"Do your troops have a reputation?" Topic

Do your elite troops live up to their reputation in battle?

Nope ..Any scottish unit will roll bad morale ..any low morale bavarian unit acts like superman. Usually the prettier the troops the worse they do..Our old Scruby SYW Brunswickers are butt kickers..and my lovely Burgoynes army is 0 and 15…sigh…

Some of my units are getting reputations, started a log book to keep track

I've been told some of my troops are kind of fishy …

I'm amused, impressed, and disturbed by your armies. 🤓

I don't know if my elites have ever lived up to expectations, but we've had some memorable moments (For good or ill) with units or heroes whose stories get retold.

Really fun to be building up a body of those tales with my son now, too.

Yes, some do. I had Moshe a 15mm shoemaker from Brooklyn in ia Ww2 jeep I used for my recon bn , who constantly did bad recon dice. I gave him gkasses, it did not help.

Back in the days of WRG 4th edition, I had a unit of 50 levy archers which were the worst class of morale possible. When I used them their morale never waivered and they turned any unit that approached them into a pin cushion. One day a friend used them in a game against me. On their first morale test they went berserk and charged across the table towards me. They then took some casualties from missile fire, failed their morale test and ran off the table.

Our club also had an ACW campaign where a unit of confederate infantry developed a reputation of being invincible in combat. Over the course of the campaign their numbers were slowly reduced due to casualties, until only 30% of their original number remained. The union surrounded them with at least six times their number and eliminated them by shooting at them. They were balanced by another confederate unit that one of the players had nicknamed the tiger brigade. The developed a reputation for running from fire fights.

Yes, darthfozzywig, exactly my thoughts. I shiver whenever a unit of the ever-variegated army appears here unexpectedly. With regard to the original question, I can't resist throwing out a story of the "Wild Geese", those Jacobites who left Ireland in the 1690s and took service in several armies on the Continent, principally France. Their successors were still in the service of the French kings until the Revolution.
These soldiers had a very definite reputation for indiscipline, brawling, singing interminable ballads late into the night, and so on. I believe alcohol may have been involved. Anyway, one of their Captains was called before the King, and Louis says, "Your soldiers, they give me more problems than all the rest of my Armee". Courteously, evenly, and with a commendably straight face, the Captain responded, "Indeed, Sire; I understand your Majesty's enemies make the same complaint".

Acrid!

I may have the rep more so than my "toys" … for better or worse ! [usually it's worse !] …

I would say that my elite troops usually do well – there is the odd blip like when one of my cuirassier regiments was routed by hussars (to be fair, the cuirassiers had had two rounds of charging, had routed an enemy cavalry regiment, the hussars were fresh and outnumbered the cuirassiers 2 to 1) but overall the elite troops act like elite troops

When I started gaming Napolonics with my high school friends many, many years ago, we had a practice of painting medals on colonels of regiments who did really well in a specific battle, or on Generals or Marshals whose commands did.

Over the years I have continued that. I am on my fourth set of Napoleonic armies, having gone through different size figures from Scruby 30mm in the 60's to my 15mm today.

While I rarely can remember what a given unit did to earn it, I can tell they have a reputation. Some have been rewarded over and over. For those regiments, eventually I distribute the medals among the rank and file. If I see a regiment with four or five medals, I know they have a good reputation. They have repeatedly over achieved. It is fun.

Tom

Do they get a proper five-armed Cross of the Legion d'Honneur, with green laurel wreath, or just the ribbon?

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As said up above have a notebook now with every unit, battles, and major victories over what unit or losses. Outstanding efforts get that unit a moral upgrade or losses down a grade each by 1/2 point. So a couple are getting a reputations.

No because sooner or later they end up dead.

A friend of mine im the 80's who sadly passed a number of years ago used to play 7yrs war in the club, and because we had most armies covered he decided he would do a made-up army. In the Army, he had an elite Gaurd Grenadier unit and called it the Volt Flugels and in every battle, we played this unit routed, it got to the point if we where playing and we always allowed knowledge of troops moving onto the table the move before, we got in the habit to wind him to say "don't worry its only the Volt Flugel from last weeks battle", or routing became doing a Volt Flugel

We have some that seem to be bullet/spear/arrow magnets, whilst others are Teflon coated.it changes with era and scenario changes, but there's always some of each in almost every game.

Invariably, my figures fight far better for another player than for me!
A bit like the post Bannockburn Scots!

Back in the day a friend painted up a unit of Brunswickers. They were very dramatic looking in their black uniforms but they NEVER passed a morale test. We got so used to seeing them run that we all called them the Black Racers.

Beyond not being able to buy a die roll, nope.

I always felt that prettier the figures, i.e. better paint job, the better they would fight, hence my craptastic W-L record.

The green dragoons never passed a morale test.