Are we basing artillery wrongly?

[JW Boots]

Once upon a time a long ago, I had my guns separate from their crew. Each crew mini could even represent an X-number of guns and was used to keep track of losses. Perhaps some still do this, but over the years, I mostly observed crew and guns being stuck on the same base. I have done so too. In more recent rules, artillery bases represent batteries that can also end up in hand-to-hand combat and are often destroyed when that happens. In fact, Warlord’s epic gunners are literally cast to their gun’s carriage wheels and must go where their gun goes.

However, I wonder…

I am working on Le Soldat; a ruleset for the late 17th to early 19th century, based on Der Söldner. And I am now contemplating artillery and getting the feeling something is amiss. Did artillery indeed end up in hand-to-hand combat? Strictly speaking, the answer is yes, as there are examples. But was it the norm? I think not.

In fact, there are these stories of Russian gunners being noted for dogmatically defending their guns… suggesting to me that others didn’t. We also have pictures of the British gunners at Waterloo sheltering in the squares while the French cavalry was swarming around those, probably remanning the guns once the danger had passed. And there may be more examples suggesting that gunners could, and would, often (temporarily) abandon their guns and return at a later stage, provided the enemy hadn't dragged away the guns if they could, meaning a battery destroyed in a wargame’s combat may not be as destroyed as it is…

So, taking this all together, should we not mount gun and crew again separately as once upon a time… or… any other creative ideas are more than welcome…

[Cubs]

I reckon the problem is that once you start to look too closely, you are drawn into a game within a game as regards the guns. The guns were so valuable that they were often mission objectives within a battle and a fast assault could overrun them (and the crew) and then ... what? Spike them? Smash the wheels? Drag them off? Turn them on their own troops? Play see-saw? There are so many possibilities as to what happens next it's probably all just easier to abstract to avoid the whole game getting bogged down whenever the enemy gets near the guns. Sure the crew could and would defend the guns, either actively fighting or keeping their heads down, confident that their own troops would repel the assault, or perhaps they ran off either in panic or in a controlled withdrawal. But do you really want to start weighing up all these things in the middle of a game?

Perhaps in a skirmish scenario this is exactly what could be explored, dicing to see if your crews keep their heads and do what you want them to, or panic and start acting randomly. You could have rules regarding the enemy trying to disable the guns or even capture them for bonus points.

[fred]

I'm largely with Cubs on this - feels that the level of representation is generally high enough that a unit destroyed covered all sort of out of action results.

From a basing perspective some people leave the guns unsecured to their bases, so that the gun can be positioned behind limbers, and presumable could be left in place to show the crew have been killed / driven off, but the gun is still in situ?

[AKULA]

TBH, I wasn't aware that everyone was basing their guns attached to the bases ... mine are still separate, so i'm now so far behind the times i'm cutting edge again 

[Silent Invader]

Coincidentally, I'm just in the process of basing my Peninsular War French 8lber. For SP2, the gun has 5 crew plus an officer (though the officer like all SP2 leaders is separately based). The gun will be attached to a sabot tray that has 5 sockets for the crew to be positioned around it to serve it.

[vtsaogames]

Most of my guns and crews are mounted on the same bases. Bloody Big Battles specifies that assaulted guns attached to infantry or cavalry units may not be knocked out unless the attached unit is defeated. In any case, sometimes the guns retreat disrupted, even when unattached.

My AWI guns are separate, so that I can switch grasshopper guns with heavier guns at will. Also, my AWI stuff is definitely lower level, with many 250-300 strong infantry regiments.

[Kuropatkin]

I feel that fred addressed the key issue: what is the time scale and the level of representation in the rules.

A skirmish game where each turn is a minute and each figure is one man, modeling the gun and crew separately makes sense, especially if there are rules for gunners fleeing and returning to their guns to avoid hand-to-hand combat.

A game where the time scale is an hour/two hours and the units are brigades/divisions, fleeing and remanning the guns all happens within a small portion of that time. A rule could say that any battery charged can fire at half and the crew is assumed to have fled to safety. If the attacker isn't able to occupy/hold the battery position, the crew is automatically assumed to reman the guns. That gives the effect without specifically modeling the event.

With 28mm, and 15mm figures, having separate crew and guns works well from a handling (manipulating on the table) standpoint. 10mm and 6mm gets a bit dicy. I would likely lose guns or crew models if I modeled them separately in 6mm. Then again, I am unlikely to play a set of skirmish rules with 6mm figures. 

[Freddy]

For army level games I never glue down the guns and always make movement tray-like bases where crew can be removed separately.



For skirmish games I do not even base the guns. This way it could have different crews (the ubiquitous 120mm 1938/43M ,,samovar" mortar was used in ww2, in Cold War and even by Afghan mujahideen.)

[Battle Brush Sigur]

I agree with the above - when it comes to skirmishy stuff like my SP2 28mm Napoleonics I don't even base the gun and keep crew separate. For battle stuff, such as my 28mm ACW figures, I put them all on bases. And big ones. One of the things I'll always remember is that on one of the early View from the Veranda podcasts I think Henry mentioned that cavalry always takes up more space than we think. Not huge bases, but not small either.

Of course it's also a matter of figure sizes. My 6mm Napoleonics stuff is all glued down. Funnily, my 10mm Thirty Years War guns are all not glued to the bases. Crews are, but the guns aren't. Not sure why, but it has some advantages: Being able to put them behind limbers for instance. Some rules (like Twilight of Divine Right) have rules for artillery taking shelter in infantry units behind them, just like JW Boots mentioned in the initial post and potentially re-man the guns once the danger is gone. For these occasions it's good to keep the guns in place and just remove the bases with the crews to remember that there's guns standing around.


It's tricky, but in the end it's best to go about it in a sensible manner, based on what you want to depict. And of course on what we prefer visually.

[Ray Rivers]

Yep, if you have limbers, it makes sense to not attach the gun to a base so you can put that with the limber.

But I think I used to always just place the gun with the crew behind the limber when it was moved.

[anevilgiraffe]

No. Base them how you like or as the rule sets require.

[vtsaogames]

No. Base them how you like or as the rule sets require.

That's true. They're your toys.

[Khusru2]

Initially I thought you meant one gun and crew represented a battery. To show damage via musketry, artillery or melee a figure is removed and battery fire effect is downgraded. Fewer men, reduced effect.

[Freddy]

Initially I thought you meant one gun and crew represented a battery. To show damage via musketry, artillery or melee a figure is removed and battery fire effect is downgraded. Fewer men, reduced effect.

It depends on the ruleset used- but as a wise man once said, ,,you are not collecting games, you are collecting historical armies", so I prefer the most flexible basing method available which I can use for any ruleset the internetz or my opponents can come up with.