"Skirmish Screens and artillery" Topic

Most ACW rule sets don't allow units to target enemy formations that are screened by skirmishers – which seems fair enough. However, I wonder whether this should be the case for artillery as well as infantry? My feeling is that until enemy units were at close range, artillery would target close order troops and ignore the skirmish screens. Does anyone have any information on how Civil War artillery was used in practice?

Stephen

Artillery usually ignored skirmishers to fire at formed regiments. Of course if those skirmishers were too close that would be another story. If you think about it… it only makes sense. What are you going to fire at skirmishers? Solid shot? Nope. Cannister? Well yeah if close and bunched together. Shell? Not really because they are too spread out.

Skirmisher screens were charged with getting rid of enemy skirmishers, finding ambushes, finding/chasing sharpshooters, locating fence lines that need taking down… and that's about it. If the ground was fairly open and flat they wouldn't even bother with a screen.

For artillery I always allow it to fire through skirmishers with no penalty for the very reasons you mention.

Thanks guys, that's pretty much what I thought. It's just I've read a couple of rule sets lately that require the skirmish screens to be targeted.