Defender picks deaths

[Guest]

shouldn’t the attacker be picking which units to remove? don’t they know who they fired at? meaning, you aim at a certain unit and fire…… :?

[Imperious Leader]

the owning player picks his loses with exceptions in naval combat

[Guest]

@Imperious:

the owning player picks his loses with exceptions in naval combat

I know, but it just seems to me that the rule is backwords. :?

[Imperious Leader]

ok so you propose the attacker decides the defender loses and vice versa?

[a44bigdog]

The only way for such to even realistically work would be that the attacker would have to state his targets each round of combat.

[Imperious Leader]

under house ideas i would suspect that tanks rolling a 1 could pick another tank as a target, with Artillery in the first round rolling a 1 could do this also.

[tin_snips]

picking each target for each unit at the start of combat would just be ridiculously time consuming. IL is right, the only feasible way to do this would be to allow units to pick certain casulties if they role a 1

i don’t see why you’d want to change the ruling over casulties though. letting the players pick which of their units to remove is fine. otherwise there’d be no point building expensive units, because they’d get chosen as casulties asap!

and a game with a lot of infantry vs. infantry combat doesn’t take my fancy

[Romulus]

Casualty system in A&A is part of the success of the game.
Simple enough for not being too much time consuming but at same time allows for cannon fodder and protection of the expensive units.

If we condsider the real battle attacker do not “know” who are they firing. WW2 was not fought with Napoleonic style battles where 2 armies lined up one in the face of the other.
In WW2 units are camouflaged, entrenched and hidden. When and if a unit is discovered by the enemy it can be target of fire, but attacker is not “selecting” the target among all the defending unit, only the one that has become visible.
So to some extent is the defender, positioning an moving its units, that allow the attacker to fire.

The more “correct” way of picking casualties is the one used in Battle of the Bulge, random selection, with the possibility of overkilling one unit and totally missing another.

If we can not have random casualties then we should stay with the “defender pick the unit to be removed” mechanism.

[Jennifer]

Didn’t Fortress America have something similar to X unit can only kill an X unit, but Y units could kill X or Y units?

Wouldn’t it be a simple matter of stating that:

Infantry/Artillery have to kill units in the order of Infantry, Artillery, Armor….
Armor can chose to kill enemy Armor or Infantry first, then Artillery (since Artillery are usually well behind the front lines.)
Fighters can target Fighters or Bombers, when no air defense is present, they can chose any target on the field of battle
Battleships, Destroyers and Submarines can shoot on whatever they want to
Aircraft Carriers can defend against enemy air first, then enemy ships

That would at least stop battles of 5 infantry, fighter vs fighter resulting in a dead fighter for the cost of one or two infantry…at least the fighter would get to shoot at the enemy fighter first, then turn on the attacking infantry (or in my world, retreat giving up the land.)

[warrafael]

I like the layered and randomized system as in AAG.
It has three layers, air, sea and land.

Air battles first, the surviving units go to sea combat first, the surviving units to
shore bombardment, unloading transports and finally land combat.

In each “layer”, caualties are randomized, but the hit probabilities for infantry are more than for artillery and Antiaircraft for instance. So cheap units protect more expensive ones.

Greetings

[TG Moses VI]

@Romulus:

Casualty system in A&A is part of the success of the game.
Simple enough for not being too much time consuming but at same time allows for cannon fodder and protection of the expensive units.

If we condsider the real battle attacker do not “know” who are they firing. WW2 was not fought with Napoleonic style battles where 2 armies lined up one in the face of the other.
In WW2 units are camouflaged, entrenched and hidden. When and if a unit is discovered by the enemy it can be target of fire, but attacker is not “selecting” the target among all the defending unit, only the one that has become visible.
So to some extent is the defender, positioning an moving its units, that allow the attacker to fire.

The more “correct” way of picking casualties is the one used in Battle of the Bulge, random selection, with the possibility of overkilling one unit and totally missing another.

If we can not have random casualties then we should stay with the “defender pick the unit to be removed” mechanism.

I am Moses Obama and I endorse this message.

[toblerone77]

I’ve got to agree with Tin, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You’ll have a bunch of WWI infantry style battles and a whole lotta sloggin’ in the mud entrenchment.

[Todd7912]

Fortress America does have a really simple casualty order system printed on the battle chart. I’ve considered adopting it as a house rule and even using the FA chart, but my game groups aren’t into house rules.

[Jennifer]

Unfor my Fortress America game is still in Iraq.  (So is my Shogun game.)

[Romulus]

@TG:

@Romulus:

Casualty system in A&A is part of the success of the game.
Simple enough for not being too much time consuming but at same time allows for cannon fodder and protection of the expensive units.

If we condsider the real battle attacker do not “know” who are they firing. WW2 was not fought with Napoleonic style battles where 2 armies lined up one in the face of the other.
In WW2 units are camouflaged, entrenched and hidden. When and if a unit is discovered by the enemy it can be target of fire, but attacker is not “selecting” the target among all the defending unit, only the one that has become visible.
So to some extent is the defender, positioning an moving its units, that allow the attacker to fire.

The more “correct” way of picking casualties is the one used in Battle of the Bulge, random selection, with the possibility of overkilling one unit and totally missing another.

If we can not have random casualties then we should stay with the “defender pick the unit to be removed” mechanism.

I am Moses Obama and I endorse this message.

Thank you!

I think that in Anniversary it is the right system. House rule or other ruleset may use different casualties removal system  but it is the right thing for the “standard” game.