Early War Poles vs Soviets demo battle AAR

Anders at our club is starting out with a Polish 7TP tank company and asked if I would be interested in playing a demo battle for him. So he borrowed 1000points of my Polish collection, and I borrowed 1000 points Soviets from Martin at our club. We based both armies on the army lists in the September Campaign v.2.1. This is but a short summary of events.

The Poles had

1 x 7TP company command
2 x 5 7TP tanks
1 x 5 tankettes with MG
1 x platoon of infantry
2 Motorized anti-tank guns

Soviets had

Company command
2x Infantry platoons, each with a single attached HMG
3x 45mm AT guns
4x 76mm AT/artillery guns
1x platoon of 4 T-26S Obr.39 tanks




The battle was a freakshow when it came to how we rolled the dice. I have never seen or experienced anything like it. When I rolled good Anders rolled good, when he rolled bad I rolled bad. At one time the Soviet tanks came up on the left flank ready to plast AT guns and 7TP tanks on close range but failed to do anything - I was certain that the T-26's would be brutally murdered the next turn. But what happened was that the Poles failed to do anything but bail a single tank, then the Soviets continued their poor shooting and the Poles did their beast to beat them in being worthless.

We had a small audience that just looked at the events with astonishment. In the end the Poles managed to knock out a tank and charged the remaining tanks with their infantry and destroyed them.

On the opposite flank tankettes were machinegunning infantry to pieces and then ended up charged and destroyed. The amount of 6+ saves performed by tanks on the Polish (fire at by 76mm AT guns) side and crazy saves performed by the Soviets was mindblowing. As such this was a very odd demo. The Poles finally destroyed 1 Soviet infantry platoon, and the other infantry platoon failed their morale check so the commissar executed a team - only to be killed by his own troops before what remained of that platoon fled off table. The Soviets "Meddling political officers" rule saw two company morale checks being rolled on "Confident" rating before the company broke.

Anders seemed happy after the battle, and our little audience had been entertained throughout the unbelievable rolls of the dice. I got to try out how it feels playing normal Soviets and can just say that the front armour 2 on tanks in Early War is really good. Saved the bacon on the T-26's when they took a hail of AT6 shots on short range. And it was fun to experience the commissar and random company morale ratings - which I think work well.