v5.1 Rules Highlight. Alternative Fire Missions

[Devin Heinle]

The final major rule we have added to the 5.1 rules is the introduction of multiple styles of Fire Missions for your Indirect Offboard Artillery strikes.

In addition to the standard Fire mission that everyone is familiar with, there are now 4 new Fire Missions. The decision for what type of Fire Mission a player wants has to be decided before a player places a Spotting Round. He can not change the Fire Mission once he decides what it will be.

Concentrated Fire Mission-The center blast hex is higher than the Arty FP but at the cost of the 6 surrounding hexes being less FP.

Loose Fire Mission-A much wider blast radius than the normal 7 hexes of a Standard Fire Mission. But at the cost of much of the Artillery FP value

Line Barrage-A blast pattern of 7 hexes in a straight line rather than focused around a central hex.

Walking Barrage-A line of 3 blast hexes that slowly walk across the board each turn. It can be canceled if the player so chooses before the end of the 3 turns.

 

[Captain Darling]

Hi, have I missed something are we playing Lock n Load Operational now, creeping barrages, extended fire missions etc...I wasn’t in the designer meeting for this but are we playing Operation Bagration or a tactical Skirmish?

Let’s think about it, we have a company commander in day to day action, in a realistic situation he has access to some battalion mortars not a battery of medium howitzers...

My (personal) thoughts on the new fire missions and purely from a WW II perspective as that’s all I play;

Concentrated Fire Mission-The center blast hex is higher than the Arty FP but at the cost of the 6 surrounding hexes being less FP.
Okay this sounds good the Company Commander contacts the mortars and says lay it on. Still a but, how can he determine higher accuracy? It just suddenly happens? maybe allow it but spend two fire missions?

Loose Fire Mission-A much wider blast radius than the normal 7 hexes of a Standard Fire Mission. But at the cost of much of the Artillery FP value
Again okay the Company Commander contacts the mortars and says suppressing fire around this area, nice.

Line Barrage-A blast pattern of 7 hexes in a straight line rather than focused around a central hex.
What exactly is the order to the mortars to do this? And why isn’t there any bleed through to other hexes how can accuracy suddenly improve so much to be able to do such a barrage? Maybe if you want to add complexity and allow a wider spread of fire let the mortars target two groups of 7 hexes at half or incremental firepower?

Walking Barrage-A line of 3 blast hexes that slowly walk across the board each turn. It can be canceled if the player so chooses before the end of the 3 turns.
Okay we don’t have General Plummer on hand so I find this hard to do. Initially does a side need 3 fire missions for three turns of fire or can you get a supper bonus from one fire mission? Will there be a scatter roll each turn for accuracy and if one attack is way off does the next start from the miss location or the original coordinates? Has whiskers on it for WW II in the scale of action we are representing. Okay Lieutenant Smith gets on the wireless, “Boys I want you to get those 81mm mortars to start a creeping barrage from co-ordinate XYZ and fire until the completion of your ammunition.” Sergeant Blogs in reply “What the hell? Is Captain Smith on the terps again?” If you must have something like this it should be an SSR and usually for an assault scenario where you Section is part of a major attack...

Once again these are just my thoughts...

 

[Captain Darling]

Attn LnL staffers, any chance to get some historical and game rationale for the above new fire missions?

 

[Devin Heinle]

Attn LnL staffers, any chance to get some historical and game rationale for the above new fire missions?

For the most part we have been intending to work in some new rules since the upgrade from 4.2 to 5.0 from previous player feedback on wanting to see certain rules added in. The decision to not add them into 5.0 was made to give us more time to work on the rules and flesh them out some and not to overwhelm people with the new rules with the major upgrade from 4.2 to 5.0.

With the release of 5.1, we decided now was the time to add in SOME of the new rules we have had floating around for a while, which was the fire, hull down and alternative fire missions. There were a few other rules we were also looking at including but decided again their inclusion at this time (including the one I was really pushing for the most-rubbing hexes with ordinance).

As far as a historical precedent for these fire missions-well it's just straight from history that we lifted these fire missions.

Walking or Creeping barrages have been in the handbooks of most nations artillery forces since the Boer wars. The British were known the most for using Walking Barrages in WWII followed by the Soviets but every other nationality had their own use of the barrage

And the Line Barrage is just an extension of the Walking barrage of putting a 'line' of artillery fire on defensive positions in an attempt to break the enemy defensive lines. Yes this was done mostly as preparatory artillery bombardment, but again-the British used them as needed more often than anyone else, again followed by the Soviets in terms of popularity.

The Loose Barrage mission may be a bit erroneously named but the naming convention fit with the other names we had come up with. Its more based on what the marines at Guadalcanal started using when they were fighting the Japanese at the Matanikau. The Marines just called it Harassing Fire and it became standard artillery procedure to lob a bunch of shells in a loose formation at a grid coordinate where the Marines thought the Japanese may be forming up for an assault. Eventually, other nations starting adopting a similar procedure (again mostly the Soviets after Bagration)

And to be honest, if you don't like the rules then don't use them if you and your opponent don't agree to them.

 

[Captain Darling]

Thanks for this reply, I agree about army doctrine but my question was how these are ‘large scale offensive barrages’ used at Company level with company mortar support which is what we are generally playing at (again I am only commenting on WW 2 I know artillery accuracy has improved since then)? Company Commanders would not be organising creeping barrages with their mortar support it would be direct fire support.

Also the other questions;

Do you get the equivalent of three turns attacks for one offensive barrage with a walking/creeping fire mission or do you have to expend three attacks to carry one out?

How do you get a more accurate attack in one hex, do you need to expend an extra fire mission? What magic creates this?

Why does the line barrage ‘bleed’ into the adjacent hexes? How is it so accurate?

We will definitely not be using these fire mission rules but I think to much chrome is being added for the sake of chrome. The rule book is now up to almost 200 hundred pages. The beauty of LnL was unlike games like ASL your rule book was not a tome to delve into. Its a crucial point of difference being lost in these developments. If you have a truly great set of rules for sure fine tune them but don’t change them for the worse (IMO).

Thanks again you your reply.