Any use for small (60mm or less) Mortars in urban settings?
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With their high ROF, CH opportunities are not negligible.
Eagle4ty
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The U.S. 60mm mtr in '45 (along with some few others) is especially useful in any environment given its ability to fire WP whereas others with any type of SMOKE exponent can be helpful. For those without these capabilities judicious use of them must be made in the trade off with the possibility of generating a sniper against their FP usefulness.
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US 60mm WP is only available from 1945, unfortunately.
The British and Japanese smoke (and WP for the latter) are always available.
The British and Japanese smoke (and WP for the latter) are always available.
von Marwitz
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If you have three 60mm MTRs you can exchange them for an OBA module. Not very powerful but fair enough to deny an area of open terrain between buildings and making the crossing of streets through it hazardous...
von Marwitz
von Marwitz
Faded 8-1
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Not every hex on a city board is a building. There are roads between them. Use them to guard crucial roads and hinder the enemy lateral movement. Sometimes you can use a spotter to get a good LOS down a crucial road for this purpose. Also look for road interdiction opportunities from rooftops in RB or other scenarios with rooftops in play. Don't need a spotter in that situation as you can fire mortars from rooftops (including Gun-sized mortars, if memory serves).
Sometimes there might also be a patch of woods or orchard (no airburst, but still shit TEM), or a clearing behind a wall, that you can deny the enemy with a light mortar. Or perhaps he will chance it and give you some shots at +1 or 0 TEM.
Sometimes there might also be a patch of woods or orchard (no airburst, but still shit TEM), or a clearing behind a wall, that you can deny the enemy with a light mortar. Or perhaps he will chance it and give you some shots at +1 or 0 TEM.
AdrianE
Senior Member
It depends on the the opponent SAN number and the situation.
Its 1/36 for a CH on every shot and 1/36 for a malfunction on every shot with a mortar (assuming B12).
A SAN of 5 is the break even point: 4/36 for rolling a 5 x 2/6 for an effective SAN. This gives a slightly higher chance of hurting your side than getting a CH.
If you can achieve some result with other than a CH then the benefits of firing increase but you have to weigh the situation.
If you have taken appropriate anti sniper measures then fire away. If the opponents sniper counter is right beside your 9-2, maybe don't take the shot.
Its 1/36 for a CH on every shot and 1/36 for a malfunction on every shot with a mortar (assuming B12).
A SAN of 5 is the break even point: 4/36 for rolling a 5 x 2/6 for an effective SAN. This gives a slightly higher chance of hurting your side than getting a CH.
If you can achieve some result with other than a CH then the benefits of firing increase but you have to weigh the situation.
If you have taken appropriate anti sniper measures then fire away. If the opponents sniper counter is right beside your 9-2, maybe don't take the shot.
You have a bunch of enemy squads across the street from your squads. You know they will move on you soon, I just use them to place acquired hexes between both groups. First having several hexes aquired in your enemies route of advance means they have to decide to move around or through the hex.. If your mtr team has a LOS to the hexes and you shot several times prior into the empty hex, you have a minus -2 aq counter . If the squads move thru the area and it is open ground ( best terrain) it is vulneralbe to -1 for ffmo, and no assault that is -2 ffmo, ffam so good chance of hit and even a good chance to hurt the squad.. also it leaves residual fire, so a double whammy to anyone entering. Sometimes the best defence is to create conditions whereby your enemy has to decide if they are lucky enough to not get the "to whom it concerns piece of shrapnel" Second previously acquired hexes allow you to place smoke quickly if you want to advance on them.. Use the mortars to deny terrain/ routes of advance.., or preplanne d smoke hexes to help ,hinder you or your enemy
They are lethal against OT vehicles and not insignificant against other AFV's as well. Vs a Panther, a 60 or even 50mm mortar can do bad things to good vehicles on a 3 or less for a result. seems worthless, but with a ROF of 3, you get a lot of opportunities. Likewise, if your side has Booby Traps in a scenario set in an urban HASL, not at all uncommon, PTC's can generate a lot of DR to try and set them off. Remember, the unit rolling the Booby Trap TC is not necessarily the guy who is effected by the Booby Traps. This makes kill stacks wonderful targets for these types of mortars since they are too small for the kill stack to pay attention to, but can generate TC's against upper level targets in a stone building on a 4 on a column 4 shot and a 3 with a 2. Again, with high ROF, this and CH's are possible and possibly deadly.
Wayne
Doing Plenty, Kinda Slow
Elect not to place/use Acquisition, perhaps.
In a high-hostile-SAN urban fight, the 60mm MTR vs stone, say, is possibly not an attractive use.
Vs Infantry, a 4-add-3 IFT DR is only 11(6) / 9(5) / 6(4) / 4(2) % likely to have Effect - break-or-Pin or (only-a-Pin) vs morale 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 respectively.*
[Another way to write that is 5(6)/4(5)/2(4)/2(2)% chance to break(Pin) ]*
Risk to the MTR player is that his 2x DRs (i.e., a successful TH followed by a required IFT effects DR) in a 5/6/7 hostile-SAN game will produce at least one (dr 1 or 2) Sniper activation 7.0/8.6/10.2% of the time, respectively.
Re a hostile-SAN-6: re your Hit/effect events vs an 8-morale target, you're more than four times as likely to get sniped - 8.6% - than as is your opponent likely to break - ~2%. Vs 7-morale, you'll get sniped more than twice as often as you'll get a break - ~4%. Even vs 6 morale targets, the shot more often hurts you than breaks the enemy.
[This comparison ignores stacks and also the possibility of your own sniper activating. Re a successful MTR shot vs a stack (multiple MC response DRs required vs the 4-add-3, say), if your =own= SAN is high, maybe take that shot?]
Re a MTR Miss, you're less likely to get sniped because you will not be required to roll for IFT effect if you miss.
Upshot is you kinda wanna Miss unless its a CH. You do want those stinging 16-down-3 CH IFT attacks of course.
Acquisition worsens your plight: Acquisition ups the number of 4-add-3 sniper-bait IFT DRs you have to make. Acquisition doesn't help your odds of getting a MTR CH (MTRs get a CH only on snakes - C9.5).
Thankfully, the rules allow you to decline placement of Acquisition:
The fewer generally-useless MTR IFT DRs you make, the safer you'll be in the high-hostile-SAN environment. If you elect to ROF-pepper your target without accepting Acquisition, you'll skip a lot of sniper-bait IFT 4-add-3 DRs that you'd otherwise be rolling had you elected to Acquire.eASLRB said:
W/out crunching the numbers, I SWAG that the do-not-Acquire choice more than halves the amount of effective sniper fire you'll take? [The choice gets more attractive the higher the defending TEM -- shelling a Forfied building, say, you'd love a CH but not a 4-add-4.]
It's all situational, but it's good to know that the rules give you the choice of utilizing this sniper-avoidance tactic as you make your 60mm MTR attacks looking for those 1/36th - 2.8% - CH events.
[Credit to ASL champ Gary Mei for this Sniper-dodging epiphany.]
*harm probabilities derived from the Medrow monte-carlo tables published in GEN22.6p5
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Actionjick
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Yes but I will still blast away.
Damn the Snipers! Full ROF Ahead!
Besides there are always Sniper Checks.
Actionjick
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SAN is an old pet peeve. If, as was rationalized to us during playtesting, SAN represents random battlefield occurrences and not really snipers how can you reduce random occurrences by a Sniper Check?
Lol reality! Now I am becoming an historical accuracy type.
Never! Just still bitter about the SL Sniper counter being eliminated.
Which I use a great deal against my long-time CG opponent (hi Charlie). As the German if/when (not a regular occurrence) I create a kill stack it will always be composed of six 2-4-8 HSs or 2-2-8 crews with an 8-1 leader. So I'm actually hoping his sniper lands on them. Sure he might break somebody...but it's one heck of a good sniper check coming back at him. Definitely worth the tradeoff when it works...
Actionjick
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Nicely thought out Sir!Which I use a great deal against my long-time CG opponent (hi Charlie). As the German if/when (not a regular occurrence) I create a kill stack it will always be composed of six 2-4-8 HSs or 2-2-8 crews with an 8-1 leader. So I'm actually hoping his sniper lands on them. Sure he might break somebody...but it's one heck of a good sniper check coming back at him. Definitely worth the tradeoff when it works...
Good tip!
von Marwitz
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Zajuts149
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Mortars are Gun killers! Since many have high ROF, you can get a lot of fire out of them. In a CG like RB, or VotG, a gun in an FBL can't move, so you can set up Mortars to shoot at it the next day. A CH is an automatic destruction of the gun, whatever the effect on the IFT on the crew.
asloser
The Head Tuomo of the Finnish ASL Community
I have several fond memories of the expressions by my opponent when the useless Italian 45mm mortar I have scores a CH against a gun placed in a key location. If you have 2-3 light mortars with low firepower and no smoke (ie Russian German, Italian, Finnish Axis minor Allied minor) just concentrate all of them at one gun and over the duration of a scenario there is a high probability for a CH. And even numerous 2FP+2/3 rolls on the IFT are going to roll low eventually.
The 60mm types are more useful, even with +2 TEM the 4FP firepower will give some results over several fire phases with multiple shots available.
Zajuts149
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I once captured the Commissar's House pretty early in an RB CG, and the Russian player had been graceful enough to fortify BB18 to lvl 2. He did give me a little drubbing by blowing up a HIP Set DC in CC19, though, killing a couple of Sturm squads and a leader.
The day after, I had a 75L AT gun in BB18/2, and I set a DC in BB19, which I blew up in the first turn. Luckily, there was no falling rubble
The AT gun now had a clear field of fire to South, and it paid off when it managed to ambush a T-34 that came in from off board.
The next day again, the gun was of course stuck in place, and could only be concealed. The Russian player had put 9(!) 50mm lmtrs in position to shoot at the gun, and it went down in the first DFPh
