On the start I positioned my German troops on the assumption enemies were on the other side of the road with the goal to concentrate my forces and try to gain fire superiority immediately. Given that according to the briefing we were outnumbered this had some risk, but better than probing forward under artillery fire while allowing the enemy to withdraw in the meantime.
The initial firefight went very well, seemed like my two companies faced off against 2-3 platoons of enemy troops in forward positions. With these being cleared with low casualties on my side I felt this changed the numerical superiority to my side.
Also because I observed a couple of vehicles waiting to cross the bridge under the smoke screen that had been laid down. The smoke screen limited my options for the units on the other side of the bridge, I was fortunate to have already gave an area target order across the bridge with the single MG42 on the other side so that it could keep firing through the smoke. One of the other MG42s was also setup to lay down suppression/denial fire on the bridge.
I moved both halftracks on the other side to a position on the river bank so that they could support my infantry while having LOS on the entry to the bridge (which wasn't smoke off).
After supporting the initial firefight the wirbelwind also moved towards a place where it could rake the bridge with fires and perhaps catch some vehicles trying to cross.
At that moment fortune seemed to favor my troops as we spotted a big mass of bodies moving on the bridge, with the Wirbelwind and halftrack in position to delete them of the face of the earth
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However, one thing I learned in this battle is that Bridges offer great protection against Wirbelwind quad 20mm HE
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Anyway, the crossing was still quite bloody as the MGs on my vehicles and the crew served MG-42s did good work.
After this I cleaned up this side on the bridge, while KGPanther was able to exit most of the units that made it into the smoke out of the map. Somehow I forgot to turn on 'locations' (alt-L) and thought the Polish exit was in the NE corner, so i had setup some overwatch on a road which I thought they had to cross. But it turned out they didn't need to cross the road
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Although I'm not sure how much I would have been able to do against the Polish forces anyway, I guess they had mostly reached the exit objectives already when my reinforcements arrived.
The Polish artillery did cause quite a number of casualties on my side, although I was lucky that most of my troops weren't moving at the moment it arrived. I hadn't expected it so early after the smoke barrage and there were no spotting rounds (TRPs obviously, in hindsight). However the barrage lasted a minute or two so I could just wait it out and press the attack again.
A first minute long lasting barrage to interdict/deny approaches for the Germans in combination with smoke on the bridge entry/exit would have been the best option I guess.
Anyway, good game!