Artillery pattern surpise

[Walker]

In a mail game on a map of my own making, attacking with a British force, I ordered an artillery strike with one 3” and one 4.2” mortar spotter, with LOS. I pulled back some squads to get them out of the danger zone, assuming a W-E fall pattern. Very unexpectedly, however, the shells hit in a N-S pattern. I remember this happening in just a couple of the many games I played over the years.

Two possible explanations come to mind:

1/ I did something to cause this unusual N-S pattern while building/modifying the map. This map was initially used for two attack/defence games, and ‘normal’ artillery patterns resulted, then I modified it quite extensively. This is the first game on the modified map and the artillery pattern is north-south.

2/ The game engine decided to ‘make things more interesting’, i.e. there is a tiny chance built into the system that artillery patterns will not conform to the west-east ‘rule’.

If my memory serves me well, the pattern remained N-S for the entire battle the last time this happened, i.e. I have never seen both N-S and W-E patterns occurring during the same game.

[Kobal2]

Doesn't the pattern of shells have something to do with the wind ?

From what I've seen, the shelling always came more or less parallel to my starting side, I never noticed a specific pattern - but it very well may be that I only played scenarios where I started north or south.

[Sergei]

It depends on the friendly side. If, for instance, you have defined north and west as the friendly sides for Allies, then their artillery might be coming from either direction.

[Walker]

Sergei, sounds like a reasonable explanation, although I checked the parameters and Friendly Map Edges are Allied North and Axis South, with West and East neutral. Maybe it is just a quirk of the game system.