"Troop labels" Topic

I have been watching some of the various discussions here (recently the one on FOW pioneers) and wonder if we get too caught up in unit labels.
For example the 101 at DDay were not veteran soldiers. It was their first combat for most of them. They were highly trained (my dad's outfit trained for two years before his 1st day of combat on D-1). Yet, the veteran bonus suits them.
Same thing with the Finns. Maybe they aren't always veterans in the truest sense of the word, but the bonus factors make it possible to fight outnumbered and win.
Perhaps the same is true for pioneers. Perhaps the game unit just represents infantry units that were better at killing tanks then the average unit – and pioneer was as good a term as any.
Just my $0.02 USD worth

I agree. Although complicated, I like rules that discern between experience, training, and morale/aggressiveness. The British 7th Armored Division in Normandy is a good example of a unit that was experienced, well-trained, but definitely hesitant and 'sticky' by the time they got to the Bocage.

I think a lot of the conventions for labeling units comes from the early Napoleonic rule sets that broke units out into the familiar "Elite – Veteran – Regular – Green" categories.

"I agree. Although complicated, I like rules that discern between experience, training, and morale/aggressiveness. The British 7th Armored Division in Normandy is a good example of a unit that was experienced, well-trained, but definitely hesitant and 'sticky' by the time they got to the Bocage."

I like the FOW model, too, and I don't think it's any more complicated than remembering a single continuum of six or more categories. But it all depends on how it's used in the game. As a guy who had a British army in FOW 1st edition, I was shocked at how much worse my Brits got in 2nd edition, when they became "Reluctant." In game terms, it meant that once pinned, they rarely got up. Once bailed out of a tank, they rarely got back in. Both of those are game-winning differences, especially the latter, since it's as good as a kill in both game effectiveness and platoon morale.

So while I like the concept of breaking troop quality into an X/Y graph, I thought that FOW's morale system exaggerated it. (The Brits became lesser troops than the Italians, for instance, in many cases.)