Playing Arty in Frontline

This will be a quick one - Frontline started up this morning and I finally have a tier 8 arty so I figured I'd give it a try.

Played two battles - first on attack, second on defense. I'll readily admit I'm not a great arty player, but seriously...it's arty. If you can click, you're ok.

Here are my quick takes:

1. It's hard to play as far back as you expect to. I thought it wouldn't be too hard to sit pretty far back, but in reality I always felt a bit uncomfortable, as if an enemy could spot me at any time. This is especially true on defense mode where you can't really get safe. On attack mode you spawn behind the "grey line" and you can at least have hard cover there.
2. I recommend waiting a bit later in the week. The first day or two of Frontline teams are still figuring it out, and it's very hit or miss. Both games this morning were won pretty comfortably by the attacking team. When I was ON the attacking team that was ok, meant I could move up, take shots, was never really in much danger. When I was on defense it was bad. Really bad. Especially once that first zone fell it was every tank for himself and I spent way too much of the battle running (slowly, because it's an arty) just trying desperately to get away. Didn't work. Got killed over and over and over because the enemies ran through my team like they were water.
   
   How bad was that second game? I actually LOST credits in Frontline, despite not firing a round of prem. That's how bad. I've never even heard of that happening, much less seen it.
3. Watch your ammo. The M40/M43 only carries 16 rounds. That means by 10 minutes in, if you've been active, you may need to find a repair circle to reload in. And if you're on the attacking side, it's a good idea to visit that repair circle to top off your ammo as you go.
4. Relating to #3 if you're on attack and you have Air Recon, consider sending it in the vicinity of the defender's repair circle. Smart arty players who know #3, will probably be lurking not far from the repair circle.
5. There are no shortage of targets. So much gets lit in this mode that you can fire just about as fast as you can reload. Again, see #3
6. Range matters. In Randoms I rarely have range issues with Tier 6+ arty. I can hit pretty much the whole map. In Frontline you actually CAN find the limit of your gun's range. So don't think you're going to just camp in A0 the whole game and shoot anybody anywhere.

Again, if you're considering giving it a try...I'd give it a couple of days for players to remember how to play this mode. Right now it's a coin toss if you're going to have a good game, or if you're going to spend the whole battle running for your life while your team screams at each other in chat.