An Artillery Ammunition Rule for

Volley and Bayonet

Updated December 11, 2002

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Introduction

This rule is intended to provide a generalized "brake" on artillery fire without involving any bookkeeping (other than tracking one number per army; not much of a chore). It does not purport to accurately model the consumption of artillery ammunition.

Revision Dec 2002: rule is now for campaign games only; LOC rule became a surround rule.

Artillery units implicitly test for ammunition consumption with each die they roll. Each "1" rolled by artillery firing consumes one point of ammunition. For example, at long range, 1 is ammunition, 2 through 5 is no effect, and 6 is a hit; at short range, 1 is ammunition, 2 through 3 is no effect, and 4 through 6 is a hit.

Each army (or corps, or other logistically-independent organization) has a number of artillery ammunition points available for a given campaign. Ammunition points consumed by firing are subtracted from the army ammunition stock, unless the firing stand is surrounded (see below).

If an artillery stand consumes an ammunition point when the army has none left, or when the firing stand is surrounded, the stand is marked "low ammo". An artillery stand that is low on ammunition and consumes an ammunition point runs out of ammunition and will no longer be able to fire.

An artillery unit is surrounded if there is a chain of non-routed enemy combat units around it that are no more than 600 yards apart from each other. Note that the edge of the table cannot be used to form part of this chain.

Restoring a Line of Communication: if a stand is already low on ammunition or out of ammunition and is no longer surrounded, its ammunition is instantly replenished by subtracting one or two from the army stock respectively.

Some notes on "strategems":

• Artillery stands can roll their dice one at a time, or can roll fewer dice than allowed (e.g., a stationary battalion that is allowed two dice could roll only one) to avoid running out.
• An artillery stand that is low on ammunition must roll one die at a time, and if the first die consumes ammunition, the stand immediately runs out and cannot roll its second die.
• A player cannot deliberately mark a stand low on ammunition just to avoid using up the army stock.
• Ammunition cannot be transferred from from one stand to another.

Examples and design notes

First, note that guns "consume" ammunition by rolling a miss -- since hit numbers are 6 for long range shots and 4-6 for short range shots, rolling a 1 consumes ammunition. This way, not every hit consumes ammunition -- that would be too predictable.

Units are marked "low ammo" and then "no ammo" to give the player a little warning that the unit is getting critically short.

Since this rule still has not yet been playtested, there is no standard on how many points should be available. However, a starting point would be one ammunition point per artillery SP per day of combat expected.

A campaign scenario could specify intervals and amounts of ammunition resupply.

A final note for those who are of the opinion that artillery ammunition is not a major concern. It is often asserted that artillery never ran out of ammunition, so ammunition should not be represented in wargames. However, the reason artillery did not run out of ammunition is because the artillerists (and their commanders) were terrified of running out, and so budgeted their ammunition carefully. It is the intent of this rule to provide an incentive for players to take care with their shooting rather than blasting away at every target that presents itself.