balkas (ravines) and shell craters question

[enrico]

in Ostfront and Stalingrad we find balkas (ravines) and shell craters ,

how we will define them ? They are considerate heavy or soft cover? they block LOS?

thank you

Enrico

[Master Chief]

Good question, they were mentioned in both books, but no rules provided. I believe they should hinder movement, some may be impassable to certain units like wheeled vehicles.

But no rules provided, so players need agreement with each other on how these should be treated.

[Gordon L. Allen]

Yes, interesting question.

Considering that shooting range berms\backstops are made of earth and do a great job of dissipating the energy of a fired bullet, I always treat something like a railroad berm as heavy cover.

Bearing that in mind, I would think that if your troops are hunkered down in a ravine or crater to where more than half of the models are obscured from the shooter’s point of view, I would consider it to be heavy cover.

This of course is determined as a prior agreement with your opponent.

Just my two cents – hope this helps.

[Steeljackal]

As already written above, it is enough to agree between players.

We consider:
small craters: rought ground; no cover; does not block LOS
large crater (which can contain one unit inside) and deep: rought ground; cover -2 (terrain is hard cover, like trench or fox hole); does not block LOS*.

NOTE *:For practical reasons often the craters are not excavated but are placed on the table, but we consider that in reality they do not protrude from the ground as in the game.

leedsnightowls.co.uk club has a good terrain summary, take a look in their download page

[Jacob Carter]

You could use the rules from the marker garden book regarding low hills and apply it hear.  “(Low hills) obscure line of sight for units that have gone Down or into Ambush, but not for others”

I don’t think it’d be to much a stretch to apply this to craters or even piles of corpses if you’re wanting to get morbid!

[Author]

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