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Pre-planned Fire

The standard artillery rules in BF simulate the use of on-call fire against "targets of opportunity". This was actually a small part of the artillery usage in the war, as much of the fire was conducted as part of a fire plan. The techniques for developing fire plans were well established in World War I, and most nations were capable of doing them (although at the beginning of the war the Soviets had difficulties, due to losses and lack of trained personnel, by 1943 and later their higher level organizations were fully competent). The key elements of fire plans were their creativity and their inflexibility (which may seem incompatible, but really are not).

• Creativity - To make a fire mission land in a designated area takes time, and coordinating several different organizations takes more time. For pre-planned fire, the time was available. Most nations had the flexibility to combine barrages and concentrations in almost any way that they wanted within the limitations of the available batteries.
• Inflexibility - Once the fire plan started, you could call it off, but it was difficult to change. If the target happens not to be where you thought he was, you cannot adjust the pre-planned artillery onto his position

Using Fire Plans in BF

You can create a several turn fire plan at the start of a game. The types of missions should be consistent with the nationalities:

• The British and U.S. can pretty much do what they want. They can use a lot of extra artillery that is only used during for the duration of the fire plan. They can use concentrations, moving barrages, lifting barrages, plans that stop for a turn and restart, etc. Smoke can be mixed in with HE.
• The Germans should usually not have more than a Battalion or two in their plan because of their command limitations. However, they should allowed to be creative as well.
• The Russians can have a lot of artillery, but they should be limited to fairly simple plans. You can have pre-plotted standing barrages and concentrations, but they should generally not be under the control of the player.

Fire plans should generally not last more than 3 or 4 turns or they can overwhelm the game.
Either the referee should plot the plan, or the player with the artillery should do it before seeing his opponent's setup.

Defensive Preregistration

Once a defender has had time to set up, one of the first things that is done is to preregister artillery targets and set up a defensive fire plan. There are several ideas that can be utilized:

• Allow all calls for fire to be preregistered. This is the easiest, but it is extremely powerful. You probably should limit this to areas that can be observed from the defender's front line.
• Assume that registration is done for all prominent geographic locations (bridges, crossroads, hilltops, etc.).
• Allow the defender to designate a limited number of preregistered points around which he can get the preregistered bonus (and the Russians can use concentrations).
• You can also allow the defender to preset some on-call defensive barrages and fire missions. These can even be set up to be irregular shapes, such as "Box Barrages" that conform to the defender's defensive position. Make sure that you specify the support level of the barrage so that it can be called appropriately. Unlike most on-call artillery, these would be actual barrages and would last throughout the defender's turn and the opponent's next turn.

Use whatever method you wish in your scenarios, but just be sure that you make clear where preregistration can be used and who can use it.

Offensive Preregistration

Just as defenders can use preregistration, so can attackers if they are moving from a static position. You should limit preregistration to those areas of the board which can be observed from the attacker's front line.

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