25 Pounder - Hammer Tactics Munitions?

I'm sure we can all agree that the 25 Pounder, unless you go Anvil, is a nearly useless artillery gun. It's accuracy is terrible, it's AOE is terrible and only good for making light cover craters.

Whereas is you go Anvil, you get an Air-burst Rounds that temporarily disables tanks and suppress infantry. Invaluable for defense. Go Hammer Tactics and you get nothing useful towards the offensive nature of Hammer in terms of the 25 Pounder. It's quite unfortunate...

So I decided to look online to see what kind of Munitions a 25 Pounder can use but couldn't find White Phosphorous rounds in their inventory. Would have been nice for clearing garrisons. Though White Smoke seems to be there. So I was thinking, "Hey, wouldn't that be useful in offensives?

Much like the Airburst Rounds, they could have several Smoke Rounds fired first, blinding the enemy, followed by the normal HE rounds, no additional accuracy. It certainly would be true to the Hammer Tactics design and help free up Pop Cap for the British, taking away the Mortar Pit or the Cromwell as a requirement for dropping smoke.

If anyone has other ideas, please fire away.

That'd be pretty cool, especially since hammer-oriented players' only smoke option is the cromwell's smoke shell, which is useful, but pretty limited and small-scale.

Nice idea, but...
The Brits are so extremely long-range combat oriented, that even in offensive (which in fact usually looks more like "stand in cover, force a retreat, move forward a bit and repeat") it might actually work against them

Nice idea, but...
The Brits are so extremely long-range combat oriented, that even in offensive (which in fact usually looks more like "stand in cover, force a retreat, move forward a bit and repeat") it might actually work against them

I can see what you are saying but from a defensive maneuvering standpoint, they would work quite well. The British Infantry are very vulnerable when out of cover and their moving accuracy sucks. The smoke helps give them more opportunity to re-position when things get dicey in clearings and such. It also forces the Germans to back off while the HE rounds are falling.

I can see what you are saying but from a defensive maneuvering standpoint, they would work quite well. The British Infantry are very vulnerable when out of cover and their moving accuracy sucks. The smoke helps give them more opportunity to re-position when things get dicey in clearings and such.

Infantry sections still get suppressed too, and smoke would be especially useful against the flakhq as well. It would also just add a little more to the frankly unappealing pyrotechnics IS kit.

Nope, too useless and Hammer already have too much good things like blitz on tanks and tracking through fog.

Maybe hammer could get you lower cooldown on arty barrages so you could keep using them more often.

Why not a creeping barrage function? That would suit hammer just right! Soften up everything before or during an attack. Would require some good muni costs, but could work wonders...

Aye, about that. I was thinking that Creeping Barrage for the 25 Pounders would have been better on the Artillery Regiment Commander as a replacement ability to the useless one the Valentine Tank has for making a Sexton shoot further (Wastes a lot of Pop Cap). But that's a topic for another day.

How do you actually use the air burst? What unit makes it work?

Essentially, it's a new round the 25 Pounders at your base will fire when you upgrade to Anvil Tactics. They are used as the first rounds fired by the 25 Pounder, followed by six HE rounds from each gun when you throw down Flares with your Infantry Sections or Sniper.