The First Blitzkrieg

Dion

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Any body else think artillery needs a range factor? I mean some of them artillry units are rail road guns which can fire hundreds of miles. I bet the whole reason why they built them in the first place was because their incredable size produced such a great range. I think the great offensive potential that these guns produce would make the game extra dynamic.
 
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Any body else think artillery needs a range factor? I mean some of them artillry units are rail road guns which can fire hundreds of miles. I bet the whole reason why they built them in the first place was because their incredable size produced such a great range. I think the great offensive potential that these guns produce would make the game extra dynamic.
I don't know. While I see in PzC we have Rail Guns with ranges of 24, 27 and even one with 30 km. But when you consider a hex is 10 km and when you consider the gun could be in one side of a hex and firing at the other side of the next hx, you are looking at 20 km.

So the question becomes would it be worthwhile allowing some RR Guns to fire OVER one hex into a non-adjacent hexes.

You really think that would make the game better?

Truth be told I have a long list of things which I hope to see added to the series that came about over wees of discussing things we could use to make a longer Desert Campaign Game as well as be features we need to take into the next game of the series, but RR Guns don't come into play in the desert so it wasn't even on the list. They didn't play a role in the westin the later war years and while there weresome RR Guns used on the east front, I am not sure they were as dominent factor as to make doing a special rule for them.

...that is just my opinion really.

Glenn
 

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The Germans had quite a few (relatively speaking) of those guns -along with some big semi-sp mortars -like the Thors which I think were like 540mm. They could fire from a long ways off, but in game terms would a special mechanic be necessary or even have that much of an impact? These were mainly for fortification busting as far as I recall - like for around the Maginot Line, Brest-Litovsk, and then in the Sevastopol area among others. GMT's EF series has some in their OOBs (which are of a similar scale to the TWiE series - I think those games are like 5 miles to the hex as opposed to the 6 miles per hex used in this series). I guess I'll have a look at their OOB's. I also know that some of the old Europa series boardgames included rail gun units with a 2 hex range (in that series the range would abstract out into about 32 some odd miles) -and they got bonuses for fort cracking duty - it was sort of an add-on type of thing in that game (in terms of adding on to the attack but not being a part of the stack).

Anzio Annie, though - same concept here- there were just a few of them -sort of a German specialty I guess... railway guns, and big ones.
 

Dion

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Just read an article on the 2nd Crimean War and in it there was a railroad gun that had a range of 42 kilometers. I know there are bigger railroad guns too. I can't remember the specifics, but the size and range was incredible. It took days to set it up, and it needed to be recalibrated after every time it fired, and everything needed to be setup perfect, otherwise it would break when they fired it because it was so big and heavy. Maybe, these guns had more of a prestige value than a militay value, I don't know. I think extra range for TFB railroad atillery would be a good addition to the game, because the way it is now is, railroad artillery becomes obsolete when the front moves more than one hex away from the railroad tracks.
 
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Dion

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Now that I think of it, the range of railroad artillery isn't all that bad, if you concider zones of control. What I mean is that even though a unit's counter may be adjacent to your hex, the targeted railroad gun may actually be 2 hexes from you because of the enemy unit's zone of control. I guess ranges and zones of control are abstract.
 
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