"Do you use casualty figures?" Topic

I suppose for skirmish games it'd be quite appropriate, but I've used casualty figures for pin/suppression markers in Crossfire before too.

Do you use casualty figures and if so, for what purposes?

I use them in practically all my games to represent dead soldiers. 8)=

German dismounted cavalry caught in flank fire by Belgian Carabiniers September 1914.

Check the Wargamorium Blog. link

I use them in my black powder games. I also use them for pin markers in chain of command. And I use them as dead guys too. :-)

I just wish I could find some good generic dead horses.

I've made up some (and need more) paper markers for my Napoleonic games. Painted on paper in real size (15mm), one for each company that goes down.

I just wish I could find some good generic dead horses.

They just don't sell – it's like flogging a….

Wounded in games where you must care for the wounded.

Pre-zombies/-etc. in games where the dead convert into something else.

Score counters for games with body count as an important part of score, but people bring their own figures.

I thought for the longest time they were useless, but i find they make a more visually appealing morale (or other status marker) compared to the usual caps, rings, or tokens.

I always wanted to do skirmish games where every casualty is marked. Maybe even add little craters where explosions go off.

sometimes. not always. more visually appealing for marking hits, attrition, shock points what-have-you than drapery rings or caps etc.
but they always get shoved to the bottom of my painting queue.

For FoG we use a disc per unit that you can adjust to show morale states. To "disguise" them, they have a suitable "dead" figure sprawled on them.

I use them in Charlie Company when running the campaign.

A soldier can be pinned, suppressed, wounded, or dead.

Wounded can be brought back by the medic.

If they are still Wounded, they are out of action for a couple games ("Months").

Dead need to be replaced.

Once marked our fallen in the Battle of Helm's Deep with candy Red Hots. The field was disturbingly cluttered by the end of the night. But we amiably all joined in by eating them in the end.

Yep, pin markers for Bolt Action and shaken/disordered markers for Hail Caesar.

I do not like casualty figures, particularly if they count against a blister's count. They are bad juju.
By all means, sell them AS A CASUALTY FIGURE PACK, but do not include them (and force me to pay for them) in a "normal" figure pack.

If my system uses 3 figures on a stand, and you stick a wounded or dead figure in a 6 figure pack, I will not do business with you.

I use as many casualty figures as I can, I prefer them to be less expensive

Agree with the OFM: Sell them as a separate pack like Peter Pig does.

Give folks the choice with separate casualty packs. I use them for all my games rather than markers for casualties, disruptions/routed etc,

Tally Ho!

Peter pig makes generic dead horses. You will be the judge if they are good or not.

martin

I use them to show damage to a unit, stuck on a 40mm square base marked 1-4 on the sides, or a singley based wounded figure to show a disrupted unit.

Phil

I make my own from 28mm plastics (I'm an ancients player), although I do occasionally buy some metals if available. I only use these for convention games, though, which tend to be quite large. I don't like tokens cluttering a large display table.

Yes as markers.

Wanted to put lots (have captured some jpeg of them too…easier)where lots of casualties happened to have sort of "difficult ground" but some found it too much and then I need too many …pb in 18th century /napy you need so many different uniforms….

A bit gruesome too.+ painting!

Yes, for both the visual effect and for status indicators. Biggest challenge is finding suitable casualty figures for certain periods. But when they are available, I have them, lots of them. I probably have more casualty figures than a rather large percentage of the hobby has figures (for historicals). And I paint them as I paint a unit so they match to specific units.

Don't know the total count, but I'd guess I have maybe 1500 total, certainly north of 1000 casualty figures. Might be above the higher number. And if that seems excessive, keep in mind the total size of collection (32,000 or so, all in 15 mm).

For my as yet unpainted (mostly) Anglo-Egyptian and French Foreign Legion locals collections, I have one casualty for every single stand – and these will be used to effectively double the number of natives. One stand lost, place a casualty figure, when entire unit is lost, it regenerates back on to the table. I decided to do this when I realized that native player's were rarely as recklessly aggressive as they should be to represent the historical reality (not that our games, playing, have anything to do with actual reality – they don't). So, with this in place, the native players can charge hell for leather for at least the first part of a game and only after getting decimated will they take up greater caution.

Those two collections alone I think I have over 500 casualties, almost all from Stone Mountain but some from Old Glory15s.

I just use them as game markers, along with counters etc. Both the 15mm and 6mm ones are done in fairly generic colours so are multi purpose. Generally I use them to indicate pins etc.

The 6mm Irregular Horse & Musket casualties are pretty horrific, literally piles of corpses and dead horses. I mainly use those for WW1 games.

I use them for pin/disorder makers and sometimes just to show where the action has been hottest (in games that don't use markers). I have medieval casualties (guys in mail shirts and helmets), tri-corns and powdered wigs, Napoleonic and ACW. I do have about 10 dead horses in 15mm. Most of these came from casualty packs, one or two from 50-figure Old Glory bags.

Early morning writer

so we, collectively, must thank as the only one around to make casualties a worthwhile product for traders!
hurrah

I use them to record causualties in 28mm acnients games where most of my figures are on group bases but the rules acount for individual casualties. When sufficient casualties are taken I take off a base and remove the individual caualties.

I use them all the time in the All the King's Men games I play. They "complete" the look of the table, telling the story of where action has occurred. A few get scattered in the vicinity of a fight each time casualties are suffered. The play no rules role other than keeping the table from looking more and more barren as units are lost. An "empty" table toward the end of a game looks silly to me.

Casualty figures are a good way to keep records on the table without disrupting the aesthetics of the game.

In games that use figure removal I use a casualty figure on a base whose edges are marked with small, discrete dots to indicate numbers of casualties less than a full stand, by placing the edge of the base with the applicable number of dots adjacent to the unit. This gives an immediate visual impression of a damaged unit without cluttering up the table with too many casualties. It also makes efficient use of casualty figures, since it only requires one per unit.

For example, the depleted Hanoverian battalions (a little out of focus since they were at the edge of the field of view, but you get the idea) at the bottom of this photo:

I use bunches of our ACW casualty figures as, regardless of the rules used, every time a unit take a casualty one goes on the table. At the end of the game it is possible to trace the progress of a unit and determine where it put it's stick in the grinder. To me it makes the table a lot more visually interesting.

For Black Powder for morale hits, and in 'They Couldn't hit an elephant' – dead on a penny (15mm) for " Fightin' ", and stretcher bearers (on 2p, – 25mm) for "Defeated"

yes.

Never.

They are unsightly and offend the eye.

I game in 18th century Imagi-Nations.

otto

Offend the eye? How so, ottoathome?

I use plastic figures with the stand removed (great use for figures who are drinking from cups or otherwise not widely useable poses) laid on an infantry or other stand to denote a high state of disruption. If a stand is eliminated outright, a dead figure is laid down. If the disrupted stand recovers (or is subsequently eliminated) the dead figure is left in place.

We like this for exactly the same reasons War Artizan gives, above.

Guf

Dear Green Feather.

We have different styles of gaming. They are unpleasant reminders of the inevitable byproduct of real war- the production of cadavers.

You must remember I game in 18th century Imagi-Nations. Therefore for me it is essential that the battlefield look good. This is the reason that my units are all on one stand, for example, with 1 officer, 1 lieutenant, 2 sergeants, 2 color, 1 drummer, and 1 fifer and 28 privates in three ranks on one 4.5 by 8" stand. I want the units to look good like they stepped out of one of those 18th century engravings or paintings. Cavalry and artillery are similarly mounted on large stands. The reason is to make sure they look picturesque at all times, neat, and trim, and especially to protect them from "the claw" the tendency of gamers to pick them up like a handful of peanuts to move them around.

As such the rules allow for this and do not need numbers of small stands, and also because the player "enters the game"-- steps into the game as a wing (left right, center) of the army or the supreme commander himself, there's no need for smaller stands.

But you must also remember that such things as figures drinking from cups are for me very useable. Behind or with each regiment I create small dioramas in the back of the unit. For example, one has a harem girl displaying her charms for a Sergeant, who is scratching his chin and looking at his palm with a pile of coins in it, another has two officers sitting at a small camp table playing chess (behind a three rank firing line), and my Turkish Regiments all have one-man-bands in the front rank.

The units in the game use small cards for markers, and are much more functional. You see I am NOT one of those people who get a sense of moral outrage at the epithet that "18th century Generals maneuvered more than they fought." I think that's an admirable way of conducting such an unpleasant business as war.

The rules are such that any record keeping is done through he small cards placed on the unit, which easily transport with the unit rather than the casualties which you have to drag around with you. These small cards go off and on as the status of the unit changes.

But over all- the picture of casualties laying about in unmilitary fashion is infelicitous.