Armor vs. Arty

[Rebel]

Which do you prefer?

Personally I like Arty

I've been playing with some QB's vs. Infantry and targetting 240mm's- In one battle, I dealt over 1300 casualties :eek:

Still a bit of a newbie (thanks to a LONG hiatus).

Any tips, tricks, and what not would be appreciated (for both! I suck at armor!)

Later y'all :cool:

[Chad Harrison]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rebel:

240mm's- In one battle, I dealt over 1300 casualties :eek:

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

1300 casulties? if your finished with those officers can i borrow them for a few days? in could use some FO like them!

in my experience, its hard to say which is more important. aritillery can be devasting, if it works. for close combat situations where visibility is low, OR there is a lot of building, artillery losses a lot of punch. however, when someone spots a large mass of infantry moving in the open or woods, or you have the enemy pinned in woods; nothing beats having some 155mm or even 200mm+!!!! a tactic i use when i have the points is to buy veteren 80mm mortar and vetern 105mm++ (depending on points). pin them with the faster responding mortars and pound em with the heavier guns!!!

on the other hand, i could never say how many times a lowly M4A1 75mm with those 50+ HE rounds has saved my butt. like i said earlier: open ground/dispered woods=artillery is VERY effective, city/low visibility=direct fire support is best!

[Rebel]

Well the deal was I was playing my brother in TCP/IP.

Funny thing happened- it was in rural flat ground (as per his request), and he mashed ' all his units together in a central thrust for the central VL's.

I hid my spotters in the one high-point (with a convienent set of tall pines ), and called in all (3 or 4 I think) of 'em. I think there was 2 240mm's and 2 155mmVT's.

Anyway, I watched while he put damn near every unit in these three VL's with virtually no cover (save 2 buildings). Meanwhile, I took my infantry and went around the side to another woody area to hide, and ambush him while he retreated (with a couple of platoons for the other two VL's off in BFE.)

Along he came and said "Come and get 'em!"

To which I responded "Wait...."

Then ALL of the arty started on the same turn. I saw a whole company get eliminated from ONE shot of 240 mike mike. A building blew up which had his HQ units in it (got hit DIRECTLY by 240mm's - ow!).

The phone rang, and I could tell from the hysteria on the other end of the line that he thought this total slaughter was a major riot, hehehe. (We live like 2 miles away from each other with DSL on the same router- very cool connex, hehee)

The mayhem continued for about 2 turns. His guys were shocked and severely mauled, so I cut the arty. For one turn

I could tell from watching him that he was desperately trying to regain a defensive position. Then as the remains tried to move, the arty started all over again- another phone call with the words "Dude. That's just wrong!"

Before the smoke cleared, I had moved in on the other two VL's, and started a careful advance on his rear quarter to pin 'em down and mop-up.

My infantry had no trouble taking care of the rest of his troops and securing the 3 VL's.

I think the battle lasted like less then 15 turns, I remember it being pretty short, hehehe

[Moriarty]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rebel:

Which do you prefer?

Any tips, tricks, and what not would be appreciated (for both! I suck at armor!)

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'll use either or both. It depends on what type of game (attack vs. ME) and how many points you have to use.

Probably the most important tip I can give you about armor is a paraphrase of a German Army tactical document:

Armor supports infantry; infantry supports armor

Use them together. Armor that strikes out on its own, without infantry support for recon and eliminating AT teams, oftentimes ends up a flaming hulk with nothing to show for it. In return, the armor takes care of MGs and things that hurt the ground-pounders.

[Warmaker]

Artillery and Armor both have their uses. If you can find the enemy at a distance, grind the bastards into the dirt with artillery. However, as pointed out previously, if the enemy is too close, you've just wasted several hundred points on firepower that you can't use. You can risk having the FO call down artillery nearby if things are that desperate but you'll surely receive a good amount of that "friendly fire" too.

Also, heavier artillery has that dreadful arrival time. With armor, you have exact control on the field and can support your attacks then and there to deal with the situation. On the defense I believe artillery becomes MUCH more valuable. A single FO can call down devastating artillery to breakup, stall, or shatter completely an attack if used properly. At the same time, you don't expose many of your forces if all your doing is calling artillery to bleed the enemy before he engages your men. TRPs can make them that much more deadly by lessening their time to a mere few seconds for some artillery.

[JasonC]

Artillery does infantry in the woods or in the open. Tank HE does infantry in buildings, and enemy armor of all types. Artillery can't hurt tanks seriously, and eventually runs out of shells - those are its major weaknesses. Tanks can't move everywhere, and die if moved too close to intact enemy infantry. Together those make reverse slope deployments of AT teams the major weakness of tanks - they can't get infantry out of such places on their own.

On defense, infantry plus artillery can do the job, but still remain somewhat vunerable to enemy arty. The idea is the infantry blocks enemy tanks with reverse slope positions, and artillery kills any infantry that comes to try to get them out. The only weakness of this combo is artillery can plaster part of your reverse slope and thus let the infantry in. If your own arty doesn't kill them, then tanks can get behind your reverse slope position too, and the whole thing unravels.

On attack, tanks plus arty can do most things, but tanks plus infantry only can't get through the sort of defense described above. Just infantry and arty trying to attack, you can't deal with defending tanks, if there are any. Tanks are pretty much required for a decent attack because of this, unless you know beforehand there won't be any defending tanks.

As for which is "better", stand alone that is easy, the tanks are better. Just put them up against each other and that much is obvious. But they do different things for a combined arms team. A good attacking team has some tanks, some infantry, some artillery - and not just light stuff like 81mm mortars.

A good defending team needs some artillery, but it can be light stuff, because it is often enough to pin and break attackers while the don't have cover. Defense without infantry is basically impossible - there are too many places you can't go, without it.

Tanks are a luxury for defenders, though they can be very useful, especially if an attacker skimps on stuff to counter them. Enough dug in guns, minefields, and TRP-directed arty can take their place in most respects, though, on defense.

This doesn't work for attackers because the guns don't move, the mines and TRPs aren't available - and because infantry AT weapons work from ambush, at short ranges made possible by reverse-slope type positions - but aren't very capable when advancing, where the defender choose the ground for his armor, etc. So defending tanks can only be countered by attacking tanks (or TDs - armor).

Every single force type, on attack or defense, has its counter. Putting all your eggs in one basket will give the enemy easy counters, if he has all the standard tools in his kit bag. His arty will work hard if you took lots of infantry, his tanks will work hard if you took lots of arty. But no one type will do what the mix can do. That is why all the types are in the mix in the first place.

[Gen-x87H]

Arty is killer. What you need to do is find where they are. Use HTs to find them and then just start pounding. I can tell you that I have killed alot more of the enemy with 105s than with Armor.

Gen