Limbering/Loading Mortars

[J6A]

I thought I had asked this at some point, and if I did, I'm unable to locate the thread.

Let's say I have a 120mm mortar on it's firing side.  The bad guys are getting close, so I want to get the heck out of Dodge.  Do I have to flip it to limbered on turn 1 and then load it on turn 2 and then start moving on turn 3, or does the act of limbering it flip it to the limbered side.  Or, perhaps, does it limber on 1 turn and retain it's deployed status (that seems unlikely)?

[Hugmenot]

Mortars can do one of three things :

Move / Flip / Fire

Flip is a move action of course, but 'flipping' takes the whole turn.

See http://www.pg-hq.com/comms/showthread.ph...ght=limber for a prior discussion.

[J6A]

Is that definitive? Because I see various options in that thread. The way I read 4th edition agrees with what you say, that just seems really slow.

[plloyd1010]

The 4th Ed slowed made a lot of things slow, in the case of mortars & personnel transport stupidly so. We always treated firing mortars like any other weapon unit. Load & limber, if the transport is in the same hex. Otherwise load at the cost of 1 MP, unload limbered regardless of loading status as though personnel.

[J6A]

Yeah, I see. Especially for the light mortars. 30 minutes to limber and load seems like a lot. I guess the logic in the other that the mortars with 1 MP can load as personnel mitigates that a bit.

[plloyd1010]

Our rational ran thusly. Mortars are no towed weapons, they are cargo. Light & medium mortars weigh 45ish & 150ish pounds respectively. Just throw them in back when in a hurry. 120mm however come in at over 1000, not so easy. Setup is easy too, but they always need to be setup. So even if you didn't break them down, still not ready to fire out of the truck (and you probably at least want the base plate off anyway).So load & unload as personnel, optionally as a weapon unit.

[J6A]

Okay, so basically it boils down to:

Light/Medium - Load/Unload like infantry
Heavy - Load/Unload like artillery

I do not find this unreasonable.

Or did I get it wrong?

[plloyd1010]

Close. Limbered heavy mortars can load like infantry (have a movement point). They would also unload like infantry (not that it would matter much).

The loading part makes a slight difference with us because we make trucks and half-tracks pay an extra movement point to load limbered guns. (Oh yeah, that's another difference with us.)

[J6A]

Okay, thanks. And I knew it was the movement point that made the difference, I just zoned on that when I posted. Oops.

[plloyd1010]

Remember that is is what I and my gaming partner do. Everyone else will argue against such an aberration.