Re: [sg] Starting Forces

On Wed, 21 March 2001, Derk Groeneveld wrote:

> I was wondering about this. Should one use these specialists as
> individuals or as members of the command squad? In the latter case
having
> EW active will eat up half the command squad's activations?

Yes, it does eat up the activations. So, putting them as a separate
squad results in more flexibility. 

If your group allows free form force creation (that is, you can choose
your own organization) then there's no real reason to put them in the
command squad. If you create scenarios, this can be an interesting
tactical problem to throw at a player.
  
> Since the gurkha's all carry IAVR, I was wondering how to use this? Do
you
> have, for a squad of 8, an effective 8 shot IAVR, which doesn't 'die'
> until the last figure?

That's a good question. The distribution of IAVRs in a squad isn't
covered. It seems odd that, as strictly written, it is implied that a
trooper with a SAW getting killed means the squad loses the SAW, but
that miraculously all the IAVRs in a squad are carried by the last guy.

One way to do this is not to worry about it! That's usually what I do. I
assume that within a game turn, a soldier can be easily stripped of his
IAVR. It makes things simple.

This leads to the question of letting one figure pick up the weapon of a
downed comrade. I have house rules on my web site to handle that.

Another is to give each figure an IAVR (or find some other way of
distributing them) and if the figure is a casualty, you lose the IAVR.
But, then you need to use missile figures to indicate the figure that
fired the IAVR.
 
> I think below 7 figures, you'll find yourself seriously lacking
firepower,
> especially after the first casualty.

Although there is a question of 2 small 4-man teams having twice the
activations as 1 8-man team. And 1 suppression marker eats up an action
for all 8 figures, while if you had a smaller squad it takes two
actions. I think you'd find that smaller squads will result in more
suppression results, and are more effective.

I haven't heard a reply from Jon as to my asking how he envisioned SG2
being played. I wonder if fireteams should be modelled as small squads,
or if a squad is considered to have fireteams but just isn't modelled as
such.

> Also, is there anything to stop me from putting more SAW's in my
squad,
> thus getting more dice? I'm not planning to, but I'm curious what the
> thought on this is. (I'd say 'munchkin' ;) )

Two SAWs per squad is actually necessary to model some historic squad
formations. I wouldn't have a problem with 2 SAWs per squad. More than
that and you are getting into munchkin territory.

Having said that, there's a scenario on my site, "Plasma Ambush" that
has one side consisting of 4 power armour guys carrying nothing but
plasma guns. They were	nasty against the APCs in the scenario, but were
not overpowering against infantry. Plasma guns have a D6 firepower, so
they were rolling Quality die plus 4D6. That sounds nasty, and it was if
they hit, but at any kind of range or in cover they had trouble doing
damage. They didn't come over as unbalanced at all.

So, while outfitting all your squads with D10 firepower SAWs is
definitely munchkinism, you might find other support weapons to result
in interesting situations. For that matter, it's not munchkinism if you
give one guy a squad of 8 SAWs but that's his only squad against
overwhelming odds. The scenario set up can fix any kind of
"munchkinism".

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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