"Artillery in Lion Rampart" Topic

I know artillery is not really cover in both Dragon and Lion Rampant except as an objective.

I also know gamers, so how do you handle it?

My thought is that each catapult/cannon should have a crew of 4 figures. They take the usual 12/6 for firing and only 6 for melee.

Your thoughts?

How about – Take 1 activation to load, 1 to fire or 1 to move/turn. Give them a 45 or 30 degree arc or fire. have a marker to denote if loaded or not.
Give them 6 crew, with armour 2, a very slow move speed and poor hand to hand stats

I've thought of this myself lately.

Pikeman's Lament has rules and stats for Regimental Guns on p24 with Field Gun upgrade. Not sure if allowed or ethical(?) to paste in the stats and rules here. (I get myself in enough trouble as is at times! LoL) This might be closest to what you need. If okay, I'll copy/paste them.

Other appropriate period 'Rampant' variant games have artillery as well.

It should be a crew of six.

would you commonly have artillery in the big skirmish scale of LR?

Wasn;'t artillery covered in a WI article by the author?

You could try this – run them as Heavy Missiles with extended range of 24" but reduce their unit Strength to 6 SP. They'll share the standard Heavy Missile traits of powerful shooting but limited rate of fire (requiring 7+ to shoot), and the changes above will ensure they outrange everybody but will get slaughtered in hand-to-hand combat.

Thanks to all for the input,some very valuable ideas. I would love to get a look at the WI article sometime.

Here's my current thinking:

1) The artillery piece will act as a strength 12 unit when firing.

2) The crew will consist of 4 figures (TSATF crew rules slipping in here).
I plan the crew to be at only 4 points and only roll 6 dice.

3) The crew will de treated as skirmishes for hand to hand combat. If they evade then they will abandon the gun.

I just treat them as heavy missile units with the stats as below, just as in the Dragon Rampant book. The frequency of fire is statistically simulated by their relatively high Shoot #. You can certainly bump that up, or require a reload every other turn if you like. I have also used them in siege games, where they have a limited amount of ammo, and have to roll to run out, after say 6 shots fired. Running heavy artillery this way may be too abstract for some gamers who want more of a realistic feel (even though Dragon Rampant is a very abstract game). I admit it's hard to let a catapult, for example, not be short range limited and thought about adding a rule to require say an 8" minimum range. But didn't bother with that in the end.

Catapult Heavy Missile Points 4
Attack 7+ Attack Value 6+
Move 6+ Defense Value 5+
Shoot 7+ Shoot Value 4+/18"
Courage 4+ Max Movement 6"
Armor 2 Strength Points 12