Anyone tried to make horse artillery less 'missile-like'?

[Cubster]

You can base your models how you like and if you want a 10cm wide frontage for your battery and some limbers behind, you can do that. It's up to you.

[Alan Charlesworth]

It would probably solve the OP's problem as there might not be enough room to squeeze his kamikaze batteries into

[Cubster]

Course, if you played some sort of campaign then throwing away vital horse artillery in suicide missions would be self defeating. You could even introduce house rule forfeits for players who display more beard than usual.

Like making them eat sprouts.

[rigolgm]

I started this thread and am just revisiting it to add a thought.

I'd previously misunderstood the Traverse Target rules and didn't realise how easy it is to shoot enemy units with it (I'd thought they had to move across half your front ARC even if they're still in your arc after they move, not just half your FRONTAGE).

This makes it a bit easier to box-in the horse artillery and reduces the angles that they can attack from. I'm a bit happier about horse artillery now. A good combo of skirmishers on your flanks, sensible 'suppression' from angles of Traverse Target etc might keep enemy horse artillery out of mischief.

[Big Al]

I started this thread and am just revisiting it to add a thought.

I'd previously misunderstood the Traverse Target rules and didn't realise how easy it is to shoot enemy units with it (I'd thought they had to move across half your front ARC even if they're still in your arc after they move, not just half your FRONTAGE).
.

Just a reminder that the unit you are firing Traversing Fire at must pass within 12 inches of the firing unit as well. That makes it a little more difficult to carry out. Especially when you consider that a unit can only fire once during your opponent's turn, which means that if your unit is then charged it will not be able to give closing fire.

[rigolgm]

Yup. It's quite a nice rule (albeit a bit absract - enemies can be shot at twice as much if they move a bit, rather than standing still in front of you). As a deterrant it has a nice affect on enemy movement choices.

[Lord Horatio]

I'm still undecided about what the base units represent, but believe proportion is the key to it all.

Artillery seems (with its wide angle of fire and relative agility) to behave like a pair of guns rather than a battery.
The fact that they are out-shot by an infantry line reinforces that opinion.
If you accept this, then you need to be lining up 2 3 or 4 guns (6 if you're Russian) for a battery.

But what does that infantry unit represent.
If it's a battalion (and if your "Brigade" is really a brigade) then many armies would be fielding 8 or 12 foot units in a brigade.
If it's a regiment, then why is it changing formation like a battalion?

And what is that cavalry unit.
Is it always a regiment (and if so is it the 200 men of a british crimean regiment, or the 1500 of the larger Austrian and Russian napoleonic formations).


I've come to a conclusion hat there';s a degree of scaling involved.

My brigades are composed of battalions (about half the number in a real brigade) and I skip the regiment level.
Likewise my Cavalry are usually scaled to have a similar frontage to the infantry units (So those tiny British regiments would appear
as the Light or heavy brigades, and the huge eastern cavalry regiments would be deployed as their constituent battalions.

So (where did I start?) What is a gun.
Where the infantry are regiments, a gun is a battery.
Where the infantry are battalions, the gun is a pair of guns (Perhaps 3 or 4).

This seems to work OK, though being on the receiving end of a battery of 3 gun models is really not much fun.

[Rook]

I am coming to the way of thinking that for me a full battery is going to be two models firing as two guns in the rules and based on a square movement tray the width of a standard size unit to stop it being too mobile and taking up a reasonable footprint to stop the temptation of the 'assault gun style' of play . (Also it justifies the field forge model and the caissons and other shiny toys for a battery stand. This will allow representation of batteries half batteries to be deployed as appears to have happened at Quatre Bra by the Netherlands units with one model on a 40 by 40 tray firing as one gun . Mind you this may be inaccurate as I am a newbie to Napoleonics so correct me if I have misunderstood this.

[Jammers]

Wait till you see HA being combined with a Follow Me order ....