Invading Krakow, the battle that essentially started WWII. I set up my force with two rifle companies(one converted ad hoc into a mechanized unit), a Pioneer company, a few sections of tanks, a few armored car platoons, and a couple of halftrack platoons(used for the above mechanized infantry), along with the assorted variety of mortars, howitzers, etc, plus several bomber groups.
The bombers start the battle, taking out some of their men(including one tank), and generally sowing chaos among the Polish. Split my mechanized forces in half, pushed them towards two clusters of victory hexes, one on the north, the other south. The north objective was taken first, but my armored cars became engaged with the Polish armor immediately afterwards. The southern objective ran into a large group of Polish infantry and Uhlans. Horses versus armored cars and halftracks? That went as well as expected.
In the north, despite initial losses of armor, my armored cars eventually crushed the Poles' tanks. (I looked it up in the game encyclopedia, my armored cars were known to have a weakness against those particular Polish vehicles, hah.) Turned out that was all of their armor force.
In the south, I used the speed of my armored cars and halftracks to flank and encircle the Polish. Their troops were quickly driven into a panic, running to and fro into walls of fire on either side. The only real difficulty so far was their ridiculous number of 81mm mortars. I lost more armor throughout the battle to those mortars than anything else(except possibly the game interpreting a fire order as a move order).
After taking the north objective, I moved that mechanized company to the north-east objective - the last victory hexes left. The only problem, it looked like the entirety of what was left of their army was either standing on it, or standing in front of it. Worse, they kept throwing down smoke field after smoke field, meaning I had to drive in to close range to fire, leaving my armor vulnerable to hand grenades(actually very dangerous), and my infantry(now starting to catch up) to ambush.
Then I get a lucky break - well not so much as lucky as
expedient; I was still crushing them - I spot their A0 unit between my force and the objective. It takes another turn or two to destroy it, but it pays off - destroying their HQ unit(always designated A0) causes a constant and recurring suppression penalty to their entire army. It took a couple of more turns(and more casualties) to force their remnants off the victory hexes, but that finished the battle - victory for Germany.
Admittedly, I thought I lost more vehicles than I did:
PzKpfw-35(t): 4 - armored car
PzKpfw-IIc: 5 +1 that was abandoned - light tank
SdKfz 251/HT: 8 - halftrack
Total Losses - according to the score page:
Germany / Poland
Men: 94 / 1093
Art: 0 / 20
APC: 5 / 0 (they had none)
AFV: 8 / 18 (all they had)
Not sure why there's a difference - maybe because I looked at the unit list for destroyed units for the first count, which might count abandoned vehicles whose crews were subsequently killed(the Polish had a thing for that) as "destroyed".
Score:
Germany: 12522, Decisive Victory
Poland: 2324, Crushing Defeat
Steel Panthers: World at War.
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Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1292717 times)