Part 72: Units

Rules: Units

Counters within GTS tend to be quite information dense, but they aren't too difficult to parse once you get used to them, and that (mostly) the information is grouped together in some sort of way. Apart from the numbers themselves, there are other important factors when considering a unit, which are the colour of the counter, which usually determines which Division it is part of, which is important for the purposes of Divisional Activations:


_{German and Allied units used in Crete.}

For the Germans, we have grey units, representing the 5th Gebirgs Division, and light blue units, representing the 7th Flieger Division. For the Allies, light tan is the 2nd New Zealand Division, while dark brown is CREFORCE, which in actuality is a rather motley assortment of units rather than a full-fledged division. Of importance is also the colour present within the unit designation at the bottom, as this affects Formation Activations, each colour usually representing a different regiment (for example, the 7th Flieger Division unit above is from the Luftlander Sturm Regiment, the largest regiment in the division and the one that was responsible for capturing Maleme airport. Again, not exactly colour-blind friendly. If the Formation Designation is white or black, those are termed as independant units.

Not so importantly, the game uses different unit representation for the different sides, so the Allies use the standard NATO symbol, while the Germans use their own weird set of symbols.


_{I hope you like numbers.}

For tank units, which there are a few in this game, a small pictoral representation of the tank is used instead, to make it stand out amongst the infantry. Tanks, artillery or infantry are all represented in the same way, and all function, for the purposes of the game, in extremely similar way, although the implications of their stats means that they will be used in very different contexts.

Let's explain some of the stats that are present on the units. For all stats (apart from one exception), higher is better.
- Fire Rating: how good your unit is at firing their main weapons. Crucially, what is important is both the value of this, as well as the colour of the box it is within. The colour represents different types of weapons, from small arms, dual purpose guns, indirect HE artillery, mortars and many more. Thankfully, there aren't many exceptions in terms of rules, with the main difference being how effective they are against armoured and unarmoured targets.
- Fire Range: how far in terms of hexes the unit can shoot with its fire rating. This also affects the fire zone of the unit (explained earlier). If this value is missing, the unit can only fire to an adjacent hex.
- Assault Rating: how good the unit is at firing during an assault. Most units can fire twice in an assault, once with their Fire Rating and once with their Assault Rating.
- Air Defence: Not used in Crete.
- Defence Rating: How well your unit stands to enemy firepower. Lower ratings are better, and this value can go negative. Also important if the value is in a black box (armoured defence) or white box (unarmoured defence).
- Steps: The health of the unit. Usually ranges from 2 steps to 0 steps. Zero step units are especially vulnerable to assaults. Units can lose steps and if they run out of steps, they are usually eliminated.
- Troop Quality: How good your unit is terms of troop quality. Important for initiating assaults, rallying, preventing suppression and not surrendering to charges, amonst other rolls.
- Movement Allowance: how far your unit can move, depending on terrain. White numbers represent foot movement, red represents tracked movement, and black is wheeled movement. Movement can also be "No", in which case the unit can't move unless it has other means of movement, or "*", which means it can only move one hex, and only if it passes a troop quality check.

Most of the times when a unit takes a step loss, you flip it over to its 1-step side. Some units, however, have organic transports on their reverse side, and thus require use of step loss counters.

The other common type of unit in the game are leaders:


_{Not a leader from this game, mind you.}

Leaders, along with having divisional/formation designation like units, have Command Range and Attachment Rating. The former tells you how far the Command Range of the leader is: this is important because a unit for his particular formation/division that is out of the leader's command range has some penalties associated with them, and will not be able to spend Command Points in most cases, so keeping your formations tightly around your leader is very important. The attachment rating tells you the limit of how many independant units can be attached to the leader and activated as part of a Formation Activation. White independant units do not cost an attachment point, but black independants do. As well as that, it is also a limit to how many Artillery Parks the leader is in radio contact with.