Review - Battlefront Romanian 100mm Howitzers (RO580)

History:
The Skoda 100mm Howitzer or Skoda Model 1914/1931 was a Czech manufactured gun used my many of the forces in WW2 including the Italians, Romanians Poles and Germans. This gun was initially created in WW1 and was used right through the period between the wars all the way to the end of WW2 - 1945.

At the outbreak of war, The Romanian army assigned 2 artillery regiments to each of the infantry divisions. Each of these artillery regiments had either 8 or 16, 75mm guns and 8, 100mm howitzers. Whilst the organisation of the artillery and the army as a whole changed during the war, the use of the Skoda 100mm howitzer remained.

Review:
Needing some artillery support for my new EW Romanian force, I went for some of the iconic Skoda guns. This is from the Battlefront blister RO580 and comes with 4 guns and 20 crew. The pack had the full complement of 20 crew but I have elected to use just 16 - 4 for each gun. The guns are nicely cast with a minimum of flash. Otherwise the guns look great. The large curved gun shield is one piece and assembly time for these guns is very short. I was lucky enough to have a friend assemble and start painting these particular guns but I have assembled the model before for my Italians.

The gun crew were easy to clean up and paint. Like most gunners, these have very little in the way of equipment so paint up really quickly. I followed the same scheme that you can see on my review of the Romanian Infantry here.

This is my favorite looking artillery piece of the war and Battlefront have done a great job on bringing it to the table. The curved gun shield and distinctive barrel looks the business. I will certainly consider other armies that I can use these Skoda guns with. Perhaps some German mountaineers.

In the Game:
Generally in EW, artillery is pretty expensive. This is because the majority of tanks have low armour ratings that can be easily penetrated by the direct fire capabilities of artillery. Combine this with strong bombardment statistics and you have a powerful unit if used correctly.

The 100mm artillery available to the Romanians isn't too expensive compared to the 150mm artillery. I think these are a good compromise at 230 points. I will take a single battery of these in most of my armies.

On the field as I said above, they have a strong bombardment with AT4 and good firepower at 4+. On direct fire, they are AT 7 with a firepower of 2+ and are rated as breakthrough guns. This will make them good on the defense by having the option of direct fire or bombardment. On the attack, they can lay down some bombardments and hopefully dig some entrenched foes out. Sadly they are not equipped with smoke rounds but that is what mortars are for!

Pictures:
Without Further ado, here are some pictures. I hope you enjoyed my review.

Fire!

The Battery arrayed.

From the rear.