The September campaign download

THIS PROJECT IS NOW OUTDATED, CHECK THE NEW AND VASTLY IMPROVED VERSION "SEPTEMBER CAMPAIGN v.2 OoB" HERE: http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.se/2012/09/the-september-campaign-v2-orders-of.html

”The September campaign” is my attempt at recreating the invasion of Poland adapted to Flames of War gaming, it is meant to be played with the Blitzkrieg book though you will need both the core rulebook to decipher the special scenario rules as well as the Blitzkrieg for the army organization bit.

The book is made up of 3 parts.

The first part is history and background bits, here you will find a brief backstory of the 2nd Polish republic and the Polish commanders active during the invasion. This first part also includes a chronological list of the battles so you can see when a certain battle started and the end date.

There is also a page with mini maps showing where most of the battle in the campaign book took place so you get a bit of geographical orientation. I also included 3 maps, 2 of which are divided into 2 pieces each to be able to fit them into the document. These maps show the force dispositions on the day before the invasion and the German battle plan, the 2 part maps show roughly half of the campaign each, you will be able to track army movements and pockets of resistance, dates of battles and capitulations are printed on those maps.

The second part is the largest, and includes the campaign itself. It starts out with a few pages of additional units, such as the up armored prototype “9TP tanks” that took part in the Warsaw and additional characters. All these new additions are operation/battle specific, and each scenario will have a description of what forces were involved – shows the list of army organizations you can play, what units you absolutely cannot pick or what extra units are available to you during that particular battle. All to make for a more “simulated historical” gameplay. You will for instance find that you cannot field sIG33 guns or StuG’s playing the Germans, and playing the Polish you will have air support and AA guns for a brief period of the campaign (mostly first week and where it was actually active).

This campaign part is divided into something I call “operations” and “isolated actions”. Operations being a bunch of scenarios linked together by historical events, either focusing on a long chain of battles such as Siege of Warsaw, or around a particular army such as the 10th Motorized brigade or the 4th German Panzer division. The isolated actions are standalone additional campaign scenarios that focus on a much more confined geographically or timeline experience, such as Westerplatte or battle of Kock.

The instructions on how to play the campaign are all in the book, but the campaign is made up of 4 Polish operations and 5 isolated actions. This is the backbone. You may expand that with a 5th operation played from the German 4th Panzer divisions point of view, this is marked as “optional” due to the fact that the 4th Panzer was involved in a lot of the battles already covered by the Polish operations or standalone battles. This does not mean that the scenarios are exactly the same, the victory conditions, force disposition and units available  offer a completely different experience.

As a little bonus I added a 6th operation, that is not part of the September campaign per se – this operation centers around the cavalry partisans led by Henryk “Hubal” Dobrzanski and take place during the autumn 1939/spring 1940. This operation is sort of an appendix to the September campaign and very closely tied in with it.
All the operations will have scenario specific background pieces so you know what it was all about, each scenario will also have a brief summary of the action. Scenarios that are part of campaigns will have “battle conditions based on the previous scenario” meaning that the result from the previous battle will affect the next battle in line in a big or small way. This book is filled with 29 scenarios. You can of course play them individually out of context just as well as they play in a campaign mode.

The third part of the book is a “hobby section”, it contains some information on miniatures, a few tutorials and tips on the hobby aspect.

A bit more detailed information on the contents of this book, the September campaign allow you to replay:

Play the largest battle of the campaign, battle of Bzura. Fight the siege of Warsaw which also includes a linking scenario to the battle of Bzura and also allows you to fight around the Modlin fortress to keep the AA batteries protecting Warsaw running. Follow the exploits of the 10th Motorized brigade as it acts as rearguard to the retreating Krakow army. Fight the first battle of the campaign, battle of Westerplatte, as well as the very last, battle of Kock. Fight with or against the experimental German “Panzerdivision Kempf”. Make a last stand against the 3rd German army at the battle of Wizna.
Battles ranging from 500 to 2000 points per side.

I will probably write add-on material such as additional German operations and army organization tweaks but also much more in depth and detailed operations spanning multiple scenarios revolving around the same battle. Siege of Warsaw would be a most interesting subject for that sort of thing because there was pretty much fighting for 20 days from various directions and lot of circumstances that affected the siege.

Additional work and material will be considered depending on the reception and feedback, I’m also open for suggestions and requests. Though I should add my only interest for FoW is the Blitzkrieg book and the invasion of Poland, so all request would have to be on this subject.

Download link:  http://www.2shared.com/document/TE_N2rvD/The_September_campaign_version.html