"Casualty markers: a timely reminder of the Hoorors of war?" Topic

Many of use "dead 'uns" in our games, particularly as markers. I was recently looking at a particular graphic example (blood & guts) & I was wondering at the effect of such figures.

Our FoG Punic games use lots: including:

A few years ago, we staged this game at a local Train & Hobby show & I can remember explaining to a tot the elephant was merely sleeping.

Apart from upsetting children & keeping track of morale status, I think casualty figures do serve a purpose: to remind us we may be playing at war but the real thing is pretty awful. I don't want to spoil people's games but this is probably worth keeping in the back of your mind.

Your thought?

I agree with pretty much every word you wrote.

John T

I don't like casualty/status markers, and i don't like info bars on bases either (like in blucher) i think it clutters.
And i don't like casualties i units either. Like a napoleonic fireing line were one guy is permanently getting shot and half way fallen over.

Those are things for dioramas.

I've read enough battle accounts, and have good enough imagination, that i can perfectly well visualise the effect if close range canister on human or horse. In much more graphic detail then any casualty marker can do.

Or it might all boil down to that i find painting casualty markers extremely boring (like i do with cassions for artillery)

I only use them in Vietnam games, where they mark locations of wound, ammo, and equipment, as all of those things are tracked in the game. I don't use them in other skirmish games of greater scope and less detail, as I would simply need too many figs at significant cost, and don't track the same degree of detail. So their utility is not as great. I do think that they are less of an intrusion on the table top than the underside of bases of tipped over figures.

That said, I've never given casualty figures a second thought. I've never seen any in gaming that were presented in an overtly graphic way, but would interpret that as some degree of immaturity on the part of the presenter.

Otherwise, casualty markers don't really strike me as being any more twisted than the concept of making a game of war.

They could be used to denote 'rough' terrain as crossing a load of dead bodies is likely to disrupt a formed body of troops. I don't know of any rules which stipulate this but it seems a logical addition.

I use then for Vietnam games for the free world side where the evac of the wounded is a major factor.

I also have 20 or so in my American Civil War collection and will drop one on the table where a unit took heavy losses. I believe it adds to look of the thing.

No thanks. War games has nothing to do with war and I find casualty markers ghoulish.

As a side note: we have our annual Train & Hobby Show game coming up in a fortnight (Ligny) & it will have a bunch of casualty markers. I was contemplating my response to the inevitable questions about them from Joe Public.

Strangely enough, 99.99% of them also think a wargame has something to do with war. Go figure.

Just tell them you like to see the bodies of smashed and mutilated human beings and the sufferings of innocent animals. Then you will support their belief wargames has something to do with war.

I can understand the use of a casulaty marker to actually mark something on the table with a figure rather than a die or a penny; I don't see how they remind anyone about the real cost of war. We are palying games with toy soldiers.

No, thanks. It's a game, not war.

Like VCarter, I need them in Charlie Company because both dead and wounded need to be retrieved.

For other games, mecha, vehicles, and large creatures are good for cover and as terrain one has to move around.

I used them for Crossfire as Pin and Suppressed markers and I always wanted to get a bunch for skirmish gaming and replace the casualties with a proper figure.

I mean, if we want to get down to it, wargaming is a bit of a morbid hobby.

Der Weasel

Don't go there my friend! It is a very dark and unhappy path you embark on!

When I say war has nothing to do with war games, it is because it is a game and we model the stylized elements. We model the interesting gadgets, the beautiful uniforms, the formations and the historical cachet. But we do not idolize war. We rather idolize the military disciplines of the men and women who wage it. Duty, honor, self sacrifice, loyalty, bravery, and of course the pretty uniforms. sure we have casualties and losses to our little lead men But we do not create little lead widows and orphans. We do not have little lead men dying in pain or writing agony. We lionize and idolize the virtues and bravery of men in war.

Bring in casualty figures to show what happened, to DEMONSTRATE what the idealized "bullets" our muskets have fired and what they do to the forms of real bodies depicted in little lead bodies, than you are very close to idolizing the real side of war and making it more to do with war, which has always been the most devastating shaft in our opponent's quiver. That war gamers are really sick egoists who delight in human suffering.

For me it's more visceral.

I remember once seeing some pictures of persons killed in war, and the corpses left by a battle. Including one of a German soldier literally flattened in the road by a tank passing over him. What came to my mind was "What sin did you do that you should die such, and like Goya's famous painting "Was it for this that you were born?" I keep thinking that somewhere, be the casualty Russian, German, Italian, Japanese, British, French or American, that somewhere there was a mother who, like that in Private Ryan, when she saw that green car winding up the long lane through the amber waves of grain, her legs go out from under her as she is told that her darling child is no more and done to death in a horrible way on some forgotten field.

No casualty figures for me. Sorry that's one part of realism I will never accept.

I've never been in a war, but I have come face to face with it's real nature. It was when I was a reporter for the Paterson Evening News. I was during Vietnam and I was sent out to get a picture from the family of a local boy who had been killed in action. I got to the apartment, a fourth floor flat in a seedy ramshackle tenement. I knocked on the door and it opened and there was this beautiful blonde, blue-eyed girl, not more than 19, and heavily pregnant. I was a bit nonplussed and I said "I'm looking for J.N.'s family. " "Oh they are two door down, I'm his wife." I mumbled something about it being a mistake I must have the wrong person. She chipperly said OK. I realized she hadn't been told yet! The editor had jumped the gun and sent me out too soon! As soon as she closed the door I ran, RAN down the stairs, From the third floor I saw the car outside and the officers entering the front door. I tore past them, trying to make the door before they got to her door. I failed. From just inside the front door I heard the scream from four floors up! A scream that corkscrewed down the spine and told you of the smashing of a life.

THAT scream was war, real war, in its very inner nature, in its very essence, and I never want to hear that again.

War games has nothing to do with war. It is where we escape from war. War in our games is bit of buffoonery, a burlesque, a pantomime with "counterfeiting actors" and bumpkins.

Keep your casualty figures.

I don't understand how acknowledging the bad stuff that happens in life is the same as idolizing it. Surely focusing on the "Duty, honor, self sacrifice, loyalty, bravery" that supposedly comes from combat glorifies war much more?

I don't think anyone is sticking their heads in the sand here. Some folks, myself included, just want to play games with toy soldiers. We don't want gory casualty figures everywhere. We are here to play a game, not simulate "the horrors of war."

That said, I may paint up a few for Frostgrave soon, but only because there is a specific scenario where they play a role in the game. And it's a fantasy game.

Sherman's quote on liking war is the best. I made and used causality markers putting down 1 for every stand removed. You could see how units moved under fire.

OSchmidt – Your reference to that German soldier reminds me of one of the Peter Pig AK47 casualty figures: very dubious taste/twisted sense of humour.

I have been reading/ watching military history since I could learn to read. I've lately studying and do mean intensely looking at the photos in William Frassanito's Gettysburg a Journey in Time. Every one of Gardner and his crew showing corpses could be a young soldier in France in 1918, Germany 1944, Iran 2008. It's a heartless buissness war, but all to often can't be avoided. What I try to do is play a make believe army and do what is done in real life

Horses for courses.

I include them in units for aesthetics and use them for markers. I particularly like the diorama aspect of making each unit different and giving it a distinct character an flavour.

What about for scenarios involving Zombies or Necromancers?

I just saw someone who found a happy medium. He took photos of figures and then laminated them onto card discs. They lay flat but look like the miniatures they represent. This makes them less grizzly but still provides a marker.

Good thread, Ochoin! I have casualty figures for my Dux Bellorum project, with pretty much the same motivation as your own. Oddly, I haven't used them much. I find that as units move, the markers tend to get in the way.

However, I also play a miniatures version of the old board game, "Cry Havoc." In that context, fallen horses and men are an important part of the game, integral to communicating the status of the game's characters. So, I guess I use them a lot for that game.

Costs do add up however, so I haven't purchased any casualty figures for my Sengoku Jidai armies or my new horse and musket project.