Re: Artillery strikes

On Tue, 01 August 2000, Kevin Balentine wrote:

> When calling in off-table artillery, it says the FO or
> whoever is calling in the strike must have LOS to the
> impact point.

Correct.
 
> How do you guys feel about calling in an arty strike
> on a location where the player "knows" where the enemy
> is, such as inside a forest, but where the figure
> calling in the strike shouldn't have that good a guess
> about it?

It gets a little hairier, actually. On page 12, under the cover rules,
it is implied that the player can actually target the woods, not just
the edge of the woods. The artillery rules require a line of sight (LOS)
to the impact point but the cover rules imply that if you can spot a
woods, you can target the woods themselves. I would allow, if I was a
referee, a player to target the centre of any woods within LOS, any spot
within LOS of the unit.

But your question is more subtle: can a player use up an artillery
strike on a set of woods knowing that a unit is in the woods, even if
the unit can't be spotted. 

The way the rules are worded, it's perfectly legal. For instance, the
American unit engages some Germans. The Germans pull back, the Americans
pull back and then order an attack on the woods. You could argue that
the Americans have a pretty good guesstimate that the Germans are still
in the woods. Or, perhaps they can hear the Germans tromping through the
woods.

If you want to avoid this, here's a house rule. Once a unit has
disappeared into woods, it goes back into hiding. This is against the
rule that prevents units from being hidden once they are activated, but
you could easily allow it in your own games. Once out of LOS, at the end
of that turn, the unit gains, say, 2 dummy markers. Then, each dummy
marker can be activated like a unit. As long as it stays out of LOS, the
unit is hidden and the dummy markers stay on the board and can move
around. Note, this also breaks the rule that states a unit is no longer
hidden after it moves.

The Stargrunt spotting rules are pretty basic. They don't handle going
back into hiding, or what happens when LOS is lost. As such, the
situation you describe is legal, even though the firing player knows
where a unit is located, even if the unit is no longer in LOS. Is it
realistic? That's harder to argue. American units were pretty artillery
happy (definitely in the Vietnam War, but even in WW2). I could see the
American player arguing that it is VERY realistic. 

Of course, now I have to wonder a couple of other things: what size
artillery was coming down on the Germans? If we're talking company level
artillery, it's probably mortar support if it only took 1 turn of
"incoming" on the inbound box. It wouldn't be hard to believe that an
American unit would use a mortar barrage on a line of woods that could
still have Germans in it. If it was in box 2 or 3, due to being higher
level support from battalion or regimental assets, it would have been
harder to call in. If it was box 2 or 3, what the heck were the Germans
doing hanging around the woods for a turn or two with artillery inbound?

You see, this is the other thing. A player could argue, "There were
units in the woods/buildings/whatever. The woods/buildings/whatever are
strategic. It's perfectly logical to assume they are still in there! I'm
not going back in without an artillery strike."

One last suggestion. If I was refereeing, and wanted it a bit more
realistic, I'd pull the player aside and say, "Okay, here's the scoop.
You know the Germans are in there. We can see them. Your units, though,
can not. So, you have to decide RIGHT NOW how many barrages you're going
to call down on the woods until you can get troops in there to see if it
was cleared out. Tell me right now how many "clean hits" you want on the
woods." Then, I'd have him call in the strikes. If he says, "One," then
that's all I'd allow from him even if it meant no casualties. If he
says, "Five," I'd force him to call in five artillery strikes, even if
the first one wipes out the German unit. 

That's the advantage of playing a scenario with a referee. If, however,
there is no ref, I'd suggest just playing as the rules allow and realize
you give up a little realism for some playability.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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