FPW French artillery and ranges

[Leman]

I'll second Lemmy on that. Fascinating sources - thanks for providing them.

[mollinary]

Ditto, great info!    Sure the stats weren't provided by a used car salesman?  I certainly wouldn't like to come across some of them on a Wargames table if they perform like that.

Mollinary

[cameronian]

Ditto, great info!    Sure the stats weren't provided by a used car salesman?  I certainly wouldn't like to come across some of them on a Wargames table if they perform like that.

Mollinary

If you 'do the tour', the thing that you notice is how the mitrailleuse features in all the art and the big memorials, I'm thinking particularly of the Bavarian cenotaph in Worth. The fact that their artillery homed in on it as soon as the first box had been fired surely says something about it as a weapon. If, as at Borny, you get a dense formation in the open at say, 1300m, and given the 'punch' of these rounds, each bullet would probably have no problem in penetrating 3 or 4 men; with a beaten zone 130m deep it doesn't take much imagination to see what might have happened, en enfilade would have been better (or worse, depending on your position relative to the gun).

[mollinary]

Yes, didn't mean to sound too dismissive - but - it needed those special circumstances.  As far as I understand it, it was extremely difficult to traverse the weapon, this is not a Gatling gun.  If it could focus on a point, a defile, a bridge, a road, it's cone of fire was deadly and terrifying. It literally cut people in half.  But it was narrow. And once exposed it was very vulnerable, and on moving targets it was much less effective.  How to represent a weapon like this in a wargame is one of the most difficult challenges in a set of rules.  There's no doubt that no-one  would choose to stand in front of it, the point was you didn't have to.  The examples of its effectiveness are like those of battlefield cavalry, misleading and weighed down by special circumstances.  Perhaps, to stretch an example to extremes, giving special abilities to the mitrailleuse would be like allowing soldiers with cigarette cases or bibles in their pockets to count as armoured?   Ducks back into the trench, just in time - I hope!

Mollinary

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Black powder deal with it nicely:
You must fire at the closest target (unless it's deployed artillery or skirmishers).
Roll 1 dice, reroll the first dice if you miss(for shock effect), keep rolling as long as you hit, which means you can cause a HUGE amount if hits if you get lucky!

However... if you roll a 1, that it jams up, and you need to order an unjam, which need to roll a 6 to unjam (I've spent a lot of time lately with very B******* guns recently!), which means you cannot fire until the urn AFTER you successfully roll; by which time the Prussians have certainly formed a gun line, just out of range!

[cameronian]

I know, it is difficult. Firing at the closest target IMHO isn't really an answer (unless being actively attacked when it becomes a matter of self preservation); my understanding is they preferred targets at about 1 - 1.5ks. Against dense targets, cavalry, infantry in company column or en enfilade, then I award a plus 2 modifier; this makes it pretty deadly, it also gives the Germans an incentive to concentrate their minds and their guns!