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Hi Guys,

I was musing on shooting and lethality in Wargames the other day, and it occurred to take that to the extreme and think about what if shooting didn't cause casualties at all!

It brought to mind the computer game Full Spectrum Warrior, which tried to model the "Fire and Movement" doctrine according to Wikipedia.
In that doctrine, the purpose of shooting initially is more to pin down an enemy to allow for a flank/assault by a second team. This is quite different to how shooting is modelled in Wargames that I know.

Are there any games which try to model shooting like this and/ or how do you think that would play out on the tabletop?

Cheers
Kroem

Not sure if any game has it completely non-lethal but certainly plenty of games put a lot more weight on the suppression aspect, especially in historicals/modern.

I feel somewhat similarly. The problem with killing-focused games is that it can rapidly take away agency from the weaker player (as they will have less stuff to play with). Obviously I don't mind that the better player will win most often, but I think it makes for a more fun game when it is not by preventing your opponent from playing. (It's a gradient of course; it's hard to imagine game mechanics that do not involve hampering the other player in any way.)

I largely prefer games that force repositioning or other maluses. Classic rank-and-flank games based on breaking the enemy rather than wiping them out entirely are closer to this. More coarse-grained games like Adeptus Titanicus, where you blow up parts of models long before you start taking them away entirely, are also good in this regard.

HH 3rd Ed is seemingly trying a bit of both.

My shooting can and will kills your dudes. But I can also attempt to apply a Status to your unit. Could be no movement for you, reduce your shooting to snap shots, or prevent you using reactions - potentially all three.

And even a single status will stop you holding and contesting Objectives, make you I1 in HTH, and ensure any charges you make are Disordered.

It’s early days of course, but the rules offer promise. That if I’m canny, and do what I can to Status a key unit or two, I can really ruin my opponents day.

Stargrunt was good for morale-centric gameplay. If your guys were in any kind of cover, it would be hard to do damage to the, but they could be pinned in place allowing other units to go get them. You could have turn after turn if not much happening with opposing squads pinning each other, but a lucky roll could lead to a sudden collapse of morale on on side, and the unit becomes combat ineffective pretty quickly. Casualties were pretty brutal in that game. A wounded comrade would incur all kinds of penalties in movement and morale as the squad tries to carry them away to safety.

Stargrunt also uses different shapes of dice to represent troop quality from green (d4) up to elite (d20). As everything is based on opposed dice rolls, it’s hard to get green troops to win against better quality troops, but it can happen.

Also you need to pass a leadership test before you can charge an enemy position due to the inherent scariness of that type of action. Again, easier to get better quality troops to undertake such an action.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alternatively, the old epic system of blast markers gave a nice balance between causing damage and causing morale effects.

Why not both? Why not bolt on some kind of supression test to getting hit in a significant enough manner? Say, if a 10-man squad is hit by 5 or more times (5+ succesful hits from opponents weapons), they'd need to take a leadership/cool test or get supressed, even if the shots fail to wound. You could then add some tiers to what type of save gives which % of hits required for the test, or something along those lines.. This would mean that even if you fail to inflict casualties, you might still succeed in stalling the enemy unit. Cover could better or worsen the pinning check depending on context

 tauist wrote:
Why not both? Why not bolt on some kind of supression test to getting hit in a significant enough manner? Say, if a 10-man squad is hit by 5 or more times (5+ succesful hits from opponents weapons), they'd need to take a leadership/cool test or get supressed, even if the shots fail to wound. You could then add some tiers to what type of save gives which % of hits required for the test, or something along those lines.. This would mean that even if you fail to inflict casualties, you might still succeed in stalling the enemy unit. Cover could better or worsen the pinning check depending on context

Are you talking about adding this to the game, without reducing lethality of guns first?
Or making guns less lethal, but letting them Pin or Shake or whatever enemy units?

Both of the current Star Wars games (Legion and Shatterpoint) have interesting systems of making combat important without it needing to be lethal.

Legion has a suppression mechanic that reduces a units effectiveness but also increases there defense. It's an interesting system that tries to make spreading attacks out more viable and worth playing a few games to pull ideas from.

Shatterpoint doesn't have a direct suppression rule, but its combat is very status effect heavy and nothing in the game ever "dies". Reducing units to zero health temporarily removes their ability to contest objectives and places a tax on their special rules. It definitely has some interesting ideas to pull from if you're looking for a game less focused on attacks causing death.

 Kroem wrote:
Hi Guys,

I was musing on shooting and lethality in Wargames the other day, and it occurred to take that to the extreme and think about what if shooting didn't cause casualties at all!

It brought to mind the computer game Full Spectrum Warrior, which tried to model the "Fire and Movement" doctrine according to Wikipedia.
In that doctrine, the purpose of shooting initially is more to pin down an enemy to allow for a flank/assault by a second team. This is quite different to how shooting is modelled in Wargames that I know.

Are there any games which try to model shooting like this and/ or how do you think that would play out on the tabletop?

Cheers
Kroem

LOL, You must have been watching my rolls at the table lately...

A hand full of Snake-Eye's, and a painful retreat! Only way to fix it- more dice!

Battlegroup (WW2) has effective fire (killing) and area fire (suppression). New players do tend to focus on effective fire (killing is key) but experienced players will use the area fire to compliment and allow others to push (or perform effective fire). It works really well and would be great to see more of in other games. Mr.Kinrade has written a sci-fi version but I don’t think it’s got a release date (I’d snap it up).

As Flinty says Stargrunt also does an excellent job of this issue - well worth a look, it’s a brilliant ruleset.

I want to say that I've seen "modern" games like Maelstrom's Edge and Beyond the Gates of Antares do this sort of thing by separating out hard damage (hits) and soft damage (pinning).

In Gates of Antares, they have some rules that restrict the pinning effects to what the receiver is likely to consider "credible" incoming attacks. (A heavy tank isn't going to be suppressed by pistol fire, and an infantry unit won't be suppressed by fire outside of effective range, etc.)

For Maelstrom's Edge, in V2 the designers decided to go for two shooting modes: shoot to kill; or shoot to suppress, actually modeled with two different stats (after dealing with rolling to hit, it becomes a matter of PEN vs. ARM for one; and SUP vs. WILLPOWER for the other). https://www.thecommguild.com/roller/thecommguild/entry/maelstrom-s-edge-v2-shooting

Yes, look at Tomorrow's War. The focus is on suppression rather than casualties.

However, Casualties can happen, and then they become an issue you have to deal with or you lose more morale.

If you would like to know more:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/03/review-tomorrows-warforce-on-force.html

and then a battle using a Star Wars theme:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/04/tomorrows-war-battle-report-star-wars.html