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Looking at my list I realized I was taking mobile 105mm Artillery guns. Now these looked pretty good and so on compared to my small Japanese Battalion Guns, however I just saw the American 155mm Artillery battery.

For a mere 275 (even less for trained) points I can have a devastating artillery unit. With spotters everywhere (AOP, every command team etc) and the ability to do the american timed bombardment I feel like having at least one of these would be ideal.

The stats on a 155mm for bombardments is:

anti tank 5
Firepower 2+
88" Range

Any experience with these big guns?

I feel like I should take 2 sets of 4 guns if I am serious about winning.

The down side is you have to take the 105's before you can take the 155's. That is a lot of points.

That is true,

But really you are looking at about 550 points to field a huge amount of artillery.

515 points gets you

4 155mm
6 Priest 105mm

That is for trained and confident. I guess it is pricey.

It's a common enough list build. You get enough infantry and related support to protect the artillery, and then keep the enemy pinned down in front of your lines while the artillery (which your platoon commanders can spot for) blows the enemy into tiny pieces. And since it's an infantry list, you'll be on the defensive against enemy Mechanized or Tank lists in most of the scenarios. If armor is popular in your play group (and it generally is).

Don't get complacent, though. A while back the group that I was a part of had a guy who ran a US list like that. And since pretty much everyone ran armor, he got very good at defending. Things didn't work out for him nearly as well the one time he had to go up against my SS infantry list, and ended up attacking instead of defending.

Even on the offensive though it could be handy. You can range in on any objective and simply pound away. With the AOP you can range in on any hiding defenders too.

If you build the list around attacking the heavy guns should be able to be useful in both attack and defense.

Yup American Artillery is pretty OP. 4 platoons of artillery list can lock down the entire board.

Watch for air power. Germans can have uninterceptable jet bombers, if they land on target they can easily wipe out a whole battery. Nebelwerfers/ Panzerwerfers are also cheap and can launch a nasty counter battery.
Almost all SPA is open topped and horribly vulnerable this way.

You also cant spot through smoke, and Germans have enough cheap smoke.

Lastly an MSU recon list can be troublesome. Panzerspah can eat artillery heavy lists alive.

The assets to counter your 500+ pts of artillery may well cost only a fraction of them.

155's are good, most other factions have something similar, and the balance is that you must take a medium battery before you can deploy a heavy. The US is not particularly strong here, Soviets have nasty heavy artillery, as to the British, and he British share most of the sepdial rules and have some of their own. The counters to artillery are still the same. Cheaper barrage units, airpower and smoke.

Dont get me wrong, a medium and a heavy battery is a solid list for most factions, you can be stronger you can win, but there are standard counters, and standard vulnerabilities.

Yea I have been looking through books and lists and came to a similar conclusion.

I still think that artillery parks in general are pretty powerful, especially as the attacker. However they can be stopped. With the AOP I can simply hide my arty and still spot anything on the board etc. Means german spotters have a bit more work to do to counter. This means they have to rely on their air power to gain the advantage here. No amount of smoke can stop the AOP without hindering yourself!

Russian arty is OP with hoard of guns with hoard of spotters.
They say a lot of terrain is not fair cause German storm-trooper move, but that's your only chance against Russian arty.

AlsoUSA have lots of Special rules to help out. TOT, free spotters(platoon leader) all over the board, AOP. Smoke to help hide their spotters

Russian arty is nothing compared to US arty.