How do you use your casualty miniatures?

[traveller]

I have quite a few casualty miniatures in the leadpile but apart from dioramas, how do you use them in gameplay? None of the rulesets I use have any dedicated use for casualty miniatures as far as I have seen...

[fastolfrus]

Peter Pig rules use casualties as morale markers etc. in quite a few rule sets

Sharp Practice uses "shock" markers, some players use casualties rather than plastic tokens.

League of Augsburg uses casualty markers as most figures are based in groups.

[Plynkes]

Most of the rules I use need some kind of marker to denote changing morale status. That's what I like to use them for.

Both myself and my most frequent gaming partner (my nephew) are also rather fond of leaving such figures on the table in places where decisive combats have occurred, or where units have been routed or wiped out, leaving a kind of visual record of the battle's events. You do have to be careful not to get them mixed up with the ones being used as morale markers for nearby units, mind, and also not fall for the temptation of marching your units away and leaving their status markers behind as battlefield scenery.

I have a friend who used to do that sort of thing quite a bit. He would always plead absent-mindedness, but we always suspected that some low cunning was behind it.

[v_lazy_dragon]

American Uncivil War used them in a similar way to Plynkes- you plopped one down each time a took casualties; and these had an effect on later morale tests

[armchairgeneral]

I use them simply to show casualties received for units that are multi-based in fours/sixes.

[Captain Blood]

As ‘daunted’ markers for Never Mind The Bill Hooks 

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=40936.1860

[Polkovnik]

For any game where hits, pins, shock, etc needs to be recorded, you can put a casualty figure on a base with a dice frame for a small six sided dice, and the number on the dice shows the number of hits the unit has taken. This is what I plan to do for my WW2 armies for Bolt Action / Chain of Command.

[Elbows]

The only game I use them in is my old west game, and mainly for looks.  There is a function where a character can be revived - so having a place marker for them doesn't hurt.

[Wyrmalla]

In the past I hardly used them. However following playing a zombie game where the "dead" zombies were placed on their side after being shot, the look of all the dead figures on the board was a nice feature. They charted how the game had progressed and gave more a scale of things - instead of a game ending with just a handfull of models left and all there being to show for it with the dozens of casualties being some figures sitting back in the box.

Nowadays in the military style games we play, whenever a soldier is killed its replaced by a generic casualty of the same Nation. So by the end of a game there winds up being clumps of dead figures all over.

To me it seems a bit more realistic instead of making the board a blank slate. The same goes for tanks and vehicles. I dislike removing destroyed vehicles, and instead leave them as they are or add some smoke to them to show their state.

Casualties aren't a thing which effect games on a mechanics level (apart from maybe zombies). It takes some effort to have enough for even one game of course, and the options out there for even common Nationalities out there aren't great. Let alone for post-WWII settings. So I can see why most don't bother with them. But if you're into the presentation side of games I'd say they're a fantastic element, and wish I'd see more at show games - rather than models just being placed on their sides.

[SteveBurt]

I use them to show disorder/shock/fatigue. Sometimes multiple figures, or sometimes I blu-tak a casualty to the top of one of the Warbases 1-12 dials.

[Codsticker]

I use them to show disorder/shock/fatigue. Sometimes multiple figures, or sometimes I blu-tak a casualty to the top of one of the Warbases 1-12 dials.

Pretty much how mine are used. In Pike and Shotte the prone casualties are Stamina markers and standing ones represent Disorder  or mark Wavering units in Pikeman's Lament.

[Jemima Fawr]

Like others, I use them as disorder and rout markers (based on coins with different coloured edges to define either state), as well as casualty markers in lieu of figure removal.  When I was 'hired help' with AB Figures I painted hundreds and hundreds of them simply as 'table decoration' to be placed on the table to show where casualties had been suffered (it was their money...).  When we did a photo-shoot for Wargames Illustrated (the Battle of Eggmuhl 1809), someone actually wrote to the magazine to complain about all the bodies.  So, when we did the next photo-shoot (Auerstadt 1806) we used twice as many casualties...   

We even set up a photo of Sharpe standing atop a mound of dead Frenchmen, with a 'crossed dead frenchmen' motif, though that photo sadly never made it into the magazine.

[traveller]

Thanks all for your comments and input! Lots of good advice, now I just need to throw some paint on the poor buggers 

[has.been]

As well as a lot of the above, Rebels & Patriots have 4 levels of moral for units,
OK, (nothing required)
Shaken (We use a chicken on a penny base)
Broken (We replace the chicken with a wounded figure)
Fled (nothing required).

Also
AK47 uses bases of dead. If your unit is near these it reduces morale.
Games against Vodkafan have had the table littered with piles of dead.

[traveller]

As well as a lot of the above, Rebels & Patriots have 4 levels of moral for units,
OK, (nothing required)
Shaken (We use a chicken on a penny base)
Broken (We replace the chicken with a wounded figure)
Fled (nothing required).

Also
AK47 uses bases of dead. If your unit is near these it reduces morale.
Games against Vodkafan have had the table littered with piles of dead.

Chickens!