"Platoon Action in Poland 1939" Topic

Another weekend, and another playtest this time with a revised deck structure and upping the game size to see how it copes.

This week it's Poland 1939. A reinforced German infantry platoon, supported by tanks and a mortar battery push forward to secure a road and rail junction. Preparing to meet them is a Polish infantry platoon, supported by a 75mm field gun and TKS tankettes. Interesting game this one, the Poles suffered from a lack of command and control, the Germans having more units with 'command' traits and a wider command ability that really helped to keep things moving. The Germans kept on the firepower as much as possible and the Poles took quite heavy losses and many units got pinned down. The German advance across the table was well coordinated and allowed support fire from each flank.

The Poles were always playing catch up as their officer tried to rally units but ended up getting killed before he could do much. But the Germans took a few losses too, but around half as many as the Poles. But the actual loss of 'Platoon Morale' was even, the Poles proving rather resilient in the face of the assault, while the Germans took fewer casualties but suffered just as much. The Germans finally got lucky, and clever use of their cards saw them wipe out several units in one turn to break the Polish Army. In the end the Germans finally won with only 4 Platoon Morale left out of 18.

Close run thing really. Lots to do with the game though…

I thought I knew my early war German AFVs but what is the 8 rad thing they have there?

Really like the terrain and inclusion of a railway by the way!

Steyr AGDZ, an Austrian design.

Amazing stuff. Done this early war period justice.

Superb stuff, just do not know how you make khaki and grey so damn colourful.

Another beautiful game. Refresh my memory about what rules you use.

Those are outstanding, excellent work!

Awesome. Water tower is just like in Poland.

A revised deck structure eh? So, a card based or driven game this time?

Your games are eye candy and much more!

@deephorse,

I hope Piers won't mind me posting his reply from another forum regarding them

"The concept is offer a game that plays in a small space, with limited model count, last for a couple of hours, is fast and fun but gives a feel for the period and offers the players constant tactical choices to make that reward play in a historical manner. It's aimed at 20mm and 28mm figures. This test was to find an upper limit to the force size, hence a larger table than previously.

The core of a force will be an infantry platoon plus a variety of support options that a player can pick from with various limits and some restrictions.

It shares some similar traits with Battlegroup, but is a new design and players will have a hand of cards to modify actions, either in their turn or their opponents. Each card has a ‘reaction' and an ‘action' option on them so careful thought is needed as to what to use and when. The cards vary with things like ‘Rush' giving double movement and ‘Mad Minute' allow two fire actions. Reactive cards have things like ‘Hit the Dirt' which gives re-rolls to cover saves and ‘Well Laid Ambush' that boosts the firing of a unit on Ambush status. The fact each card has both actions and reaction modifiers on them really forces a player to make hard decisions on what they use, and when.

The system aims to reward period tactics, so suppressive fire is a key mechanic in pinning down enemy units, which have to be rallied by discarding cards or by ‘officers'. So far it's worked well and in all tests those adopting a historical manner of play – interlocking fields of fire from section MGs to pin units, followed by aimed fire from rifle groups or assaults – have won against a more ‘gamey' style of play.

It's been nice to see officers moving about behind the forward lines to rally units, while units lay down smoke to cover advances and MG teams being real area denial weapons.

But overall, hopefully a game that people will enjoy and most WW2 gamers can play without the need to buy any further figures and can get cracking on straight out of the box.

Long way to go yet, lots of testing to do, but if I do publish it the idea will be to have the rules and platoon lists for the entire war in one single book, supplied with a card deck, to make it a standalone system."

Thanks cap'n was just about to post that!

79th PA,

I use Battlegroup for WW2, these are a new set I'm working on.

Thank you Captain Cook. It sounds interesting. I will keep an eye on this.

Lovely stuff…keep us informed about the rules (I presume they're not available yet)

Tim

AGDZ is by ACE.

I call it a 'carve your own' kit.

As for the hedgerow I just through the terrain down, no reason for it.

Lovely stuff…as ever.

I really like the looks of this, I am really exited about this, will it be marketed through PSC as well?

No idea M1Fanboy!

At the moment Im still developing the system and would like to get it all tied down and sorted before I look at how its published.

That said I will no doubt be running Will at PSC a playtest of it soon enough… If for no other reason than to see if he likes it!