FoW: EW tournament 2011 pictures and my Game 1

About a 3rd of the pictures I took yesterday were of other people's games, armies and the 4 tables upon which our games were held - so let's start with those. If we were having a "best painted" I think that Jesper would have won with his wonderfully painted French army, probably followed very closely by my buddy Thomas French tank company. Two very well painted forces that really got my attention.

 

Game nr 1. "Hold the Line"
Polish Infantry Battalion vs German Infanterie kompanie (Magnus)

Army lists can be read here: http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.com/2011/12/fow-early-war-tournament-2011-lists-and.html

A somewhat anachronistic battlefield awaited us - the desert table. After the initial dismay I ended up liking it anyway. It did have decent amounts of terrain for a desert table so it worked out. As both me and Magnus had infantry armies it came down to a die roll to see who got the ungrateful task of being the attacker. Neither of us had any transport vehicles - and my army had only 2 infantry platoons and 1 tank platoon mobile enough to even be able to perform such a task. Btw, the desert fort counted as impassable terrain and could not be occupied by any units.

I had a stroke of luck and ended up as the defender - facing a German infantry horde for a change of pace. Started with my light and heavy artillery on the table, and also 1 of my infantry companies. I made a difficult decision about which objective my infantry platoon and the HMG platoon would be guarding. The objective closest to the enemy had very little cover and I was hoping I would be able to hold the enemy of until backup arrived- my plan was to direct every reinforcing platoon their way.
I placed my infantry platoon to occupy the small village and block off the rather open space leading towards my artillery. My hope there was that they would be able to sit it out in their trenches.

The battle starts by German air support failing to arrive, to my relief. The German infantry start their slow advance in the cover of mortar smoke barrages which block the line of sight for my HMG platoon. The Polish artillery open up by a nice crossfire barrage hitting the advancing German infantry and pinning them down - very little German casualties are inflicted but at this point I just hope for the artillery to be a delay action.

So the Germans get their aircraft to arrive in force and they home in on my precious heavy artillery - if I had learned one thing it was to spread the hell out and I would be lying if I was not a bit proud of my deployment which only allowed for 1 gun to be touched by the bomb template no matter which gun team was targeted. What follows was that bombs drop on one of my heavy artillery teams , I fail my save but my opponent rolls a 1 on the firepower test and we both looked at each other in disbelief.

Sadly the heavy artillery platoon fail to unpin the following turn so the Germans get a break from double bombardments and just take another hit from my light artillery. They now start mortar bombardment of the village where I had holed up my infantry platoon and one spotter. My spotter survived bombardment upon bombardment and the infantry fared rather well despite taking a few casualties over the next two turns from enemy mortars. On turn 3 my first reinforcements arrive - so I bring in the 7TP tank platoon and race them at the double to reinforce my HMG platoon guarding the objective that enemy infantry start getting a bit to close to. I lose 1 tank to anti tank gun fire and 1 tank to enemy air support - my platoon commander also decides to bail out leaving 2 tanks to just stand there in the open. Enemy infantry close in and charge my HMG platoon which is pinned down, defensive fire kills a few stands but I end up losing the assault and 2 stands, having my 2iC with them I decide not to risk anything stupid and instead withdraw and come back next turn (special shout out to the WWPD guys and their assault tips video).

The objective had now fallen into enemy hands, things did not look too bad yet. My HMG team had re-organized themselves, however my tank commander refused to jump back into his 7TP and lead a supporting action to help out. Instead I had to bombard the enemy position with Light artillery, fire at them with my remaining HMG team and then charge with the infantry platoon teams closest to the objective. Things went rather with the enemy destroyed I had retaken the objective. Unfortunately the next German platoon was already on their way and I had but a handful of teams guarding my objective. And even though I had just received my last infantry company as reinforcements they were still 2 turns away from reaching the hotspot.

The deal was sealed during turn 5 when an enemy mortar placed a barrage over my 7TP tank remnants and managed to blow up one of them making the platoon flee off table, the barrage also took with it my 2iC which fled after the last HMG team he was attached to was killed.

The Germans then managed to clean up the few Polish rifle teams remaining and captured the objective for the second time. As I realized I could do nothing to retake the objective during my next turn I surrendered to save us both time. The battle ended 5-2 in favor of the Germans.
My opponent Magnus did one hell of a job hauling his infantry across the table and in the end ended up appreciating his air support a little more (it was his first time with air support).
The battle was not especially bloody for the Poles in terms of losses but I just had lost my gamble with the exposed flank. Much relied on the 7TP platoon to arrive and hold the line until the rest of my infantry arrived. Sadly it did not work out in the end even with some ad hoc movement of infantry sideways to fill the gap for a brief period of time.