Artillery Bombardment

I originally designed this unit independent of any other source in the 1980’s when there was only A&A Classic available.
Artillery: move 1 (same as infantry) Attack value = 4 and Defence value = 1. Cost is 6 PF.

@Navalland said in Artillery to defend at 3?:

Just trying to figure out the most balanced unit set up and wondering if +1 defense to artillery would be good idea. Probably better to leave it as it is right now.

Ya I would for now.

@Arreghas I really like the rule. Here’s what I like the most

I think it would speed up the game It helps minimize giant stacks of troops It’s historically accurate. Concentrated artillery bombardments were used all throughout the war, especially by the Germans in Russia during 1915

I just have one suggestion. I feel like having the artillery not being able to battle if they do this will discourage people from doing this, so here’s what I propose:

When you choose to have an “artillery duel” artillery just hit at one less, like you said. You and the defender use all your artillery in the territory Once per turn you may choose to have your artillery battle at their normal values. However, the roll at 1 until your next turn.

That’s one of the problems with games is everybody banks there planes. My own game at least has it where u can lose planes in naval and ground when u don’t want to. If there’s a bonus plane kill u have to take one as a casualty

@CWO-Marc
Thanks for your thoughts. I intend to revise the top posts for this and the other two “expansion posts” sometime this weekend, I now have some food for thought.

Thanks again!

-Midnight_Reaper

@thrasher1 Maybe it is time for me to thank some people. The people who came before me… All the guys (and maybe girls) at game magazines who published Axis and Allies (and Fortress America and Shogun related stuff). I never got one of these magazines myself however.
But for now: a big shout-out to these pre-internet guys! If anyone from you is here on this forum: please send me a message if you want.

What about giving it the ability to fire first in battle, defender removes casualties, then normal combat begins. Or what about being able to fire from adjacent territory. Also can it be used as AA and land combat at the same time or do you have to designate in defense.

But doing that does not model the capabilities of these units. The game OOB permits the preemptive firing because it is against just air units that are flying over to attack. It is marginally acceptable to allow this, but realistically these are just basic artillery.

Since they were made as a new unit it stands to bring it fully into the fold as a normal combat unit.

To allow preemptive fire every round is too strong for a 5 IPC unit IMO.

Plus this unit needs to be 3-2-5 as the other units took the other values, so the value of a 5 IPC unit must balance out and preemptive is worth more.

If you want accuracy, you would need to introduce the concept of units ‘breaking’ and running before they are destroyed.  Squad Leader (Avalong Hill 1977) had this, some squads keep fighting when they are down 50% strength, others ‘break’ and run when damage hits 10%.  Of course each of the existing units when they need variable strengths compared to other nations units.  This would require a switch to dice with a greater range of values, I’d say minimum 10 sides, but lets use 2 10 sided like AD&D.  No way a soviet or german tank unit fights the same way as an allied unit.  The way the allies fought german tanks was using a squad of 4 allied versus a german tank.  It starts like this, the first allied tanks lights up like a torch and the remaining three start to manouver around the german as its turret rotated a bit slow.  So, allied tank #2 then #3 light up in flames and the 4th allied tank gets in behind the german and lets loose at point blank range in the poorly armoured rear of the German and manages to disable it.

New units would not fight as well as vetern units of course so you would have to keep track of the age of each unit then modify its combat values based on just aging and also exposure to combat.  Yeah cool, way more accurate, of course each countries turn would take a few hours and we would have to go back to cardboard units with the 3-4 % values representing the units abilities.  We would need zillions of these units for each combination of values.

In ‘set-piece’ battles the Japanese were getting slaughtered against the US.  Perhaps it because by 1943 the US was producing as many machineguns per month as the Japanese produced during the entire war.  I think the Japs having never faced trench warfare and the futility of charging into massed machineguns had no concpet with this type of warefare.  Moreover, the Japs never seemed to retreat so they had little ablity to learn lessons as nobody came back to HQ with information on what they faced.  I would think for accuracy this would have to be represent also with different strencth units.

Personally, I think AA has found a pretty good balance of accuracy and playability.