Units in Faction Games

I’ve seen two main ways of handling units in high-concept strategy games - as squads and as unit types. I have originally addressed this in FFR: A Year Later, but I figured a closer look at both of those is in order.

Squads

This was used in Braunstein, the Bloom (its archive Discord server available here) and is commonly used in wargaming at various levels of complexity (Kriegsspiel, Warhammer, etc.)

In a squad-based system, each group of soldiers or specialists available to you is its own squad. Every squad can be described separately via equipment, tags, stats, or what have you. What differs it from a unit-type system, is that you can and will have multiple squads of the same unit type.

Let’s give an example.

I have 3 squads of Rats, they are all the same unit type - Basic Rat. All Rats are quick, small, crafty and cowardly.

Squad 1 is Rank II and armed with laser rifles.

Squad 2 is Rank I and armed with torches and pitchforks.

Squad 3 is Rank III, armed with blackpowder matchlocks and driving a landship.

The way the squads are described (stats, equipment, tags), I know roughly what they’re capable of. I can give each squad a different task. Heroes are also easily modelled here as their own Squads. I could also assign more complicated stats to them (speed, damage, etc.)

Squad-based systems usually allow you to create new squads, or to modify the squads you already have (give them different equipment, train new tags or increase stats).

Advantages of Squad system

- Easily comparable in skirmishes.

The referee can easily compare squads. For example, at a glance I can see that Squad 2 is going to lose to either of the other two squads in open engagement. The same is true for the player, so they can more reliably gauge their unit strength.

- Detail in orders, more happening

Because the player can give out more orders than in a Unit Type system, more could be happening in a given turn. An engaged player can interact with many elements of the setting and with multiple other players’ plans at once.

- Simple damage tracking

Unlike in a Unit Type system, here you can have destroyed/wounded squads. There’s no vagueness or additional means of tracking squad health needed. Furthermore, wargames can track individual models.

- Detail in squads

Squad-based systems are particularly good at modelling warfare. Here every squad can be detailed on its own, and you can have great variety within a seemingly same-y army, with different equipment, vehicles, special characters attached to a squad, and more.

Disadvantages of Squad System

- Large information load on player and referee

The player is forced to keep track of every single squad, its tags/equipment/stats, where it is and what it’s doing. The referee must keep track of all this also, on top of ensuring the player didn’t make any errors in changing any of the values. 

If you have 5 or so squads or your squads can’t change during gameplay, this isn’t as intensive, but if you can produce new squads, the information load grows exponentially. Something like an excel sheet is recommended.

- Required engagement

Because of the above, a game using a squad system is more difficult for beginners to engage with. It requires more time to write out orders for each player and far more time to resolve them for the referee. It requires a dedicated player base and an experienced referee with plenty of spare time, capable of handling all this.

- Balancing

While comparing squads in skirmishes with static squad count and equipment is simpler in this system, the same can’t be said if you can produce new squads or modify existing ones. How do you balance a faction that has very strong starting squads but can produce very little (or none), compared to one that has very weak starting squads but can produce a lot of squads and equipment over the course of the game?

- No modelled resources

You may have to plug in either a one-use-asset system, where assets are treated similarly to units, but are more difficult to produce (Death Dream of the Infinite) or a separate Token system (Bloom) if you want to model things like economy, being able to use facilities or artefacts and the like.

Unit Type (Token system/FFR)

Every FFR game besides Bloom used the Unit Type/Token system (list can be found on the FFR Discord server)

In this system you have only unit types, characterised by their equipment, abilities, tags, stats or whatnot. 

Soldiers - army, armed with machine guns, kevlar-lined armour, using a handful of IFVs with heavy machine guns

Technicians - group, no armour, basic handguns, can fix equipment and vehicles, can set up fortifications

You don’t track individual squads, but rather use Tokens (which you usually get 2-4 per turn) to declare which unit types are engaged where. Say, you declare “I’m using 2 Tokens to have my Soldiers attack the enemy base”. You can use multiple unit types for the same action.

Advantages of a Unit-Type/Token system

- Easier to Play and Parse

With less major actions per week (2-3 on average, up to 6) the information load on both referee and player is far smaller. This also enables busier or less experienced players to engage with the game, making it easier to pick up and run.

- Modelled Economy

Tokens immediately allow you to model a faction’s size and economy. Assets (such as units) in basic FFR systems each allow you to do different things that you spend Tokens on. This allows you for example to say “I will spend 2 Tokens on research and only 1 on troop movement”, which helps determine your priorities and resolve a vast array of actions, modelling not just warfare but also other aspects of statesmanship.

- Roleplay, Diplomacy and Decisions focus

FFR games are chiefly not wargames, and the Token system consciously takes complexity and fidelity of simulation away from warfare to give importance to other matters, like making policy decisions, management of information, diplomacy, economy and more. Those aspects can obviously be present in squad-based systems, but at a cost of more complexity.

Disadvantages of Unit-Type/Token system

- Less Actions

I write this with a grain of salt. Many standard FFR games have been so fast-paced and intense that many players, including me, had trouble keeping up. Nevertheless, on paper you can do way more in a squad-based system.

- Tracking Health

You generally won’t disable a whole unit type if a 1-Token group has been wiped out, hence why more involved health-tracking systems may have to be used. For example, enabling a unit type to be used in 3 Tokens’ worth of engagements, or 1-2 if wounded.

- Less Unit Fidelity

It’s rather inevitable that the technicalities of what you can do with your army - equipment, new tags, etc. will suffer a bit in this system. Making changes to your entire unit type, or producing new ones is generally more difficult.

- Oversimplifying Combat Resolution

Are two unit types inherently better than one, even if you spend just 1 Token on the engagement? Maybe the amount of unit types you can engage is determined by the amount of Tokens spent? Does keeping your troops in an area cost Tokens? These and more are the kinds of questions a referee should answer themselves before running the game.

In practice, this has rarely ever been an issue. Very often combat is rarely ever just “2 tokens of unit A beat up 2 tokens of unit B” and usually more narrative, with varied goals and unit movements. A very clear resolution often shows itself just by carefully reading the orders that each player gives.

Conclusions and Afterword

I will preface this by saying these are my views and advice based on my experiences, and others may have different take on this.

Every time you increase complexity and simulation fidelity, you sacrifice something else. High-fidelity squad systems suffer in terms of economy and statesmanship. If you add mechanics for economy, your game becomes more complex and difficult to run. Therefore, ask yourself what you want to run and why.

Personally, I haven’t really seen a game (in the FFR sphere) particularly enhanced by a squad-based system, and I’ve seen games bogged down by it. It offers a false sense of simulationism and balance that falls apart under pressure. This is largely because many scenarios have their own systems, and the first playthrough of it (often the only one) ends up its playtest. Many referees also open up with a “I can absolutely take increased workload” and then buckle under it 3-4 turns in.

I strongly suggest, both for up-and-coming referees and for more experienced ones, to use the Token/Unit Type system. It’s easy to run and easy to play. The theoretical apprehensions about its combat resolution are in practice rather easily resolved and rarely ever relevant due to the clarity of the picture painted by actual player orders. It really helps make your game about something more than moving miniatures across a map.

Conversely, once you’ve run a couple of games, have a group that chiefly knows what they’re doing, and are confident in your skill as a faction game referee, the Squad system can be neat to try.