"Prisoners: For you the War is over" Topic

Do any of the current WWII skirmish level rules actually provide for a figure surrendering and being taken prisoner?

I feel we are all too cavalier with the lives of our soldiers, shooting it out, perhaps against all the odds. How many of us would actually say, OK, my figure will surrender to you? Perhaps this might be something that rules should impose upon us in specified circumstances. One thought, if a game provides for victory points, is that if a figure surrenders, it should be worth, say, 1 point rather than, say, 2 or 3 for a kill. After all, it means that the other side must then make provision for the capture of the figure and escorting him out of the action.

I am looking for rules suitable to game the like of Home Guard against downed Luftwaffe aircrew where perhaps there is less of a chance of the airmen shooting it out.

Any thoughts?

IIRC NUTS! by Two Hour Wargames takes that into account, one possible reaction table result is for the figure to surrender.

I believe most of the rules beyond skirmish level, roll it into the unit elimination rules -- in other words, they don't go into that level of detail. When units are eliminated, it could be that they are reduced to an ineffectual number of fighting men, they broke, and ran, or they surrendered. No matter why, the unit is no longer combat effective, and it is removed from play. The details are not that important, at this level of play.

In a skirmish level game, it could be a different matter altogether. I don't play skirmish level WW II games, however. Cheers!

IIRC NUTS! by Two Hour Wargames takes that into account, one possible reaction table result is for the figure to surrender.

Yep, and your own figures may surrender under the wrong situation. And there is a Mission your squad may get where the goal is to capture an enemy figure and bring it back to gain intel.

In this AAR, the game ended when the remaining German figures had to surrender -- their reaction tests called for them to retreat, or they were "hunkered down," but they couldn't do so since either they were too close to a US figure or they'd end up back in LOS of an enemy figure. If this happened during the game, you can just take them out of play or there are optional rules on how you would assign one of your figures to guard up to x6 surrendered enemy figures, and to escort them off table, etc.

link

We do this regularly, morale fails the troops surrender if unable run away.

On times i`ve looked at the table and seen troops about to be slaughtered by overwhelming odds and simply say – they give up.

We always use logic (can you see that to react to it?) and fair play in our games, so it seems to work for us.

My Skirmish Action rules allow for PoWs as combat results in certain circumstances. Also some scenarios require taking Prisoners. Cheers!

I've not seen a lot of prisoner miniatures.

Both Easy 8's Battleground and TAC Publications Arc of Fire state that surrounded broken infantry will surrender. Battleground goes into detail about searching prisoners, guards and refusing their surrender.
Face of Battle has rules about surrendering, an interrogation table, and escaping prisoners.
Although not skirmish, the AH Squad Leader had rules about surrendering units (GI Anvil of Victory IIRC).

TW&T has rules for prisoners, as does IABSM.

Chain of Command has basic rules for surrendering troops.

Thanks for the replies. While a lot of rules do have provision for dealing with prisoners, not many seem to have provision for making someone surrender in the first instance.

From what I can see, Nuts! Seems a good candidate. Would it be suitable for platoon/squad level games such as Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard dealing with downed aircrew or Fallschirmjagers trying to capture a local airfield to allow invasion gliders to land?

SG2 has provision for surrendering and prisoners.
Page 53
PDF link
And hence my sg2ww2 conversion also has.

I've used it to run home guard vs FJ.

AFAIK this was a one off:
link

These guys are a crew fighting from their ditched plane using it's machine guns.
To little effect – but you could game something like that.
It's pretty much a machine gun nest vs a company kind of an action.
They put up a sporting "fight" before throwing the towel in with no great harm done.
Seems to have ended with a pint all round.

If they'd killed a couple of the guys facing them I'd guess things might have ended somewhat differently.

That's with working machine guns and an intact crew.

Bailed aircrew on their own would have to be insane to take on home guard.
A couple of untrained ( probably bashed up ) aircrew with pistols vs infantry? Suicide.
Even if they "win" some fire fight – then what do they do?

I'd just nail a rule on…
Must surrender when spotted and within 12" of a section+

Assuming they don't have the time to don their nun's habits.

I tend to include a surrender option in my melee rules in skirmishes, My 7 Years war rules make units surrender in given circumstances (surrounded, or unable to outpace pursuers)

I like (and have played ) games where troops in the preverbial are forced to surrender. In a game and in a campaign situation, the bigger question is how to guard them and what you do with them. The easy option is to remove them from the game otherwise you get into sidelines and that can be a major distraction. From a command and control perspective, we would like to be able just to "throw them over our shoulder" and get on trying to secure that objective!