Artillery Preparatory Fires Before the game gets going, there is a period of German preparatory fires and Allied return fire. There are any number of ways to do this. All fire is off board and is handled by paperwork (except for German guns that accompany the attack to destroy strongpoints by direct fire). I assume that the Germans have five times as many guns firing into the attack corridor than the Allies have who can fire back. I allocate German guns to counter battery, fire against troops, fire to open holes in wire, and fire against command posts. Then I develop tables for the effectiveness of one battery and roll for results. In this example, the Germans have ten batteries firing, the Allies two. German allocation: Counter battery - three batteries Against troops - three batteries Open wire - two batteries Against command posts - two batteries Allied allocation: Counter battery - two batteries Counter Battery Fire Let’s discuss counter battery fire. I assume that the Germans know the precise locations of the defending batteries through aerial photography. However, since these German batteries only moved into position a day or two prior, the defenders do not know their precise location. Now, there are ways of locating a battery once it begins firing but this takes time. Thus, I assume (and I don’t have any hard numbers to back this up) that the German batteries will be firing for awhile, perhaps thirty minutes or longer, before the defenders start getting shells anywhere near them. And in thirty minutes, the Germans should be able to put enough steel on target that the defender must either displace to another firing location or risk losing all guns, caissons, horses, ammunition, and gun crew. So, the first battery to fire (the Germans) enjoys a tremendous advantage over the defending battery. Now, you can come up with all sorts of modifiers and probabilities and roll dozens of dice to get a result or you can just roll up all probabilities into a single 1D6 die roll for each battery dedicated to counter battery fire. German battery 1: destroy entire battery 2, 3,4: cut down target battery fire by 50% 5, 6: no appreciable target effect Allied Battery 1, 2: cut down target battery fire by 50% 3 - 6: no appreciable target effect So, during the preparatory fire phase (before any Germans move across no man’s land) the Germans roll three dice, one for each battery allocated to counter battery, and the defenders roll 2 dice. Record the results but don’t apply the results until after the preparatory fire phase is completed. Now, the preparatory fire phase lasted several hours. Therefore, in order to conduct counter battery fire throughout the game, I use the same tables but only roll for artillery fire every ten game turns. If you wanted, you could roll for artillery every turn but target effect would be minimal. For example, the defenders would certainly move a battery or two to join the battle and the batteries you were firing at would be either destroyed or move to a new location. In any event, the most effective counter battery fire occurs during the preparatory fire phase. Firing Against Troops For fire against troops, I let each battery fire upon twelve inches of trench line during the prep phase. This fire is a combination of non-persistent gas and high explosive using both contact and delay fuses. 1, 2: 1 MG and 2 inf stands hit 3, 4: 1 MG and 1 inf stand hit 5, 6: 2 infantry stands hit This target effect may seem minimal but remember, the defenders are down in their dugouts during the preparatory fire phase. Fire Against Wire Cutting wire is a difficult task for artillery. The typical result is a jumble of shredded wire rather than neat rows. But even shredded wire can delay an attacker. Anyway, I let a battery concentrate on a twelve-inch section of wire. The result is automatically shredded wire. The advantage comes when the Germans try to cross the wire. It takes a squad two turns to cut through untouched wire but only one turn to find and improve a path through shredded wire. Mark these paths so that follow on troops can use them with no movement penalty. Each path accommodates two stands per turn. I let squads open up as many as four paths through a twelve-inch section of wire. Let’s review what happened here. Let’s say one battery is allocated to a section of wire. At the end of the prep phase, this section of wire is shredded. Once a squad of infantry arrives at the wire, they can clear a path in one turn. The attacker sends four squads to open four paths. On subsequent turns, the attacker can move two stands through each of the four paths (a total of 8 stands) each turn. Fire Against Command Posts On the map I show three command posts, two for companies and one for the superior battalion headquarters. For this game, the purpose of a command post is to order subordinate units to conduct local counterattacks or to pull back to a subsequent trench line. If a command post is knocked out, it’s subordinates elements will not voluntarily leave their positions but will remain in place and defend as best they can. So, one CP controls the troops on one half of the board, the other CP controls the rest, and the battalion CP in the rear controls all defending units on the board. A command post is a difficult target to put out of action because it is such a small target and has been “hardened” as much as possible in an established trench line. So, if a battery is given the task of taking out a CP, it uses this table. 1,2: CP destroyed 3 - 6: no effect The Creeping Barrage After the preparatory phase is over, some batteries change missions to that of firing the creeping barrage. In my rules, a battery can fire a linear sheath 8 inches wide. This line of fire proceeds in a straight line through the defensive zone at the same pace as the infantry. I let the following infantry control when the line creeps forward. The term creeping is probably misleading. Actually the line of fire jumps forward, a pre-set distance, at the command of the infantry being supported. Communications were not good enough to change from the pre-set path, only good enough to shift the line of fire forward on command. I suppose I could figure in a method of determining whether the communication from the storm troopers gets to the guns but I don’t. I figure each assault party has a special color flare which it fires every time it wants the fire to shift. Some artillery controller in friendly lines watches for the colored flare and then telephones the battery to shift fire. More World War I German Infiltration Tactics Introduction Infiltration Tactics Infiltration in Action Solo Play Artillery How to Use Storm Troops Large Scenario Map (slow: 100K) Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #135 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com