This is a custom card being designed for my Strike North Campaign Scenario which I will be GMing during the upcoming MaizeCon in Waterloo, IA happening in October 2018. There are plenty of card designs already out there by such esteemed individuals as Sharpe, Thor711 and ObstbfEgon. This particular card is entirely of my own design. I think I am the first person to propose the designing of an AAM sled!!
Looking for feedback. What do you think? Is it balanced in terms of cost? Any concerns or questions?
Gun Transport - This unit has the transport ability. It can carry non-large Artillery.
Manually Towed - While this unit is adjacent to a friendly Soldier with a base speed of 1, it gets a speed of 1 on snow terrain.
Horses were generally unsuited for use in artic weather conditions, so soldiers sometimes had to manually tow equipment & weapons using a sled over snow covered terrain.
The purpose would be to make a Relocate 2 field piece able to move in the movement phase? What other advantage is there?
A very good point and this is why I post this stuff so I can get fresh eyes to look over what I'm proposing. So here is my logic......
My currently proposed rule for Snow terrain on an AAM map:
Snow – Vehicles must make a movement roll to enter. Double cost for Vehicles with high gear ability. Soldiers can’t enter snow hexes during the movement phase unless they have the Ski Capable special ability. Soldiers in Snow terrain have cover. Vehicles don’t get cover.
Obviously the way this is worded now would allow any artillery unit with the Relocate SA to move in the assault phase freely. So there would be no use having a Sled to carry them. I was thinking about a unit like an MG team which usually has a speed of 1 when I first typed this up. So right now if an MG team is faced with attempting to move into a snow hex they must sacrifice the chance to shoot during that turn by moving in the assault phase.
So how should artillery units be handled? Should I just assume that a unit using the Relocate SA already has a sled to move it during the assault phase or should there be some sort of additional detrimental effect on artillery units trying to move into a snow hex? In April 1940 there was something like 5 to 6 feet of snow on the ground in the Narvik, Norway area. Obviously that makes movement very difficult which is why I came up with the Ski Capable SA for soldiers. An artillery piece would have an extremely difficult time "relocating" in such conditions.
My vision for the Sledge is to handle this much like a truck would tow an artillery piece but with a sled. You mount the artillery onto the Sled in the movement phase, move somewhere in the assault phase, dismount in the following movement phase and then be able to fire in the assault phase. A soldier unit with a base speed of 1 would be required to do the actual towing. This would mean that unit could not fire in the first assault phase because they are too busy towing the artillery piece.
So to solve this problem how about I add an extra line in the snow terrain rules that might say:
Units with the subtype Artillery can't relocate in snow