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Been thinking about adding some artillery to my Grenadier kompanie; my options are limited to nebelwerfers/panzerwerfers or standard 10.5mm howitzers with the option to upgrade to 150mm.
I'm considering the 150mm sFh18 guns which come as a box set from battlefront. What are peoples experience using these and their benefits over their lighter cousins? The panzerwerfers are tempting but most likely going to be left to being bought over a longer period of time as they only come singly as far as I can tell.

It depends what you need them for 150s are great vs armour and dug in infantry but wasted on smoke duties.

Nebelwerfers/Panzerwerfers are a little light to take on armour average vs. dug in infantry but excellent at smoke.

105s sit in the middle.

Having seen massed katyushas fail to do very much at all, I'm an advocate that artillery, if being used to kill stuff, should be good at it. So that would be the 150's then I guess.
Not too fussed about smoke right now; I can always use the StuHs for that (whenever PSC get round to merchandising them...)

In my view, Artillery is NOT for killing stuff, it is for pinning and smoking. With that view, it is hard to beat the cheap Nebelwerfers -- 3 cost about 115 points or so.

Exhumed wrote:Having seen massed katyushas fail to do very much at all, I'm an advocate that artillery, if being used to kill stuff, should be good at it. So that would be the 150's then I guess.
Not too fussed about smoke right now; I can always use the StuHs for that (whenever PSC get round to merchandising them...)

StuH will only do direct smoke against a single target. Artillery bombardment smoke is quite another thing.

Thanks for the insight, chums. We'll see what the christmas paycheck fairy brings me and probably just get both...

As a 21 panzer player, my 3 x 15cm Lorraine 37Ls are just incredible at killing stuff. They are cheaper than other armoured Arty by virtue of being on the crappiest chassis you can get, but they aren't likely to be going at the double or crossing terrain are they? so why not? Since they are a bit shorter ranged, they are cheaper than Hummel's, despite having the same gun (shorter barrel) but unless you deploy them cross-corner, they will hit anywhere on a 4x6 board.

They have the stats of a howitzer, so so long as they hit, they will do damage with a AT of 5 and FP of 2+ to vehicles. They are Vet's so hit on 3+ assuming first range in.

I am also a huge proponent of Panzerwerfers. While 115 points is nice for Neb's, 185 pts gets you 6 tubes that cannot be pinned, are "tanks" if they get assaulted by inf, and have AA MGs, plus they can stormtrooper move? I'm sold. Their nice firepower value is a refreshing change from my 25pdrs, thats for sure.

If you need smoke bring mortars.

My 6th FJ are supported by a SS Motorised Heavy Arty Battery and they always blow the hell out of anything.

NW are good for both, especially if you are fighting concentrated infantry.


Have never used Panzerwerfers so no opinion.

DirtyJon wrote:In my view, Artillery is NOT for killing stuff, it is for pinning and smoking. With that view, it is hard to beat the cheap Nebelwerfers -- 3 cost about 115 points or so.

Agreed. It's why I love my Brit platoons. Every one of them has a mortar in it.

Light mortar teams found in British units may only fire like a direct firing team. They just have a special rule where they can fire over friendly teams so you can keep them in the back.

You cannot bombard with them. Also, the smoke they put out is only a 2" smoke puff, which is concealment, the same as a burning tank.

I really hope you haven't been using them as full mortars this whole time. :(

Even a single mortar firing as a bombardment is a bit rubbish; the reroll hits and have a negative modifier as well i think, as do all single artillery guns.
Vertrucio is quite right. British platoon mortars as just rof 1 weapons that can shoot over the rest of the platoon.
Dedicated mortar platoons are a different story.

Vertrucio wrote:Light mortar teams found in British units may only fire like a direct firing team. They just have a special rule where they can fire over friendly teams so you can keep them in the back.

You cannot bombard with them. Also, the smoke they put out is only a 2" smoke puff, which is concealment, the same as a burning tank.

I really hope you haven't been using them as full mortars this whole time. :(

Oh.

Oh dear.

...Well, I suppose the good thing is that, since my games have only gotten up to 1000 pts, I've only ran 2 rifle platoons. And most of the time my smoke came from my 25 pdr battery - 3 guns to do the actual barrage, and the last gun to launch smoke (first, of course) - the mortars in the rifle platoons are often the first to go.

Depending on how big your games are, I would take both nebelwerfers and 150s. Then at higher points I would tack on a 10.5 battery too.

it also depends on if you are playing defensive or offensive.


For my Fallschirmjagers I use 10.5s and Nebelwerfers(substitute 150s in for 10.5s) like this.

Defensively, the Werfers pin and take out enemy infantry while the 10.5s focus on any armor. If none, they also go for the enemy infantry.

Offensivly, the werfers keep the enemy pinned down while the 10.5s dig them out of their holes. Once the 10.5s are ranged in, the Werfers move on to other enemy infantry and keep them pinned. Then my infantry closes in for the kill. I might spend a good 3-4 turns punishing the enemy infantry before I move in. Patience is the key here.

Is it possible to field 150's and 10.5's in the same list? Aren't the larger guns just an upgrade?

it depends on the list.

My FJ have the ability to run an FJ artillery battery and get an allied SS artillery battery so I can run both in the same list. i just don't upgrade both.


Any time you can run 2 Artillery plattons and can upgrade them then you can have both.

Sounds fair to me. I suppose my next question should be is it worth running them as motorised or is there never really a need to reposition heavy artillery?

Unless you are playing in multi-player games on tables exceeding 10 feet in length I don't think you will ever need to reposition.

I play Panzer Pioneers and Hummels are always in my list. Even though you can't take Hummels it's the same gun just not mobile. The reason I pay the extra points for the 150's is that if I am going to use Arty I want some that is capable of killing things. If all you want to do is drop smoke take mortars and use the extra points elsewhere. I can think of more than one case where my Arty was decisive in victory due to good FP and AT.

Artillery is more important when facing infantry, unless you have really big guns you won't do much more then slow tanks down and occasionally kill one or 2. Once you get to the 150s you can actually expect to start killing tanks in useful numbers.

Infantry can be a pain to dig out, as opponents of my FJ know all too well. If you are facing infantry, particularly Veteran, then big guns are useful.

They are less useful against Russian Hordes because that infantry almost never digs in, morters and nebelwerfers will do just as much damage as 150s. if you can pin them down in the open then you can start hammering and hopefully they remain pinned, but with russians thats not very likely.