece assault on the second Polish objective hex.

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The German assault begins in earnest, with infantry guns, mortars, and 7.5cms on PzKpfw IVs (note that silhouette is drawn to resemble a PzKpfw IV Ausf. B, but the values are approximate enough to represent either A or B 1st Panzer was using for Fall Weiss). But Yavasa is feeding in reinforcements into the battle, and close-assaulting German PzKpfw IIs originally used to spot the Polish defenders. Yes, German tanks are burning, and Polish cavalry are involved. This DID happen (German armored recon if memory serves), and can be successful if done carefully under the right circumstances.

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You can’t have a Poland 1939 campaign without some Stukas. Sadly for me (German player), Yavasa was using his light tanks pretty aggressively. Note these two platoons of tanks rolling toward by captured objective hex in Jezów. Hence, I was forced to use my limited Stukas to secure my flank and rear, rather than kicking in the front door toward more objective hexes further north.

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We got as far as Turn 5. Yavasa has definitely picked up this game! And I’m pretty sure if this game had gone to completion we’d wind up with a 4-3 Polish win.

So we only got five turns through what’s normally a ten-turn game.  No worries, this was just a demo game / tutorial.  We hope to come back and do some more at a later time (schedules permitting) to continue our 80th Anniversary Commemoration of the 1939 campaign and the start of World War II.