71st Mechanized Infantry - Field Artillery Battalion

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Artillery is the King of Battle - or so the cannon cockers will tell you.  In BT it is often a side show, or a plot point to move along a battle forcing some action out of the characters.  In tabletop play it can be both decisive and irrelevant depending on deployment.  In either case, it adds a dimension to the game that takes it from Big Stompy Robot skirmish to military simulation - which for me is one of the highlights of BT.

There are lots of Artillery units and types in the game, a variety of vehicle mounted guns and even a couple of mechs sporting some indirect fire capabilities.  But the oldest, and most versatile in terms of eras for play, is the Infantry Field Artillery.  These tube artillery troops are the most classic artillery set up - unprotected from return fire they run around there large bore guns loading, aiming, and moving to a new location on unarmored trucks and ammo carriers. It was this feel I wanted to capture for this Field Artillery Battalion.

The size of the battalion is a little wonky since the description provided in the source material is one gun per platoon and no additional size descriptors, which would indicate a normal 9 platoons to the battalion.  So that's how I represented this unit - 6 Thumpers (produced by Ironwind Metals) and 3 Sniper towed pieces which I proxied from a set IO bought on Etsy and are really Warhammer 40k Epic pieces but serve the purpose well enough.  That's the good thing about 'generic' class or infantry types - they can be anything you want so long as it is in scale and looks scifi enough.

The unit I choose t represent was the 71st Mechanized Infantry who was historically assigned to the 2nd Sword of Light regiment all the way back to 3058.  While earlier information is not available to judge, I choose to represent them as the infantry support assigned during the Mallory's World Campaign of 3013.  

I included a command platoon of a Command Van Proxy (rarely see these but felt appropriate for a Fire Direction Center); a jeep proxy (again, rare to see and from original Succession War era lore) and 2 flat bed truck proxies.  The generic class of vehicle allows me to use a unique mini purchased from Death Ray Designs and added some extra bits for an ammo cargo.

All in all not to bad - a nice addition to my growing Infantry Brigade.











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