Re: 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.

I've never really seen this unless you make everything highly motivated
fresh troops.  Try mixing motivation levels and troop fatigue, they
really
make a huge difference.

>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.

But the morale problems of keeping a tired, poorly motivated unit on the
table attempting to fulfil a mission objective are trmendous, and IMO
make
a challenging and fun game.  However, if you are just looking for a
shoot
'em up type of contact then this type of maorale issue is less
important.

>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.

Again I would ask how higly she was motivated, plus as a GM I'd get her
to
take reation rolls as everyone around her was blown away. On the flip
side
it may be that she is worth keeping in mind and using as a chracter in
another game, if a player identifies with a figure/character then they
will
play the unit he/she commands VERY differently next time as they will
want
to protect thier favourite fig.

>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.

You should really test every time it is required, in this case it is not
uncommon for a single unit to take several tests during the same turn.
This obviosly has a radical effect on the faliure rate.

>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 not sure about too many veteren, try lowering the overall quality
and
mix the motivation and fatigue states and see if you like games that
way,
if not its back to th ebetter quality units.

>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?

I generally havn't had a problem with this.  In the main i try to play
point of view of the troops on the table.  On a dense battlefield it is
not
uncommon for individual squads to be strung out such that they are not
aware of other squads in the smae pltn, therefore if not comms are made
they don't know who has been wiped out as the CO will not relay that to
them.  Of course if they can see th aother squad then this may be a
problem
which could be rectifiewd by reaction tests etc.

Stuart.

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Stuart Murray

Department Of Molecular Genetics	     Tel: (718) 430 4289
Albert Einstein College Of Medicine	      Fax: (718) 430 8778
1300 Morris Park Avenue 			  email:
smurray@aecom.yu.edu
Bronx
New York 10461

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