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Are Field artillery worth taking or should I stick with more infantry? I haven't used much artillery in my early games and so I am skeptical to do so.

Generally Artillery is mainly used not for damage output, but for pin and smoke. Though certain armies take advantage of artillery in certain ways, except for germans. I'd say US can have a decent support from a single field battery with their rules

I'm going to be running Irish or Welsh Guard Brits. How effective are they for my list?

I would say that artillery for Brit forces is pretty good
1)reroll first attempt (if you take an AoP then reroll 3rd attempt too! )
2) When you repeat bombardment the enemy rerolls successful saves!

My Brit Para's are made super scary by their artillery!

But for your force i'd not be too concerned, you can normally pin your opposition with the number of MG's on your tanks, and you have direct smoke - my two favourite uses of artillery.

On the other hand if you plan to move from pure tanks to infantry, I'd say go for some 25pdrs and some 5.5's!

British artillery parks can be pretty scary, USA has pretty good arty rules too. Bear in mind they won't often pay for themselves in terms of killing but they have various other applications.

I would always take some Sextons in a British armour list. MG fire can't be relied upon to pin dug in veteran troops and as the Sextons have a staff team as soon as you range in on a target you stay ranged in. They give very good odds of being able to pin your target when you need them pinned.

Plus they are cheap and they can fire a smoke bombardment. I wouldn't take more than 1 troop though.

In infantry lists I tend to favour mortars simply because they do everything that I need them to (pinning and smoke) for half the price. My favourite comination is a mortar platoon and a heavy mortar platoon as the latter are great at killing dug in infantry and they are even slightly better at killing anything that isn't a heavy tank than real artillery but they are cheaper as they don't have a direct fire capability. One of the quirks of the FoW points system is that artillery is more expensive than it should be due to their relatively high AT rating in direct fire.

Palindrome wrote:
One of the quirks of the FoW points system is that artillery is more expensive than it should be due to their relatively high AT rating in direct fire.

Very true. Especially in the case of artillery that have direct fire of AT14 or above (cough germans cough). But mostly everyone ignores that stat and looks at the bombardment power. Although I do admit I wonder if those provisional artillery batteries that use friggin german heavy anti tank guns can pop off a shot or so at tigers and so on

Brits do have some nice artillery, shame they can't use Priests in most of their lists! I do enjoy that +4 Firepower

With me being a American Para player,its all about the Arty,King of the BAttlefield.2 155 batteries,2 105 batteries,priest and2 75mm batteries.Of course time on target.