Heavy Artillery?

[TERRYFROMSPOKANE]

Could someone please give me a tip on how to effectively deploy Heavy Artillery? Unless one can put it far in advance in ambush in a Gully or Plantation, one's own battle line will soon out distance it. And in a plantation, it loses its range advantage. I have tried deploying it at a 45 degree angle on a refused flank, but the enemy always seem to be able to maneuver around its arc of fire.

Thanks for the Help. Terry G.

[imanfasil]

I'm not sure there is an effective way...

[IanB3406]

It's not supposed to be effective.

[imanfasil]

It's not supposed to be effective.

Correct... don't let the extremely high cost mislead you!

[ravenflight]

Could someone please give me a tip on how to effectively deploy Heavy Artillery? Unless one can put it far in advance in ambush in a Gully or Plantation, one's own battle line will soon out distance it. And in a plantation, it loses its range advantage. I have tried deploying it at a 45 degree angle on a refused flank, but the enemy always seem to be able to maneuver around its arc of fire.

Thanks for the Help. Terry G.

I've not even tried to use it, and I use a Syracusan army from time to time. If you can get 'Fortifications' you can at least give it an extra few inches of deployment. If so, I'd consider something like this:

At the 15" mark place two '2 element' fortifications so that you can deploy the artillery thusly:
Use 4 Heavy Artillery with intersecting fields of fire so that there is a rhomboid shaped beaten zone where all 4 can fire, but a 'mutually protective zone' there at least two can fire.

Place a BG of poorer quality foot (preferably ones that can shoot) on the flank to stop troops 'zipping past' via march moves.

Now, that's one fairly strong formation, but it's also expensive.

You could do it with half of the armies in "Empire of the Dragon" but boy, you've taken up 92 points just in artillery and another however much for foot... probably talking around 110 points minimum, and it would just be ignored.

It's the kind of thing that would only work against certain armies and then only if you could orchestrate everything to work perfectly. You'd have many battles where nothing happened as you try to win against 800AP with only 690!

[grahambriggs]

It's not a particularly cost effective troop type. However, it does have some advantages:

it gives a corridor where the enemy will get shot at, so they'll avoid the area.

Can deploy further forward behind field fortifications

enemy testing cohesion count a minus.

So I think it suits a plan where the enemy have an obvious line of advance that you'd like to deny them; so can help defend a weak flank by forcing the enemy to either take the fire or swing wide. A few shooty skirmishers will help prompt cohesion tests.

It's at it's best when the enemy advance towards it with a slow, tough target.

Because it can't move, a lot of strategies don't fit well. But if you plan to wheel a small tough army to narrow the table it could perform a decent role on the inside hinge of the wheel (as it's friends will not be moving very far to start with.