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My main army in MW is Finnish Jalkavaki and it should be quite easy to upgrade them to LW

HQ 2 Panzershreks

Full Jalkavaki platoon, panzerfaust

Full Jalkavaki platoon, panzerfaust

1 section MG platoon (combat attached out)

Full Mortar Platoon

Full Heavy Mortar Platoon

Full tank hunter platoon, all with panzerfausts

Full Pioneeri Platoon, panzerfaust, supply truck

Artillery battery (122mm howitzers)

4 T26

8 platoons of Fearless Veterans, 3 templates and 4 hopeless tanks.

Its quite similar to my MW list except that this list has field artillery and 1 less infantry platoon.

It is almost completely lacking in ranged AT but it has crammed full of panzerfausts and my FV status combined with mission tactics will make most assaulting tank platoons very sorry. The T26s are there to deter light armour and hope they get lucky with side armour shots.

See, I like the idea of heavy mortars but if you're defending against armoured or mech I wonder about their usefulness, especially as they can't drop smoke.
Have you found them useful ingame?

 Exhumed wrote:
See, I like the idea of heavy mortars but if you're defending against armoured or mech I wonder about their usefulness, especially as they can't drop smoke.

Hmm? As far as I know the finnish heavy mortars are capable of firing smoke bombardments.

I would say this is pretty hard enemy to knock out - at least if you play in "realistic" karelian table, with lots of forests and only and not continous open spaces. I would still recommend you to dumb the not-so-usefull T-26s, and replace them with heavy tank hunters. As the unreliability makes them less reliable anti-flank choice, expecially when your list has no recovery vehicle.
With price of 4 T-26 you get (max) 2 fearless 75PstK/40, or if you based your opnion on number of shots, the 50 PstK/38, which fires less but performs better.

Of course if its matter of style or you just find more comfy to got with armored support of anykind, and you have somekind of plan how to set them up, I dont think your game would fall on them being in the list.

 Exhumed wrote:
See, I like the idea of heavy mortars but if you're defending against armoured or mech I wonder about their usefulness, especially as they can't drop smoke.
Have you found them useful ingame?

Statistically speaking the heavy mortar is more effective against medium tanks than 105mm artillery due to its range in re-roll and 3+ fire power, only slightly better (12% Vs 10%) but better none the less. Plus I like heavy mortars, typically they are the only artillery I field in infantry lists.

The T26s are exceptionally poor tanks in LW but what they are is mobile, even if they are slow and unreliable. I used to run pure infanty in MW and in attacking missions I got shreddded by light tanks, carriers were my bane, simply because I had nothing to counter them and AT guns are relatively easy to hide from. The T26s are able to deal with light amour quite effectively and they have even killed the odd medium (in one game 3 T26s managed to kill 3 T34s). I fully expect them to die but when they are 30 points for a FV tank team they are a bargain. Plus there is the cool factor, you have to respect using tanks that were past their best in 1939 in 1944.

Small AT gun platoons have never impressed me, return fire will gut them and they (usually) don't have the firepower to seriously threaten enemy armour. Again its something I tried in MW and I found that the most impressive part of the platoon was the close defence teams. I prefer to kill enemy armour in assaults, just like the Finns did.

You're right about the finnish heavies, I was assuming they had the same limitations as heer mortars.
The tank hunters seem like a bargain for what they do: Swiss cheesing soviet tanks!