I don't know about you, but I would rather not remove individual figures when they become casualties. Nor do I like a "record-keeping" type of system where you graphically maintain a record of casualties. I've used pipecleaners to denote casualties and although I don't mind casualty caps as much, I still prefer whole stand removal.

The problem, of course, with whole stand removal, is that it doesn't allow for the slow, steady decrease in a unit's size that we all like to simulate on the tabletop. If you have a six stand unit, for example, and it sustains the loss of a single stand, you've lost one-sixth of your unit effectiveness in numbers. I guess, aside from the roster system and single figure casualty removal, there's no good way around this.

I have used, for my 25mm Seven Years War battles, a system of whole stand removal as follows. My infantry stands feature six figures and the cavalry have three. If an infantry unit suffers two casualties, for example, I roll a 6-sided die and any die roll which does not exceed the number of casualties results in the entire stand being removed from the game.

All or Nothing

Simply put, it is an "all or nothing" type of approach. For cavalry, since there are only three figures per stand, if they suffer two casualties, I double the number of figures in my mind (2 becomes 4) and any number not exceeding a "4" results in the entire stand being removed. Regarding artillery stands, I have four gunners per stand, which doesn't lend itself to 6-sided dice. I'm sure there are dice of almost any number of pips available nowadays, but you could use percentage dice for this, or other instances. For example, if you lose one gunner of four, you've lost 25% of your stand. You could roll percentage dice and solve the situation by stating that any roll lower than 25% removes the whole artillery crew stand.

It just occurred to me that this sounds like a pretty drastic measure for artillery stands, I guess because we are talking really about an "all or nothing" type of approach where if your gun represents a battery (I have two-gun batteries), you run the risk of losing your entire battery if you suffer one single casualty. Not the type of chance factor most of us enjoy taking in a wargame, is it! Nonetheless, statistically (don't you love that word?) it should work out so that over a period of time, you lose the same number of stands using this method of "whole stand removal" that you do by removing individual figures.

It is possible, as well, that since my infantry units are quite large - 37 figures including a mounted officer on the command stand and the cavalry regiments are represented by 24 figures, they can absorb the loss of an entire stand better than say a 12, 18, or 24 figure unit of infantry or a 6, 9 or 12 figure unit of cavalry.

I've only used this approach in a single game at LITTLE WARS I several years ago for the SYW and I don't remember any complaints about the system. As a matter of fact, gamers seemed to like the statistical possibility that even they suffered casualties, it didn't always translate to losing effectiveness if they were able to roll successfully to "save" the stand. I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say about this system if you have any thoughts on the subject.

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