"Do You Put Artillery Models on the Board?" Topic

All my artillery models are of the 18th century or earlier, so deploying them in the line of battle is appropriate enough.

In WW II I don't deploy artillery models. I agree with the poll question, seems silly in the WW II era.

Now I DO use them for my 18th and 19th century games as well as All Quiet on the Martian Front….

Yeah. How did "in WWII" drop out of the poll? I answered as though it were still in, but still…

(And the short answer is that you about need a Rommel scale board to have indirect-fire artillery present, but WWII artillery was certainly used sometimes in direct-fire mode. I'm not turning in my DAK 88's, and my 1940 French really need those 75's. If the question had been properly phrased as "Do you place WWII indirect fire artillery on your tabletop?" the answers would have been almost unanimous.)

Mr. Polls Criticizer strikes again, and with a potentially inappropriate conclusion, but I digress … lol.

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Other … for WW2 … depends on whether a large ground area is being covered by the table top game area or not. With the rules "D-Day to Berlin" and the Bagration to Berlin supplement, where as an example players can play the northern part of the Battle of the Bulge on the table top, the rules provide for both on board and off board artillery. Although if I play a skirmish sized game, then there usually isn't any artillery on the table top, unless a person calls mortars a form of artillery.

For WWII no, I don't put artillery batteries on the table. I guess you could always do a scenario in which a battery is being overrun, but that's about it. What do I do with all of the lovely artillery models? I don't buy them since they should be somewhere in the next room.

I play a lot of Russian front games, and the Red Army tended to use its light artillery (76mm) in a direct-fire role, so they're on the table. We play an operational-level game where a kilometer is about 15", so it hardly seems inappropriate.

A fair hit, GamesPoet. But if you want useful answers, you need to phrase the question carefully.

I play with 54mm Army Men figures, with rules I wrote. I limited the range such that they need to be on the table. I do play on a table, as I am too hold to play on the floor. I also play on tables which are 9-24 feet long. I made the artillery range long, but not measured in 100's of feet. Truth be told, I shortened the ranges of every weapon, to make the game playable on a table (slightly -- LOL!) smaller than a tennis court. Cheers!

For my pre-20th century armies all my artillery are direct fire models; so they are on the table

For anything 1900 and beyond I put direct fire artillery on the board – for example anti-tank guns or infantry direct support like the German 75mm infantry gun – but for indirect fire always off board

Just did a Normandy '44 game with German 105s and British Priests – both were off board

Definitely needs to differentiate between smoothbore or rifled.

I think the poll was asking about WWII. I don't have artillery models on the table as I don't own any. Makes no sense to do so. We use Bolt Action in 28mm and I have seen M-7 Priest on the table and they look totally out of place. They are like lightly armored tanks with an enormous guns. They don't last long.