"Cellars" Topic

We had an interesting game but an issue came up we have not bothered with before – Cellars. Now in a small house (by UK pre WW1) had coal cellars where you could shelter from Indirect fire. There entrances are close as the, typically max length of the house is under 30 ft. so finding the cellar entrance is a no brainer. Now in a large rambling house there may still only be one cellar entrance and it is unlikely to be in the centre. No you could die for the first guy in the house but even that is a poor cop out, as it can end up in a daft place. Random in my opinion is never a credible replacement for reality. So do you put a card under each house/house type indicating where the cellar is and the first on their searching for it finds it or do you have a standard position for the cellar entrance for a specific standard of model.
Many houses on the continent still have cellars, in East Germany the services come in well below ground to avoid freezing so it's not an unusual situation.

Just ss a reference, as a young kid both my parents and grandparents had coal heaters. Coal was delivered down a shoot into a walled off but open 1 side bin in the basement.

I suspect much later than "pre-WWI." The UK isn't serious about cutting down coal until the "killer fogs" of post-WWII and the discovery of North Sea gas. But generally look for the coal chute on the side nearest the road. At the least it's on a vehicle-accessible side.

Coal in a cellar? I suppose. We only used our cellar for wine, although sometimes the dogs liked to sleep down there on a hot day.

robert piepenbrink You are right that the chute is in the road. A friends house has such a cellar and chute access as you describe. However access to the cellar is not ideal from the chute as you have to go outside. There are invariably steps down to the cellar to retrieve the coal as was. This is the way down you would use if artillery started to land. As an attacker you may try the chute but it could be booby trapped. This is why the position of the internal steps is important. Big houses may still only have one internal access point.

So who uses cellars in their scenarios?

We suggest in our rules all houses have cellars and that way it save tons of rules about tanks trying to get through houses. A tank in a house with a cellar automatically gets stuck in the cellar.

Ah! Not shooting out from, but just hiding in. Your call, but above skirmish/RPG I'd just have gone with a die roll--not where the entrance was, but whether someone had found it. Otherwise you're on a fast track to needing a floor plan of every house. This is not too bad in a tract house subdivision, you understand, but without a standard floor plan it's a lot of non-wargaming work.

robert piepenbrink "Nothing worse than a smart Arse especially when he's right". Hitch hikers guide.

The lad came up with this one. As you may be aware for 1/144 we use a card village base, gives 2 floors and holds the houses in the right place. Mark the cellar entrance on the Base, sheer genious and quick to do. I can vary the position by village even with the same house model so a real win win. The bases themselves are quick and I have lots now so remebering the pattern of any given village would be hard.

I'm afraid I have to disabuse you about the coal 'chute' being on the road side of the house. Mine [Edwardian middle class detached] was next to the kitchen door on the side up a one man passage. Which would be fine as coal was delivered in sacks carried by men [we had coal fires in the 1960's when I was a child and that's how the coal still came]. Also the entry point was robustly secured by bolts on the inside so was not a viable entrance point to the house. If you want houses with cellars you need to find plans and/or pictures. Worth noting that not all coal 'cellars' were indoors/underground and that not all those that were had a 'chute' entrance, in some cases the sacks were just carried in the back door. Finally the presence of cellars at all is very dependent on terrain and the water table

Ah. I am duly corrected. My experience is primarily American, and they all had vehicle access, even if the vehicle was at one time horse-drawn. Ice men worked on a different program, of course.

Quite right about the inadvisability of cellars on low or poorly-drained ground, but I have known some built there anyway. One used to change hands every August (dryest weather) until an owner stood his ground and paid for serious water-proofing.

Mark J Wilson – Interesting. My 1930's house was one of a number built between the wars. They had a "Coal House" i.e a small (circa 4ft by 6ft) building on the side of the house I.e one wall was the house wall. It held the coal and was accessed from outside. As a school kid most folk had coal fires and we had "Pea Soupers" extremely dense fogs caused by particulates in the atmosphere from coal fires causing excessive precipitation of water droplets. Getting off topic here.

And yes in places cellars were not practical. Even my friends coal cellar was prone to flooding but as originally it only stored coal, small amounts of water were not seen as disastrous.

So the idea of marking individual houses depending on configuration is a good one for which we have a solution.

But as has been noted some thought should be had as to plausible places to locate the cellars on the village base.

So the issues raised by our game needed more thought and so I have now done some.

The base rules note that in buildings the vertical height moved must be accounted for, this though out of scale helps to slow movement to some extent with out resorting to more rules which I am never in favor of unless absolutely vital.

Our Trench ADDENDA has not been published (yet) but states for trenches.

"In the event a Fighting position is hit by effective amounts of artillery, any element may attempt to Evade into a Personal bunker in either, Skirmish or Fast Mode. To be successful the element must have sufficient move in the single phase for the nearest base edge of the element evading to the intended Personnel bunker can reach the most distant section of the Personnel bunker in the single phase allowed. Otherwise the evade is unsuccessful and the element remains in the position it achieved in the evade but takes the artillery fire effect. If not into a Personnel Bunker the rear of the element must be outside the Artillery impact area for the Evade to be effective.

So some thought for cellars. Taking an approximation cellars would be about 18/20mm, standardise for simplicity 20mm deep at 1/144. Now while we could take the element length into account in a small building and spread across more than one floor for a section: easier is to define the base as 10mm long" It could be longer or shorter but its a plausible value. This give us a minimum evade of 30mm. As an evade move is 1/2 D20 X10m we get a chance at minimum of 5 on a D20 to evade successfully.

So to evade into a cellar even for a small building (our smallest is 60mm long) and the cellar is immediately accessible we get a min score of 5 so 75% chance of an evade working. High but worth the uncertainty. Hence basic rules can apply using a standardised minimum if required.

What do we do about remote cellars, or even Ice houses of mansions? Actually now no problem as the basic guidelines have now been established.

Designing rules and getting them to work in new circumstances is fun!

You could reasonably ask why such things were not addressed 16 years ago on issue 1. We, even at Issue one we realised how awfully over simplified and in many cases Just wrong rules were back then (some still are). Its taken a long time to shake off firm but wrong assumption's made in many rules. Plus our ability to co-ordinate assaults has got better, we are better tacticians so can anticipate and plan far better than 16 years ago. Plus simply moving to the originally none existent 1/144 scale has provided a more optimum scale to portray more interesting operation's at company battlegroup level.

Is this a hasty defence thing, or a prepared defence situation?

Small houses – the ones we all seem to occupy – the cellar/basement is a terrible place to be – the whole house could collapse and you'd be crushed.

Large houses – the ones we all aspire to (except for heating it) – the cellar/basement may be casemented and be a good place to defend – the casementing will prevent burial in a collapse situation.

If prepared defence – then some field engineering might have taken place – adding strengthening supports to floors and ceilings with columns; internal sandbagging for fighting positions; danert coils in halls and stairwells; scaffold boards up stairs; mouseholing walls; cutting ladder holes between floors, etc.

The main thing is to provide adequate fighting positions with the means to replen/feed/replace and also for people to get out under cover to the next position.

Plus knee-high wire to prevent enemy grenadiers getting too close to the building, danert coils off building corners, etc.

The US DOD must have an online field engineering handbook that'd illustrate the above.

Stoppage – Our game situation was based on a hasty defence. In particular the risk was small caliber (AGL rounds) these would go off on the roof and as UK houses are small and divided by lots of solid walls there would be spaces in the cellar that would not be unduly prone to collapse.

Now its an interesting debate about high caliber rounds. Against a direct hit it is very questionable, depending on the fusing whether you would survive a direct hit in or out of the cellar. Less accurate fire would be more survgivable as you do have protection from debris. It would not in any way be ideal as other risks as you mention are there but again in part mitigated by selecting the optimum section of the cellar. Rember that even in WW2 in the UK If you did not have an air raid shelter you hid under the stairs in an air raid.

My own house does not have a cellat but does have an airraid shelter. Not done that one in a scenario but its too snmall scale for me.

Here is how to prepare a house and cellar for a defensive position: link

Wolfhag

We had a coal "bunker" which was a tiny separate brick walled and concrete roofed separate construction. The coal man came through our garage to the back of the house carrying coal in sacks to this.