I was hoping the new version would clarify a question I had about suppression, A quick perusal of the rules and no clarification (that I could find).

I have noticed there are only 2 Intimdating weapons now, Heavy Sniper rifles and Flamethrowers (no more MGs with 3+ Fire dice or tank main guns), so suppression is less likely to come up.

Can a unit be suppreesed and pinned at the same time?

Situation: A suppressed unit is fired upon and takes a casualty and fails its morale check.

Is it now both suppressed and pinned or does the pin take precedence and overides the suppression?

Rich

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Hannibal's Wargaming Blog

Page 44 and carrying into page 45. Still the unmodified FP of 3d or more.

The later. Pinned takes precedence over suppression.

Sorry for short answers. I think the dog and kids are having a cage match in the next room and I'd better go stop it!

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Rich,
I am in a similar position to you of learning the rules and have spotted another phrase on this subject that is also pertinent to your question. Top of second column on page 41 - "Weapon Teams or units equipped with LMGs, GPMGs, MMGs, or AGLs do not suffer the -2 Firepower penalty and are always considered to be using Suppression Fire". This adds to your list of weapons capable of giving suppression fire but the important thing is that they are operated by teams and not individuals.
Ralph

Ralph

What I read from that rule is:

You fire with the weapons team/unit and you dont cause casualties. As these weapons always fire suppression fire, the unit wil still have to make a morale check to avoid being suppressed. Failure means they are suppressed not pinned.
This now means that they suffer the downward die shift for the rest of that turn, but another suppression test doesnt force a fallback.
This is I believe is to represent that these weapons and teams put down a hail of fire. They might not hit but they will cause you to put your heads down.

I read it slightly differently from you Blackmamba. My interpretation would be that teams armed with these weapons are always deemed to be giving suppression fire, whether or not the weapon has an unmodified firepower of 3D. They do not have to sacrifice the -2D firepower that an ordinary infantry unit armed with automatic rifles say would have to in order to give suppressing fire. If on firing they score any hits (4+ dice rolls) the suppressing fire will have effect and depending on the target units confidence level may cause a morale check. This happens regardless of whether the hit is saved or not by the target units defense roll. If the firing units dice roll also manages to cause casualties then the target unit must roll for morale for that reason and this happens regardless of the units confidence level. Then, following on from that morale check, if the unit gets a pinned result that takes precedence over the suppressed result. Therefore it is possible for suppressing fire to result in casualties. Two consecutive suppressed results in the same turn do not matter, but two consecutive pinned results in the same turn will cause the unit to pull back.
Again I hope I have got this right but may be misreading the rules.
Ralph

Ralph what i'm trying to say is that,

a units that recieves suppression fire with at least 1 hit (4+) on the FP dice, then:

1) the unit makes all its saves resulting in no casualties- then the unit must still make a morale check to avoid becoming suppressed (depending on confidence)

2) the unit failes 1 or more saves, then casulaties are taken and the unit must make a morale check to avoid being pinned.

I read it that they then dont have to take another morale check to see if they are also suppressed.

Interesting because either of us might be right. I would say that it boils down to whether a morale check for suppression is the same or different to a morale check for pinned. On page 55 it says that "If multiple instances of the same type of Morale Check points occur at once, only one Morale Check is made for all of them". As morale checks for suppression are dependent on unit confidence and are triggered by withering fire, whereas morale checks for pinned are not dependent on unit confidence and are triggered by the actuality of casualties I would argue that they are two different checks. Also morale checks should happen immediately and the calculation of casualties is a marginally later process to the outbreak of firing. Having been suppressed a unit would then have to take a second morale check for pinning if it received casualties and do so at a negative die shift. Then if it becomes pinned the effects take precedence over the suppressed result.

My interpretation would mean that units are more fragile under suppression fire, but as long as both players interpret the rules in the same fashion then all well and good. I wonder what the official version is?

Suppression fire works like so:

A non-weapon team/non-Intimidating Weapon can make a Suppression Fire attack at -2FP dice. As long as at least one of the units FP dice come up a 4+, Suppression can occur even if no casualties result.

A weapon Team/Intimidating weapon works the same as above, but they do not suffer the -2FP dice penalty.

If a unit takes a casualty from Suppression Fire, make a Morale Check. If the unit fails the Check it is Pinned and Suppression is moot (Pinned takes precedent over Suppressed). If the unit passes the Morale Check for the casualty, it still must check to see if it is Suppressed. Make a second Morale Check. Failure indicates Suppression.

Intimidating Weapons ALWAYS have a chance to Suppress, regardless of the target unit's Confidence.

Non-Weapon Team/and Weapon Team Suppression attempts are modified by the target unit's confidence.

Low Confidence target units make Suppression checks with a -1 Die Shift to Morale.

Confident target units must make a Suppression check if the attack against them has a modified FP of 3+ (attacks of 2D or less just aren't enough volume of fire to suppress).

High Confident units are only suppressed by Intimidating Weapons (weapons with an unmodified FP of 3+ or which are specifically identified as Intimidating.

Hope this helps clear things up!

Shawn.

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Shawn,
Thanks for the clarification. When you come to republish these rules this might be one area that could stand re-editing as the wording on page 41 certainly reads as though a suppression check should always come before a pinned check. It does indeed say that a unit may suppress its target even if no casualties are caused, but there is a line to say "The firing player's Suppression roll must include at least one die roll of 4+ to succeed however". If the casualty check goes before the suppression check then this statement is superfluous as a roll of 4+ must have occurred to cause the casualty in the first place. The line only makes sense if the suppression check happens first.

I hope this doesn't sound picky as I think you have produced one of the best sets of wargaming rules I have ever played. It's just that as with any new set of rules the meaning of the wording does not always reflect the author's intention and this only becomes apparent through instances such as this.

Ralph

I guess I should not have added the comment on intimidating weapons as it seems to have muddied the question I was actually asking.

A unit is suppressed and is fired upon LATER by a different unit, it takes a casualty and fails the Morale check.

Is it now:

A: Pinned and Supprerssed.
OR
B: Pinned.

If B and a unit has multiple suppression does the one pin wipe away all suppression.



Doh, that will teach me to rely on the index to look things up, it completely misses that reference to intimidating weapons.

Rich

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Hannibal's Wargaming Blog

If they're Pinned, they're Pinned. Suppression isn't "wiped away" by being Pinned - being Pinned is worse than being Suppressed, so it takes precedent. A second Pinned result will cause a unit to Fall Back. Multiple Suppressions don't do anything.

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Shawn Carpenter
Game Designer, Ambush Alley Games

"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

I think i see my problem.

I was thinking the effects stacked i.e. A unit that is both pinned and supressed took a -1 die shift for being Suppressed and another -1 die shift for being pinned, or a unit suffering from multiple suppression suffered a -1 die shift for EACH Suppression failure.

Rich

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Hannibal's Wargaming Blog

Shawn to be fair the book does say high confidence units canot be supressed ....we must have missed that...The Table Labled Suppresion fire results on Page 41...we need to add that to the errata....Mikey

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" If a unit takes a casualty from Suppression Fire, make a Morale Check. If the unit fails the Check it is Pinned and Suppression is moot (Pinned takes precedent over Suppressed). If the unit passes the Morale Check for the casualty, it still must check to see if it is Suppressed. Make a second Morale Check. Failure indicates Suppression."

Shawn

Thankyou for this clarification.

It make perfect sense to me. This means that this check has to made every time a low confident or confident unit comes under fire from say a mg team (mg42 team WW2). Being fired upon by a hail of fire is enough to make anyone keep their heads down.

You got it! That's the idea behind it - in fact, we were thinking specifically of the MG-42 when we wrote this rule!

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Shawn Carpenter
Game Designer, Ambush Alley Games

"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."