"Do you put artillery models on the board?" Topic

For any scale above 6mm, it makes me a little uncomfortable to see artillery batteries on a ww2 board. Not only does it not usually fit the ground scale..but almost never would deployed artillery be at threat of enemy armor and infantry.

On the other hand, what am I supposed to do with these great models? Put them on the edge of the board and say they can't be fired on?

I wonder what others do about this. Do you cheese the rules so that they can be included or do you just not collect the models?

I put them on the table edge, or they are in a scenario where they are being over run.

A lot of Soviet artillery did direct fire, so no problems there!

I suppose you'd need to define what you meant by artillery. Many instanced of British gunners firing over open sights for 25pdr batteries in the desert exist. I tend to agree that it's less likely for larger ordinance. Having said that, it's also down to representation and for those who care (not me) ground scale etc.
Certainly as a target or objective a large battery is placed but is unlikely to hit anything under a certain arc.

I play 3rd ed Flames of War (not the heretical 4th Ed!) which almost mandates on table artillery. Since my table is 9' long, it's possible to stay out of range.

And, I don't apologize for it, either. So there.

Even in games which use a scale of 1:10000 or 1:20000, such as LWRS/Bewegungskrieg, i normally place indirect fire weapons off the playing area, on the edge of the playing area, next to my aircraft. Placing them on the playing area exposes them to risk and they normally cover the entire playing area anyway, so why bother placing them on the playing area. As counter-battery fire is rare you do not need to worry about that, but even if you do execute this its normally with your 15 cm howitzers, which can still reach the enemies 105mm, or similar. Also, once you go with a scale such as this, the playing area normally gets smaller, as this is one attraction to this scale, so artillery range is not an issue.
Of course if you are going to use them as direct fire weapons, on the playing area they go, such as my soviet 76mm guns.

No. Unless there's a possibility of them having to fire direct, usually by scenario, they aren't on the table. The only we2 artillery I have is 6mms and most of that sits in a box. If someone else wants to, go crazy.

Were there instances of artillery being overrun? How often?

Also, side note, I'm not aware of any counter battery fire in most rules systems. Any rules that focus on this?

There is in Fistful of TOW's. In comes up as a problem encountered when you are firing artillery and you have to refer to the Area Fire Problems Table and/or the Area Fire SNAFU Table.

I don't even buy them.

Again, in Flames of War…
An artillery battery is just another target. So, go ahead with counter battery fire. It takes a long time to kill the battery, though. A typical battery has 4 guns, a commander and a staff team. If you're smart, you spread the guns out so only one gun at a time can be under a template.

I've never argued that FoW is "historically accurate". Be honest. No game is. It's a matter of how much insulting your "knowledge" you're willing to put up with.

No just mortars and ATGs

I play Spearhead so a lot of the artillery is off board

I put artillery on the board on my old tiny 16 foot long table, HO 1/87 scale Roco Minitanks and similar guns. If we were doing something unusual they might be on the side table with a specified distance from the edge of the board. That way they were subject to counter battery fire, being overrun, hit by air support, or attacked by guerillas or commandos.
On my new 40 foot long table I intend to put Gustav on the table.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Like JtheOFM my group only plays FOW Ver3.0 with group house rules so really Ver3.2. Most artillery is held off table and we use a counter-battery rule. Ranging in, certain number of cannon, Cmd, or staff team targets, depends on training rating. So no problem for us at all. Table is 8x6 or 8x5 or 12x6… up to 25x6 for the backyard patio battles. We as a group never went with Ver4.0 rules. Like many established FOW group they split and some played only Ver3.0 or watched as the local Ver4.0 died off from CoVid. Seems locally the Ver3.0 were the seasoned and veteran players with the collections intact.

Note , I play FOW using 20mm. The group also plays with 15mm. If interested, my contact info is on my blog under "about the Wargamerabbit" pull down menu tab. We game in SoCalif in the northern LA area twice monthly, mixed with 25/28mm games ancients, napoleonics, AWI, and soon WSS. Full service gaming room.

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Well, for one example of a battery being overrun you have Lt Winters' assault on DDay.

If I've got the models, I put them down, although off table artillery is placed off the playing area. It is a handy reminder the guns are there, and also somewhere to stack ammo counters and keep track of CB fire if appropriate. Besides, I've painted them and they look nice. I often make them into little dioramas with HQs, support vehicles, AA etc.

In operational games, then yes, the guns are on the table. If the ground scale is 1cm to 1km, they can't really shoot very far…

Were there instances of artillery being overrun? How often? Also, side note, I'm not aware of any counter battery fire in most rules systems. Any rules that focus on this?

I cannot recall many examples, but I am sure it occurred. However artillery could be several km behind the front line, so it may not make an interesting game. I am aware of German armour meeting French 75mm Guns in Belgium in 1940, with the 75mm Guns doing a good job holding them off. The Russians experienced the same thing with their 76mm Guns, but as for 10.5 cm or 15 cm field howitzers, or 122mm Guns, I am not aware of many examples.

As for counter-battery fire, many rules do cover counter battery, even the old WRG squad scale set of rules had counter-battery. When you scale up to 1:5000 or 1:10000 rules its very common, although in practice players do not wish to dedicate a long range element to this task. I suspect its to do with the scenarios, as the most interesting scenarios are attack/defence style of games and in that situation counter-battery is not so common. This video lists a set of rules which contain counter-battery.

We play Rommel. Each 6" square is a Kilometer across. Artillery is definitely on the board.

Depends on the scenario.

Only if my scenario is designed as a direct attack on the field artillery zone (as GatorDave notes above, which can be the realm of game systems scaled to involve these depths of the battlefield).

I've done one such tactical-scale scenario like this in 50 years – believe it was modeled on an historical German Panzer thrust against the Anzio lodgement, where a US field artillery battalion was firing "over open sights" as the last line of resistance.

There are plenty of "attachment-level" opportunities for supporting infantry guns, regimental guns, SP artillery guns for scenarios at the tactical level of gaming…….

……they're often there within the strongpoint deployments, or in the direct support line echeloned in/around any MLR (when available).

As a side note – I recently read an after action report by a towed US ATGun commander submitted about the fighting in the Ardennes (think is was from around the Rocherath-Krinkelt fighting) – the doctrine of redeploying anti-tank guns in engagement from their initial positions to another was disputed. The author basically forwarded that the platoons either won their engagements vs. the enemy (and needing infantry support to do so if under combined-arms attack), or they were destroyed in place…..the possibility of redeploying medium [and heavier] anti-tank artillery being tactically, very unlikely.

Generally, keep them off table and mark them when in use. This way you can collect them and use them typically or even in an overrun scenario if required.

I mostly play Bolt Action in which, apart from the occasional piece using direct fire (which lets me a cool Italian howitzer or French 75 on the table) arty is off board by rule. Otherwise, when playing FOW, as JtOFM points out, on table artillery is usually obligatory, except in some of the Stalingrad scenarios and so forth.

As Mserafin said, plenty of historical examples of artillery in the thick of it, especially on the eastern front. Read "With the Guns" , a Russian memoir. They would race up and deploy in the midst of a battle to pulverize the Germans over open sights.

The Russians would also prepare firing positions at the FEBA for heavy artillery (like the tracked 203mm gun). The night before the offensive they'd haul them into position and at dawn have them fire over open sights at German defensive positions they've already identified. It was not unusual to have Katyushas direct fire either.

However, in a game, it would not be much fun being the Germans.

Wolfhag

The Russians would also prepare firing positions at the FEBA for heavy artillery (like the tracked 203mm gun). The night before the offensive they'd haul them into position and at dawn have them fire over open sights at German defensive positions they've already identified. It was not unusual to have Katyushas direct fire either.

The Russians conducted direct fire with their artillery more than most, although it's interesting they also did this with the 203mm. While some Russian artillery used modern indirect fire techniques, causing the Germans significant issues with counter-battery in July 1941 in the south, but for the most part they lack sufficiently skilled men to allow all their artillery to have this capacity.

I always wondered why the Tank Corps lacked any howitzers, until very late in the war, but I expect it may not have been very useful in a traditional supporting role due to lack of experience men and forward observers. I think they resolved this by 1945 as I start to see howitzers organically attached to tank corps. Of course the infantry always had at least 122m howitzers, but in a defensive role they could pre-register likely targets, as they could in a prepared attack.

The tanks corps did have lots of120mm mortars, so perhaps that's what they used for ad-hoc fire support.

but almost never would deployed artillery be at threat of enemy armor and infantry.

Take a look at the campaign of the BEF in northern France in 1940. Time and again the artillery were relied upon to hold back the advancing Germans, whilst the rest of the army fell back towards the coast. Your "almost never" became "almost always".

At the battle of Mtensk on 6 October 1941 the 4th Panzer Division resorted to using 10.5cm K18 guns, in addition to 88s, in a direct fire role when their tanks couldnt cope with the T-34s and KV-Is.

Like Martin I place batteries down at the edge of the board to remind players of their off board assets.

I do in D-Day to Berlin, but a zone is 3 square miles

IN the last 6 months I have been using a figure game conversion of a board game which uses a ground scale of 1:30000, which means I need a lot of artillery. The rules are based on SPI's Modern battles quad. I do find is unusual to actually use artillery on a playing area but I am finding at this scale I can field corps sizes formation per side and can refight historical conflicts, if i make the effort in creating the playing area.

We play at 1:1000 ground scale so no its never on there in the indirect fire role, to do so would be a farce.

Putting it at the end of a board to remind folk seems bizarre in so many ways. Folk complain continually about fog of war not being modeled in wargames, forgetting stuff is there, is a perfect example of fog of war and it requires no rules or dice throws whatsoever, perfect!

We were playing Nuts Big Battles a few weeks ago, US platoons same side v random German forces. We had revealed an isolated enemy platoon and moved through woods to gain 2:1 strength advantage. At that moment the enemy rolled up a randomized artillery mission that landed on my patch of woods and obliterated my platoon.

At this game scale, a scene of terrifying beauty, though I paid the price.

No artillery models in our collection, except AT guns.

Also, reading Carlo d'Este's Bitter Victory. US hastily deployed field guns (105mm's?) which contributed to stopping the German counterattack at the edge of the landing zone on the day after the landings. Sicily, 1943.

That's the beauty of an operational level game at 1:50,000 scale (1 cm = 2 km). Artillery is definitely on the board, ranges are do-able and maneuver matters. Mobile units can easily outstrip their artillery support as well as their infantry if they are not careful, or if they need/want to.