The Commander Series Forum

In Sunday's game, my opponent targeted my infantry and one of his gunships was inside the artillery blast template. I expected the gunship to have dice rolled against it, but my opponent said no and stated that only smart missile and AA can affect gunships.

Now, I don't care how good the gunship pilot is, but even Tom 'Maverick' Cruise couldn't jink his way through an artillery barrage!

Surely in this situation dice should be rolled against the gunship?

Jimi,

I'm no expert, but I'd have to agree with your opponent in this matter.

The gunship is an airborne target and it would be highly unlikely that it would be hit by an incoming shell or be close enough to the ground to be caught in the artillery blast.

Other, perhaps more experienced, opinions?

HostileContact

See Page 10 - The Pointy Stick Rule. I suspect a high degree of fromage here...

P29 Artillery Support, 2nd paragraph:

"Place the artillery template on the table centred on the hit point. This is the artillery fire-zone. The attacking player must test for all units within the zone, including any friendly units and command units."

I would suggest that this rule overrides the issue of gunships being targeted by aa and smart missiles.

Dont forget if a gunship is used as on-table support it is treated as if a ground unit (P32) and therefore subject to "getting some" by every available unit within LOS and range.

This rule also suggests that in between orders the gunship has landed (P32 On table support, 2nd paragraph). This only strengthens my point above that the gunship is a valid target.

Furthermore the FAO cannot issue orders to ground units other than artillery so your opponent cant claim that the gunship is also receiving orders from the same source.

Hope this helps

"Surely in this situation dice should be rolled against the gunship?"

Yes

In the Spearhead series book "1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam" by Simon Dunstan he notes the importance of ensuring that helicopters going into landing zones did not fly through the strike zones of friendly artillery because of the danger of aircraft being struck by shellfire. I recall this issue being mentioned in other sources talking about the same subject.

So I think Gunships, which logically would be flying pretty low, being struck by artillery is entirely reasonable

Thanks for the answer, Pete.

Just to reinforce Pete, the largest cause of aircraft lost in WWI was artillery fire. Long range shels go up to 20,000 ft easily. Also if using bomblet ammo well, nything under it.

IanS

I sit corrected.

HostileContact

Dont panic - it isnt obvious at first. And you might at least stand.

IanS

Hi

Could a gunship then be targeted by artillery.

Jim

Can't remember the system, but there was a modern micro armour game being run at a convention I was attending, during which the US player moved his Apaches behind a copse of trees intending to do a pop-up ambush on a Russian tank column. Just as he placed the flight behind the trees a russian scheduled artillery barrage landed in the exact spot. IIRC the whole apache flight was wiped out in the barrage.

I do not see anything wrong with having to dice hits on a gunship in this case.