Counter Values

By The Numbers

How were the three arguably most important numbers in ASL generated and why is there virtually no conversation about whether they are real?

You can tell an ASL grognard¹ when you mention 666 and he immediately thinks of a first line US squad rather than the mark of the devil. Virtually all ASL players will know exactly what you are talking about if you give the three digits of its firepower, range and morale. Maybe less so of, for example, second line Italian squads. And, to be sure, there is a lot of overlap, for example, 447 squads. However, it is this defining characteristic that identifies units.

How did these characteristics come about? Why are they so universally accepted and virtually never debated? Perhaps most importantly: Why do we go on adding squads (especially by third party producers) without laying down a basic understanding of what goes on in the composition of these factors?

I propose a short exercise to help us understand what makes up these figures by developing some theories about what should go into making these theories, gathering data and then testing those theories against the data gathered.

How Were the Numbers Originally Developed?

I'm going to start out by saying that I have no personal knowledge of how these numbers were developed. I will only admit that the original developer of Squad Leader was Don Greenwood and that previous statistical tests I have done on Mr. Greenwood's work have been astonishingly well done and while I don't know how these numbers were generated, I have a high degree of confidence in them. The fact that he developed these numbers without the easily accessible data on the Internet is utterly astounding.

I've also done a huge of amounts of research on vehicles of WWII and again, I have come to understand not only the wealth of knowledge represented in the development of the game system but the shortcuts they did as well.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty convinced that when the game was developed back in the 1970's the primary source was an a priori guess. So an educated guess by a very learned expert. Like a major league outfielder catching a fly ball, they don't do the math of the geometry to catch a fly ball, the game developers did a good job of figuring where the ball was coming down, getting under it and putting the glove where the ball is.

This means that the figures are subjective. Based on the guess of an expert, but nonetheless a guess. So there is room for argument—especially as third party producing new counters hither and yon—about what firepower, range and morale should be.

There are a couple of things that make objective measurement of the data problematic. I'm going to group these into three categories: Social Differences, Doctrine and Training. Social differences is a somewhat sketchy area because it is a slippery slope to racial differences, but there are differences that make socialization important. I will hark back here to the 1989 ASL Annual which talks both about American and Soviet troops in ASL. Written by Craig Posey, these (and other) annual articles summarize the information and thought that went in to the composition of the different national distinctions in ASL. While these Annuals are a bit hard to find these days, they are worth looking into—especially if you are a third party producer looking to define or redefine national counters.

Are Germans more disciplined than other nationalities? The Japanese more aggressive? Does literacy and technological knowledge affect being a good soldier? Why are ASL Finns so awesome? Why are ASL Italians so pathetic? What are the national characteristics identified in first hand and historical accounts that allow for differences in ASL counters? Where does this put us in understanding ASL counter stats?

Doctrine means that, for example, the US includes a Browning Automatic Rifle inherent in every squad. This is convenient as they never have to worry about it breaking down. However, it also means that the US has a significantly higher firepower than other nationalities.

Training affects these numbers because units more familiar with their weapons are going to be more effective with those weapons. This, intuitively makes a lot of sense, because familiarity with weapons improves aim and allows better use of close combat weapons. If not, why would military leadership spend time on it?

Firepower

Theoretically, firepower should be one of the most simple of these to compute. Firepower is, generally, simply an estimate of the number of members of the unit and the weapons they possess. However, there are problems with this estimate.

I don't think anyone would argue that there are national distinctions between ability to shoot. Possibly, one could argue that the more rural a society is, the more likely the society is to rely on shooting, but even this is pretty marginal. However, training affects accuracy. The more time on the range, the better a soldier is able to shoot. If not, isn't the time on the rifle range completely wasted? Doctrine would, in every case, emphasize the need for accuracy, so this isn't very important for firepower either.

The makeup of the squad's weapon compliment is probably pretty important and here, we see a vast difference in ASL Squads. Let's think about this. Soldiers are supplied with a variety of weapons like grenades, rifles, submachine guns, shovels and knives. Even rifle grenades. So the main difference we see between squad types is between SMG squads and Rifle squads.

However, virtually all nationalities have a basic FP of four. Even though rifles varied quite widely from the Lee Enfield (Max range 500m, manual breach) to the M1 Garand (Max range 840m, semi-automatic feed), in ASL the numbers are about the same. And, while the US has a FP of 6, this supposedly includes a LMG-like BAR as part of its inherent firepower. Which makes it more like a FP of 4 with an additional 2FP LMG. Even though the US had a lot of carbines and Thompsons mixed in, in addition to what is arguably the best combat rifle of the war, its firepower exempting its inherent LMG is roughly equivalent to 4 anyway.

The US and British can be assumed to have had a lot of training time before combat, while many Red Army and late German troops were thrown into the combat without ever having fired a shot on the range. But in ASL, no effect.

This carries over to close combat, where the firepower factor makes up your close combat value as well—at least between infantry units. This means, effectively, that a professional volunteer force of British riflemen has the same strength in close combat as a bunch of teenage Germans. It also gives SMG squads an edge, which is certainly justifiable. If we go over to hand-to-hand close combat, the factor gets somewhat medieval, with both sides being reduced to shovels and knives.

However, close combat does not seem to factor in grenades (and often German units were designated as “Grenadiers” precisely because they were trained for close up fighting with grenades.) And one of the first weapons a unit ran short of was grenades. Yet in low-ammo situations, units still have their full firepower and even doubled point blank fire. Close combat does not factor in Molotov cocktails, which seems like it should affect close in fighting. It is possible to argue that troops might be reluctant to start a fire in their own hex, but I think the mechanics of Molotov cocktails in ASL is pretty flawed.

Firepower also does not factor in experience, which could be crucial in the lethality of a squad. Many times, untested soldiers would not fire their weapons or would fire over the heads of their enemies. It took time for them to get used to the idea of killing. This reluctance had to be overcome over time in battlefield conditions. However, the elite status of a unit does effect FP, only for SMG where we would expect it to have less of an effect. Elite status generally increases the firepower of a SMG unit.

ASL was published before the scientific (though controversial) research of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (U.S. Army, ret.) Grossman contends that very few casualties result from aimed gunshot wounds. Others agree that kill ratios of various rifle weapons (and even automatic weapons) are very low in terms of their lethality. At any rate, there is a lot of good evidence to suggest that the rate of fire, range and stopping power of a soldier-portable weapon is largely irrelevant to firepower. Casualties tend to be caused by more impersonal weapons like artillery and grenades. Still, Grossman's work is pretty controversial in academic terms, but we see this justified by the immaterial effects of different weapons between the nationalities in ASL.

I will also mention that the British, for some inexplicable reason, were granted immunity from cowering as their superpower. This makes their first line and elite units a bit better than other nationalities. They also lack a first line SMG unit, as do the Germans.

On the lower end of the spectrum, we can see the squads that do not measure up to the base line. One exception is partisans, where a mix of weapon types and a lack of close support could be argued. Japanese squads, for all their virtues, lose a point of firepower when they stripe and also starting out as second line squads and conscripts. I suppose that Bushido spirit is only spread out through the first line. Chinese squads, at least those not supplied by the US, begin as three firepower. Finally, Italian first line rifle squads start out as three firepower. I'll leave it to you why old men and young boys of the Volksturm have a better firepower than first line Japanese, Chinese and Italian squads, but there you go.

So, unfortunately, there is not a lot of variance among squad firepower factors. Virtually all first line rifle squads are 4 FP and all SMG squads are 5 FP (increasing to 6 when elite.) The only doctrine included is the US being up-gunned. Training, experience and national characteristics are irrelevant in terms of firepower in ASL. Probably, we would expect more of a variation in this, but the founding fathers clearly believed that different types of squads could deal out roughly the same amount of firepower, just at different ranges.

Range

As far as range, there is a far greater variety of ranges in ASL than of firepower factors. However, while WWII rifles did have a variation in range, the Army did a study in 1959 that showed that rifles in WWII were not so much limited by their effective range but by visibility considerations. As a result, riflemen generally only used their weapons with any degree of effectiveness at less than 200m (5 hexes in ASL terms.) Only in very rare cases were rifles fired beyond 300m. This study was declassified in 1971. This was a duplication of a British study of WWII troops with an addition of US troops in Korea, which is now relevant to ASL.

This seems to comport with ASL, where I rarely take shots of over 7 or 8 hexes. Given the limitations of mapboards, I think few players do. Further, at least with respect to rifles, point blank fire and fire at two hexes doesn't matter very much and fire up to five hexes drops off very rapidly. However, unlike ASL and on a rifle range, where effectiveness of rifle fire is linear and fairly independent of range, in combat it tends to be exponentially less effective at longer ranges until about 250m (six hexes) where it becomes generally ineffective. Groups of soldiers firing at the same time accentuate this effect.

Submachine guns fire at shorter ranges and give up accuracy for putting rounds on target. Firepower varies widely between SMG groups, from 5 for first line Red Army and elite German SMG units to 8 for specialist Finn and German Engineer units. Explaining away these differences is not simple, as German Engineers were notoriously short of trained personnel. While they may have had extra hand held explosives, these are already factored into the game with demolition charges. Meanwhile, their MP-40 SMG's were drastically inferior to a Soviet PPSk-41 which had a larger magazine and a greater rate of fire. It did have a larger projectile with greater stopping power. The British STEN gun is widely considered the most defective SMG of the war, but in ASL has equal firepower and twice the range. The American 747 represents squad with extra Thompsons—a good SMG with brutal stopping power, but the extra point is often wasted unless you are using the IIFT.

Let's look at the effect of range in ASL. If we take a typical unit with 4FP and look at what this means over their range, tripling it for TPBF, doubling it for PBF and halving it for long range, we get a total FP number.

If we graph this, we can see that there is a linear relationship between range and total firepower.

And this is data that Posey uses when analyzing firepower of various nationalities. Total firepower as a measurement of firepower and range. But it's not quite right. Because the effect of range is not linear. If we think of a unit in the center of a desert board, a unit with more range is going to cover more hexes. A unit with a range of two covers his own hex, all adjacent hexes (6) and all hexes with two hexes (12). As the range gets longer, the total number of hexes grows by an additional 6 potential target hexes by each factor of range. Now, true, on most boards there will be some blocking terrain. And the greater the range, the greater the potential for blocking terrain. But it still means that the potential for a LOS to sneak through and cover a hex is greater the larger your range. And there ARE open areas where this becomes a factor. If we graph total firepower as a total possible area covered, we can see that it is not linear:

And while the graph looks close to linear, keep in mind that the y axis is much, much larger numbers. Measuring range as only a line (graph 1) means that a unit with a range of 2 has a little more than half the potential firepower of a unit with a range of 6. However, the total potential range of a unit with a range of 6 is more than six times the potential of a unit with 2 when looking at the total number of hexes covered.

I want to stress that this is mitigated by the likelihood that LOS is blocked, but we are talking about a unit's potential here. This is especially problematic given the findings of the Army study which suggests that fire is rarely even attempted at ranges of five hexes. There is just no way that ASL range numbers are anywhere close to correct.

Another important consideration is ammunition supply. Units are likely to reduce their range as ammunition supply dwindles in order to make every shot count. It is tedious to keep track of how many times a unit fires and I'm not suggesting anything like that. But units do start out under ammunition shortage and many, many trees have given their lives for historical battle rules and SSR's to mimic effects of units under low ammo. These effects do, generally, go right at the effects I mention, because unit substitution does (generally) decrease range (as well as morale.)

Finally, it makes sense to point out the doctrinal effects of range. Units being directed by a leader are simply more likely to fire their weapons. It is natural that inexperienced troops would be reluctant to fire and draw attention to themselves. However, when presented with an attack at close quarters, they will fire in self-defense. It seems probable that only leader direction would make a unit attack a potential hornet's nest.

Morale

Morale comes in three flavors: 8, 7 and 6. Throwing in broken side morale, it goes from 4 to 9. We tend to consider 8 as an elite morale, 7 as normal and 6 as a conscript or third line morale. The lone exceptions are the Americans (with a 6 morale) and the Finns (with an 8.) I think the logic in both is flawed.

Here, national distinctions make up the most important rationale for assigning a morale to a particular unit. Italians, as everyone knows, were horrible soldiers and surrender as soon as any enemy pokes their head up to take the surrender. Except they weren't. They were victims of a lot of very bad economic systemic, strategic and operational decisions. Until they were forced into a conscription scenario, their army was professional and effective (aside from a largely worthless armored vehicle park.)

The original argument for the Americans having a 6 morale was, as I remember, that Rommel thought that no soldiers were worse in their first battle, but had improved so much by their second. Certainly, there is a very weak justification that Americans, unlike other armies, were not on home court at any time in the war. But the reality is that in game terms, with a 6 FP, American squads get very tough indeed if you give them a 6 morale.

Likewise, from the very beginning, the Finns have been adopted by many ASL players and imbued with various superpowers (including an 8 morale and the ability to self-rally) that has become difficult, if not impossible, to roll back without instigating a backlash.

Nationality distinctions for morale differences aren't really very good justifications. What is not considered in morale is tactical situation. Crossing an open field can improve your morale in certain, rather narrow situations. Being on a beach does make you fanatic, but one might question whether that is even enough. With literally no where to go, such as the case on Omaha beach, is an increase in a 666 squad by one point of morale enough?

Squads do go berserk (10 ML) and fanatic (+1 ML) as a way to randomly increase morale. Dare Death sort of allows a way to control this in an odd way to assign a superpower to Chinese squads. Units can also declare a Human Wave, which allows a (+1 ML) and extra movement—if you can wrangle the proper conditions to allow it.

Broken side morale is also an important issue in ASL. Generally, the lower the quality of the unit, the more likely that the broken side morale is lower than the front side. This is true of half squads and green units. The exceptions are the Americans, who have a broken side morale of 8 (going down to 7 for lower quality units.) Also, the SS, which get a +1 morale.

The US broken side morale is a game mechanic. Given their 6 unbroken morale, they will likely not come back if their broken side morale is the same. The broken side morale of 8 gives them a reasonable chance to come back even if DM. This gives Americans a kind of unique characteristic of break and rally. Whether or not this is a genuine characteristic of the US military in WWII is somewhat irrelevant.

The broken side morale of the SS gives them an even superior possibility of coming back under DM, making them extremely difficult to dig out of stone buildings. I even have an opponent who will break an SS unit, rout him with a leader and gain an extra movement phase by rallying in the next turn (if done right, you can even get two chances to rally.) The argument allowing a higher broken side morale for the SS is two fold. First, they are, after all, supermen—and any argument to the contrary is politicizing the game. Second, at least on the Eastern Front, they expected (and got) no quarter.

I'll leave the first argument alone. But if units that expect no quarter get a higher broken side morale get an extra point of morale, why don't the Red Army troops get the same thing? Virtually none of the Red Army POW's came back from German captivity and those that did received no hero's welcome when they returned to the Red Army. In fact, why don't ALL units subject to no quarter not receive an increase in their broken side morale? Especially partisans, who had absolutely no hope of anything short of a quick death if they surrendered. What about the Charlemagne Division, that were going to be killed whether they fell to the Russians or the Americans who would turn them in to the new French government? In fact, assigning an increased broken side morale to the SS is probably justified, but not for these reasons. It is because they were fanatical Nazis, often raised from childhood on a steady diet of hate and nationalism that made them willing to die for the fatherland. This, however, is not a popular argument to make.

Conclusions

In order to create an interesting game atmosphere, the game designers wanted variety. There are, really, three dimensions to this variety. First, there are national distinctions. Second, there are unit quality distinctions. Finally, we can distinguish between rifle units and units with more automatic weapons.

National distinctions can be seen as real differences between equipment and training. We can also throw in doctrine and to some degree the effects of love of country and trust in leadership. Perhaps certain aspects of national characteristics show up in the assignment of a unit's statistics. Whether or not the countries have a professional military (like the UK) or have good technical knowledge.

However, national distinctions can be unfair. Italians, Japanese and Chinese all are disadvantaged by what can be considered stereotypical observations about their effectiveness. Marketing plays a role in the superior abilities of American and UK units.

I am very dubious about these national effects. If you are a third party producer and you are going to come out with a new type unit, I would tell everyone to start with a 447 squad and develop justifications for each change you want to make. Run these past another knowledgeable player(s) (and especially outside your playtest/publishing group) to prevent it from becoming a capricious, subjective effect. I think there must be very strong justifications to allow changes to be made from a national distinction standpoint.

Unit quality distinctions are far more important with regard to the numbers on the counters. When a unit has fewer experienced members they are less likely to produce firepower, apply it at longer ranges and hang around in bad situations. Elite, on the other hand, means that you've got more motivated troops that are more heavily invested in the regime. They are likely to have the newest, best equipment and the crème of the replacements.

Finally, and here ASL does a very good job, there are good distinctions made between rifle units and submachine gun units. This is accentuated by the assault fire rule. This grouping of automatic weapons such as Thompsons and BARs is what justifies the high US firepower. On the other hand, the Italian Beretfa SMG was a very good weapon and is not represented at all in ASL. The Folgore division used this weapon and yet has no assault fire ability nor an increased firepower. Except in the Le Franc Tireur redesign of the Italian OOB, the Beretta does not impart the normal benefits of SMG's.

While it is clear we cannot go back to the start with regard to production of counters. We'll work with what we have. This means, that we have to live with a certain unrealistic element in the countermix. People are not orcs, elves and dwarves, so distinctions between nationalities is a game device rather than a means to replicate historical values. ASL is a game and not a military reenactment.

However, as new counters are developed we need to be true to the original game design. This is my principle argument with PTO counters. Things changed rather drastically with the concept of step reduction. Then, the USMC had to be beefed up to contend with those effects. I'll admit I did not buy the Forgotten War and have no intention of playing these scenarios, so I can't comment on the new counters with these. However, while the ASL countermix is arguably rounded out completely, third party producers don't necessarily see it that way.

LFT has done a remake of Italians and Romanians. I think this is done rather well. Bounding Fire Productions have added a second line Red Army squad. In all of these cases, I'd say these are well done. I was given a set of Soldiers of the Negus, but not comment on anything, other than the tank flipping superpower that provides some comedy relief. No, I have not played any of these scenarios.

You know what third party stuff you like and you will make decisions based on that. However, keep in mind the ideas I have raised here as you evaluate their decisions on counter values.

1Do people still use “grognard” anymore? It is French for “grumbler” and it is a name that was attached to the Republican Old Guard during the Napoleonic Wars because they had earned the right to complain about their conditions. ASL players adopted it when the Internet first became available to describe people who had been playing for a long time.