"HVU - High Value Useless?" Topic

How often do you play a game where an objective is to capture/protect/destroy/whatever a High Value Unit (person, information, artifact, etc.) that has no tactical use in that game (though it may be tactically significant in another related game)?

For us, it's about 25-33% of the time.

The best ones are protect the resistance sympathizer with critical information about the war effort.

Sometimes I do. I would guess about the same 1/4 to 1/3 of the time as etotheipi.

In one memorable game, the HVU was a spy who was to be extracted by the players. Unbeknownst to the players, a security robot had captured the spy and was holding him in a small building. When the extraction team opened the door of the building, the robot shot at them with a laser.

The extraction team returned fire, and a firefight developed with the team bringing up PGMP-14s (plasma guns) and an automatic grenade launcher until they destroyed the robot. I somehow kept a poker face throughout.

I rolled for damage to the spy and concluded that he was pretty much burned to a crisp and no longer able to be identified without a forensic lab. So the players had to carry his pretty gruesome body and the remains of his briefcase to the landing zone for extraction and analysis.

It was the worst friendly fire incident I've seen in some 40 years of wargaming, at least in terms of the game objective. I've lost soldiers to inaccurate artillery fire, but this was the actual game objective.

I do it all the time. The game is called "chess," and the HVU is called the "king."

Once in a while. I played one game where the objective of the game was a precious object the king wanted but the players didn't know what it was. After he slogged through to capture the item he found out it was a bathtub. He did laugh eventually.

One of my "go to" Napoleonic Age of Sail scenarios involves an engagement (that very nearly actually occurred in the Caribbean in 1806) between a superior French squadron against a small British convoy escort. One of the French ships is captained by Jerome Bonaparte. Jerome is played by the game's umpire with his sole maniacal mission being to attack the opposing British flagship irrespective of any orders from his own commander to the contrary. The French admiral's job devolves down to trying to keep the brother of l'Empereur alive and out of the hands of the British.

It makes for an interesting scenario ….. ;-)

B

Almost never.