Indirect fire - does it lack power in BG?

I had some great Torch games this weekend. Everything was fun and as always I was happy with the rules.

One thing that did come up at the post game beer, was how artillery and mortars did not cause a lot of casulties in the games we played. As we fancy ourselves to be proper historical WWII nerds, this was kinda funny, as most casulties on any WWII battlefield was from indirect fire.

Was this because we used indirect fire wrong, is it a delebirate nerf in the rules to encourage use of other weapons  or are we misunderstanding its dominace on the WWII battlefield?

It is deliberate.
Artillery should only pin or supress targets most of the time for game purposes. Only if you get a direct hit (on a roll of 6), can casualties be caused.
It is a design concept. If the real artillery starts to fall in the battlefield, there would be no battle and no game.
It is perfectly explained by Warwick in the rulebook notes.

You can put in some additional details if you want. For my games, for example, I made HE direct hits to lower your cover level by one level.

Regards,

Diego

Huh, from the game I have played Arty and airstrikes are normally what makes or breaks the game. But then we use a lot of Arty and very rarely do we run with someone not taking any. If you really want to go into it. It's a numbers game. The bigger the gun and bigger the battery the more likely to get those kills you are looking for.
2 81mm mortars are just to pen. Want to kill take those 155mm battery 6 dice odds has 1 will be a six, then that's what, 6 or 7 dice to wound at a 3+. It's a killer.

I can understand historically artillery is the biggest killer but it would make for pretty boring games especially as in real life a single platoon of infantry is easily made inoperable by concentrated fire.  The small scale of the games (platoon or even company) makes it difficult to incorporate defence in depth tactics unlike real life where front line batallions are often smashed by artillery and bulk of defenders are held in lines further back out of range of artillery (or at least forward observers LOS).

If artillery was as brutal as in real life most 1944-45 games would be "Allies bomb the crap out of the German platoon whose shell shocked survivors then surrender."   The same would apply for Kursk or any major operation.


Other platoon/company games limit artillery too.

Arty is only really a flavour of the full force... as the small rulebook describes. The game of flattening the table with heavy guns isn't the ww2 wargame I want to play. In BG the guns are firing impromptu barrages at targets of opportunity, which isn't the way artillery was really used. That's more mortars job... but we can't ignore artillery altogether... the trick is not to let it dominate the table... and really pinning is its main function (pinning being the central mechanic of the game). Nothing pins better than a good stonk! It is also an unreliable weapon that requires some persistence... every barrage won;t be on-time, on-target and have crushing weight, but 1 or 2 might, and they hurt enough. They are also an orders soak... so be careful with too much.

Actually, by 1944 for British and American artillery targets of opportunity were very much the way they were used, though always within the context of the grand fire plan (I know, I've oversimplified it). I think trying to protray artillery in an historical manner in a game of the scale of Battlegroup would just add a level of complexity that would suck the fun out of it. As it is, I'd even ignore the penny-packet onsies and twosies of guns in the lists, as the major powers, at least, almost never employed them that way. An artillery piece on the board would be used for direct fire in its own defence by the time it was visible in this scale.

Even medium mortars were rarely used in other than pairs, and many countries tended to concentrate them at battalion level, partuclarly by the end of the war.

By the way, for off table artillery, does each gun still require an order? I've assumed so, but off table artillery does work a bit differently, so I've been wondering if I'm wrong.

Each gun requires an order.

As I said, merely a flavour, not a simulation of the reality... which as you said, wouldn't be much fun.

Artillery in BG can be very powerful. Even a single mortar can be a nuisance. But more guns are even better. I had my best and deadliest results with Sowjet artillery. A Katyusha Battery which killed a King Tiger and with 3 onboard heavy mortars, where i got lucky and killed 2 MG teams, a Rifle sqad, and nearly his Forward HQ with one barrage.

Regards
Wolflord

Same here, both me and my friend have had great success with Arty, on and off board. 2 81mm mortars, held a tiger at Bay, keeping it pinned most of the game. We had an Arty duel where I was trying to grab the last objective that he held. Neither of us could move due to the constant Arty barrage from both sides. Don't remember who one that game.

To many under estimate it's affectiveneas. One average success of an m7 battery is dropping 6 dice, with most likely having 1 hit, 4 pins, and 1 miss, can stop an advance. Off board fire support can be even deadlier.