Staff Early War Armies: Mike Haycock's Leichte Panzerkompanie We continue our feature on the Battlefront staff members Early-war armies by taking a look at Mike's Leichte Panzerkompanie.

As soon as I heard that we were planning to release Early-war, I was very excited about the German Leichte Panzerkompanie or Light Tank Company. I’ve always liked small tanks such as the L6 that served in the Italian army during the North Africa campaign or the Late-war Panzer II L Luchs. The fast pace and manoeuvrability of small tank armies suits my style of play, swarming in on a weak point, blazing away with machine-guns, then assaulting the cowering infantry to seize the objective. Early-war gives me a chance to try out much vaunted Blitzkrieg tactics. As Anti-tank gun ranges are a lot shorter, allowing much more time and room to manoeuvre and less of the static tank duals that are common in Late-war. Also infantry don’t have the personal anti-tank weapons like Bazookas, Panzerfausts and Panzerknackers providing better opportunity to overrun them. See all the Staff Early War armies here...
The German Leichte Panzerkompanie Organisation Diagram

Once I received a copy of the Blitzkrieg I turned straight to the Leichte Panzerkompanie and started creating my army list. I wanted the tanks to be as light as possible so I went for three Leichte Panzer platoons to provide me with my tank horde.

Next, I wanted some support to aid the tanks when attacking. I thought about infantry but decided to go for all armoured and fast moving vehicles, so bought a full strength platoon of Heavy Panzerspah platoon with Sd Kfz 231 (8-rad). These are great as they give me a lot of reconnaissance as I will be attacking most of the time plus they look cool.

Another thing I realised about the 8-rads are that they are almost as tough as a Panzer II and once on the table they split up to form three separate two vehicle patrols which increases the size of my army nicely.

Now I have the core of my army and the flavour all set up I needed to get some support units. As my army is all light armoured it should be good at running down infantry, okay versus guns as I can concentrate my firepower and machine-gun them to death (hopefully). But I am sadly lacking the ability to deal with any medium or heavy tanks as my best gun has an Anti-tank rating of 5.

First, I looked at getting some artillery in the form of a 10.5cm battery but felt they were too immobile and their direct fire range lacked the range I was seeking.

Next, I looked to the Panzer IV D’s but 450 points only brought me 3 tanks with an Anti-tank of 7 which seemed a bit low.

So I finally settled on a Bunker FlaK platoon as they while having only limited mobility can kill anything they can see to shoot at and lastly I added in Limited Air Support in the form of Stukas. After all this was the period is where the Stuka made it's name. ~ Mike.

Want To Know More About Blitzkrieg?   Over the past few months we have added a massive range of articles about Blitzkrieg to the website, to make it easier for people to find a specific article we have put together this handy place. Find out more about Blitzkrieg and Early-war here...