The problem with artillery

[ochoin]

I'm planning a game, after what seems a long, dry spell, in about a fortnight. It will be SYW & based on an historical battle (Reichenberg).

Scaling down the forces to fit on my table & to maintain some semblance of the historical action has to be counter-balanced with what I actually have in the way of figures & terrain. And still make for an exciting game. All this is a challenge but a pleasant one.

As nearly always with Horse & Musket games, the historical lists seem to be top heavy with artillery. In the past, with large-ish Napoleonic battles, I might cut down the historical units by, say, a factor of 4. For every 4 battalions, field one. Ditto regiments of Horse & artillery batteries. Using a uniform factorisation found a game where there always seemed to be too many guns on table which would skew battle. I don't think this was a flaw with the rules as it occurred with several rule sets & appears even more with the SYW where artillery generally shouldn't dominate a battle.

3-4 batteries a side, & not too many battalion guns, seems a sensible estimation.

If I'm correct in my original surmise, why is this so? Why does the paper strength of artillery seem too strong?

donald

[grizzlymc]

Much of the problem with bathtubbed H&M battles is that artillery gets to concentrate its fire, because that ranges are not bathtubbed. Reducing the amount works, but als dropping artillery range works.

[RMD]

For SYW I start by immediately removing a number of guns equal to the number of battalions in each army. Battalion guns were pretty ubiquitous at the time, but generally fairly useless and overwhelmingly dumped in the first decade of the 19th Century. You can either ignore them completely, or add some infantry firepower to reflect their presence, while imposing a movement penalty for the same reason.

That said, I'd leave them in for periods such as the Jacobite Rebellions, where artillery was pretty sparse and battalion guns were generally all there was in terms of artillery (and as such, had a relatively large impact on the battles).

For the rest, I allow artillery to be manoeuvred to a position, where it is then deployed and may not be limbered again until either the army is in full retreat or until the enemy has been pushed back to long range, whereupon the civvy drivers come out of cover and move the guns again. The exceptions being Russian and Prussian 'flying'/horse artillery with military drivers, though they won't be as nippy as Napoleonic horse artillery.

Lastly, I arbitrarily ban any more than two batteries from concentrating their fire on a single target. This isn't really the age of flexible command and control and grand batteries, so this rule helps to discourage that sort of tactic.

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

Battalion guns were pretty ubiquitous at the time, but generally fairly useless and overwhelmingly dumped in the first decade of the 19th Century. You can either ignore them completely, or add some infantry firepower to reflect their presence, while imposing a movement penalty for the same reason.

Were they fairly useless though? How do we know? I have always assumed that they fired canister at the same time as the battalion fired its vollies, hence their effectiveness was mixed in and so difficult - if not impossible - to calculate separately.

I wonder if the real problem with battalion guns in the early 19th Century was that armies had graduated from "small, but perfectly formed" to "full fuck off/industrial" sized, and as well as the sheer cost of providing and maintaining 2-4 guns per regment in the field, the consequent requirement for trained artillerymen (and draught animals) had outstripped the capacities of the artillery schools (and farms) to produce them. As a consequence, regimental artillery was increasingly manned by semi-trained infantrymen supervised by an exceptionally nervous artillery NCO, with a resulting increase in snafus, hang-fires, and accidents ranging from singed eyebrows to an entire gun exploding and taking the ready use box with it. Thoughts?

[BaronVonWreckedoften]

As nearly always with Horse & Musket games, the historical lists seem to be top heavy with artillery. In the past, with large-ish Napoleonic battles, I might cut down the historical units by, say, a factor of 4. For every 4 battalions, field one. Ditto regiments of Horse & artillery batteries. Using a uniform factorisation found a game where there always seemed to be too many guns on table which would skew battle. I don't think this was a flaw with the rules as it occurred with several rule sets & appears even more with the SYW where artillery generally shouldn't dominate a battle.

Donald - One problem that us wargamers rarely (if ever) consider is that real army commanders weren't under some self-imposed requirement to use all their toys or have them taken away from them. Sensible chaps (which most were, despite social propaganda) would keep a reserve. Why? Because real artillerymen got tired and used up real ammunition, so you didn't stick them all in the front line from the kick off, and then have them blaze away all day until the full time hooter. Every so often, your batteries would fire more slowly to preserve ammo and calories; and in later epochs, they would pull out of the line completely, to restock with both, being replaced by - guess who? Yes! The reserve.

I'm sorry? What do you mean "We haven't got one."......?

[RMD]

Battalion guns were pretty ubiquitous at the time, but generally fairly useless and overwhelmingly dumped in the first decade of the 19th Century. You can either ignore them completely, or add some infantry firepower to reflect their presence, while imposing a movement penalty for the same reason.

Were they fairly useless though? How do we know? I have always assumed that they fired canister at the same time as the battalion fired its vollies, hence their effectiveness was mixed in and so difficult - if not impossible - to calculate separately.

I wonder if the real problem with battalion guns in the early 19th Century was that armies had graduated from "small, but perfectly formed" to "full fuck off/industrial" sized, and as well as the sheer cost of providing and maintaining 2-4 guns per regment in the field, the consequent requirement for trained artillerymen (and draught animals) had outstripped the capacities of the artillery schools (and farms) to produce them. As a consequence, regimental artillery was increasingly manned by semi-trained infantrymen supervised by an exceptionally nervous artillery NCO, with a resulting increase in snafus, hang-fires, and accidents ranging from singed eyebrows to an entire gun exploding and taking the ready use box with it. Thoughts?

The answer of course is 'probably'.

[tim.w]

I remember Alex's Gettysburg game where guns had 3 'shots' depicted by bluetac balls and when spent had to be resupplied by limber teams or taken off the line to reload/cool down etc. That worked well and prevented any static super batteries.

[Peeler]

bluetac balls

Childish snigger.

But you're right, it did cause logistic problems & stopped artillery from blazing away all through the game.

[grizzlymc]

Some good points. I think that Battalions guns should be limited in ammo and remember that these are generally 3-4 pdrs, so their cannister won't be blindingly effective and their roundshot will be 2-3 musket ranges.

Comments re the manouvre of guns are good, also, perhaps allow guns to fire 22.5 degrees from the facing of the entire line, so they can't focus fire laterally.

I am also curious as to how effective artillery is in the rules. Typically 7YW would be 1/3-1/2 the ROF of wellingtonics guns, earlier guns even more so. Look carefully at the firepower and either adjust the rules or use less guns.

[Buff Orpington]

Battlefront address the issue by restricting ammo although many players choose to ignore it because they want their Tiger II blazing away every turn. Off the top of my head I can't recall if the Sturmtiger gets 1 shot or 3.