Stargrunt 2 Morale Questions and Comments

My experiences playing Stargrunt 2 at GenCon were the first outside of
playing
my own Ork Hill scenario. I noticed that there seems to be a fairly low
chance
of units dropping morale levels in SG2. I thought this might have to do
with
the set up in my own scenario, but it seems to be fairly common.

Now, this isn't NECESSARILY a problem. After all, the players seem to
like it
this way. It leaves the units capable of acting, and suppression is
common
enough that units are frozen in place fairly often. 

However, I have noticed some weird things. In particular, total
casualties to
a unit has no bearing on the unit's drop in morale. I had a unit lose
one or
two figures per turn until the commanding officer was all that remained.
She
kept her morale status as Confident. Okay, she was a veteran, but even
still
this seemed very strange. 

You take a major morale hit if you lose more figures in one attack than
you
have left over after the attack. This is good. A major loss of life in
one
quick burst should lower morale drasticall. If you lose the men
piecemeal,
though, this has a very small effect. This doesn't seem right.

During the con, the house rule used by Jeff Guillion was that a unit
only
tested for morale once, at the end of the turn. This speeds up the game
and
causes some nasty morale results, but I didn't care for it. I found it
to be
too much of a pain trying to remember which unit had to take a morale
test and
for what. Still, the current system seems not to result in enough of a
lowering of morale unless the unit takes a lot of casualties and is
below the
level of Veteran.

Has this been common with other groups? Is this a problem, or do people
generally prefer a game where morale isn't that big a deal? Or am I just
playing with too many "veteran" units on the table?

I'm thinking that something along the lines of a morale test or a panic
test
should be done when a unit loses more than half its strength. Currently
a unit
takes a TL 4 test when it loses more figures than it has left at the end
of
the combat. Perhaps a TL2 test when the unit drops below half strength,
and a
TL4 test when it drops below one quarter strength is needed.

For that matter, perhaps a straight +1 to the TL per casualty is in
order. The
squad data card has a space for the unit's full strength complement, so
we
might as well use it. If this is used, I suggest scrapping the TL2 and
TL4
tests listed above.

Finally, I noticed that the condition of the rest of the force on the
table
has no effect on the morale of a given unit. That is, the whole platoon
could
be taking a beating, but the morale of an individual squad that still
hasn't
seen action hasn't been affected. I know that this was a bit of a sore
point
with me in DS2, but it doesn't seem to be that big an issue in SG2.
Still, has
anyone found this to be an issue, and if so have you looked at it?

Allan Goodall	       agoodall@sympatico.ca

"We come into the world and take our chances
 Fate is just the weight of circumstances
 That's the way that Lady Luck dances
 Roll the bones." - N. Peart