Artillery Barrage Q

dougeagle · Post by **dougeagle** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 10:12 pm

Hey guys,

Trying to figure out the answer for this question that I have and hopefully somebody on here can help me out.

Can I use artillery to bombard a town or area on the battlefield even if the FO hasn't spotted the opponents stands?

chrisswim · Post by **chrisswim** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:31 am

Sure, are you assulting? If so, the defenders could be hidden or mapped out.

If there is a specific reference to a set of rules you are looking for?

dougeagle · Post by **dougeagle** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 8:07 am

No, its not for assaulting and its for the GHQ-WW2 rules.

I was just curious to know if I can just bombard an area with the FO not seeing the enemy target. Such as in WW2, when the Allies knew that the German forces were in the vicinity, they would bombard the area first as their troops moved in.

Gort · Post by **Gort** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:58 am

Doug

The very short answer to your question is "yes". The details are in the GHQ Modern rules. These rules are generally more concisely written and have fewer typos than the WW2 rules, and have numerous items that apply to Generation I and II (ie ww2) forces. This is a quote from the relevent section that will answer your question:

[11.08] Special Artillery Fires

1. "Map Fire" - Traditionally, at the beginning of any major attack, artillery fire and air-strikes are used to engage enemy units "suspected" of being in a given area. We shall call this kind of pre-planned barrage "Map Fire". "Map Fire" is aimed at a map reference rather than "observed " enemy stands. You must plot target location, sheaf pattern, turn-of-arrival, and duration of "Map Fire" after the map is set up but before any forces are placed on it. When the turn-of-arrival comes, you simply make the necessary Cohesion die-rolls for the fire and for "Deviation" as normal. Failure to fire simply delays the arrival of the barrage. "Map Fire" may not otherwise be voluntarily cancelled, or its "Duration" terminated early.

There are also sections on pre-registered fire and fire direction centers. The GHQ Modern rules are well worth acquiring even if you only game ww2. There are plenty of interesting additions in these rules that can be applied to ww2 games.

Hope this helps

regards

Steve

dougeagle · Post by **dougeagle** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:52 am

Thanks Gort...or Steve...which ever you prefer...

I was also wondering if this tactic can be used in the WW2 rules, or was this accidentlly omitted?

kgpanzer · Post by **kgpanzer** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:40 pm

sure why not.....if say for eg: you have a battery of 105's and you want to shell the town.....now depending on the rules system you use will affect the out come. A lot of folks seem to forget or did not realize that artillery was the #1 killer on the battle field.

The way I use artillery is # of fire missions will be allocated to there mission this keeps the game more flowing to allow <micro> tank battles to take place and not just soak the board with artillery rounds.....another method is allowing no fire missions and they get single shots for direct fire this reflects on small stock pile of ammo for the guns.

Cheers
Anthony

Luca · Post by **Luca** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:13 am

Hi, I've a question for those artillery experts in the forum

To fire correctly the artiller, it's need to make two positive cohesion rolls, because firing and suppressing at a target is quite difficult.

But I thought, It is difficult also firing a smoke barrage? Because when you fire "normally" you have to hit the target or at least make fall the granate as close as possible. But to create a smoke barrage is need "only" to deploy the smoke in a position that betwen your and the enemy tropps, it's no need to be too much accurate. And again, when firing with an artillery battery at a target, are used all the guns; but when firing smoke grenades are used just a couple of them, and correcting the precision of the fire should be more easy I think.

So, in term of playability, should the smoke fire be attainable with an inferior cohesion roll? This way players with law cohesion, instead of risking of loosing to attain an effective artillery bombardment, could use more smoke barrages.

thank you, bye!

dnichols · Post by **dnichols** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:39 am

dougeagle wrote:Thanks Gort...or Steve...which ever you prefer...

I was also wondering if this tactic can be used in the WW2 rules, or was this accidentlly omitted?

I have used this rule in the WWII rules and it works nicely. I asked the author of the WWII rules about this once and he said that the WWII rules were designed to cover the core tactics of the era in the simpelist format possible so little used tactics were omitted on purpose. Logical.

---Daryl