Miniature personalities

For those of us whose brave lead minis tend to be harshly treated by
their commander's orders and/or dice, but still want to use names for
at least some of their figs...just name some of the squad members--the
vets--and cheat on their behalf.

For example, one of the squads of the Large Scarlet Single division has four
war weary vets and seven eager new guys. Enemy machinegun fire rakes the
position and causes three casualties. Take them from
the new guys.  Or roll a d20, 1-14 is a new guy, 15-18 is a vet, 19-20
is a reroll. Or, when the medic covers over for triage, roll all the medic
rolls, then assign the "all better!" to the vets and the "oops!" rolls to the
new guys.

You may have to modify these a bit depending on what you feel is appropriate
for picking up support weapons and such.

Just in case anyone missed the reference, go watch the movie "Big Red
One".

> For those of us whose brave lead minis tend to be harshly treated by

Hmmm, interesting rules ideas here for "cinematic" games (I mean
movie-style play with heroic characters, NOT the FT movement system!)
.......
Maybe give the "leading characters" a number of "luck" rolls - if they
take a hit, they can roll with a high chance of moving the hit to some hapless
"unnamed extra" standing near them...... of course, the higher up the credits
that their name appears, the more of these rolls they get!

"No, no, I'm not putting on that red sweatshirt!! I don't want to die in the
first five minutes to show how this week's monster works!!"

 ;-)

> --- Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:

> Hmmm, interesting rules ideas here for "cinematic"

Actually, I just got done going through Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers and this
isn't cinematic, it's realistic.

Most casualties in US units came from the replacements fed in in the previous
30 days.

Anyone in the line longer than that was a veteran and had a much higher chance
of living through the war.