How are Casualties Handled?

[Stilletto]

Greetings,

Forgive me if this has been answered. I have just discovered the joy of this type of game so I don't have any background on how this works.

I prefer a game with individual soldiers but I can't find much of that any more. Reading this forum I heard about John Tiller, and his games look very interesting.

So, on to the question. I see the counters are made up of individual items such as vehicles and leaders, but the regular soldiers come in squads or half squads. When a squad takes damage does it track individuals or is the squad as whole unit that lives or dies as a unit?

Thank you.

[Peter Fisla]

The 'casualties' concept is handled the same way as in ASL, squad can be reduced to half-squad and then killed. Leaders can be wounded (light/serious which means KIA). Crew (specialized troops that are used for Ordnance weapons), is the same as half-squad in terms of size of the unit.

[Richie61]

Kinda like this?

Casualties in are handled in a somewhat abstract manner, in order to avoid having to track casualties on a man by man basis:
• A squad that breaks can be thought of as having suffered light casualties.
• A squad that breaks and is replaced by a lower quality squad can be thought of as having suffered casualties among key personnel, causing it to become less effective.
• A squad that is casualty reduced (K result) to a half squad (HS) has suffered heavy casualties.
• A squad that is eliminated due to a Killed in Action (KIA) result has suffered catastrophic casualties.

[Peter Fisla]

ORIGINAL: Richie61

Kinda like this?

Casualties in are handled in a somewhat abstract manner, in order to avoid having to track casualties on a man by man basis:
• A squad that breaks can be thought of as having suffered light casualties.
• A squad that breaks and is replaced by a lower quality squad can be thought of as having suffered casualties among key personnel, causing it to become less effective.
• A squad that is casualty reduced (K result) to a half squad (HS) has suffered heavy casualties.
• A squad that is eliminated due to a Killed in Action (KIA) result has suffered catastrophic casualties.

Nope , a squad that beaks does not suffer any casualties. However a squad that breaks by a large margin will be replaced by a lower quality squad type. A squad that suffers casualties is reduced to half-squad, a half-squad that suffers casualties is killed. I hope this helps...

[Richie61]

Peter,

Well I be [:)]

I think we are both on the same path here. I quoted a thing I read back in 2009 from An ASLSK tutorial, but I see what you mean [:)]

[tyrion22]

ORIGINAL: Peter Fisla
Nope , a squad that beaks does not suffer any casualties. However a squad that breaks by a large margin will be replaced by a lower quality squad type. A squad that suffers casualties is reduced to half-squad, a half-squad that suffers casualties is killed. I hope this helps...

This system seems to be copied from ASL, so shouldn't the interpretation be the same? I'm quite sure that in ASL, a reduction in quality is supposed to represent small casaulty reductions (which is why the quality is permanently reduced), while a reduction to a half-squad is a major casualty reduction. I think this system is quite brilliant, since you use counters ASL provides anyway (lower quality squads) to gain more granularity than in other squad level board games (most have just squad -> half-squad -> eliminated).

Looking at the video about infantry movement and fire, it seems an ASL player would be able to jump right into this game and start playing.

[Peter Fisla]

Yes, people familiar with ASL should be able to jump right into the game