The beginner guide states that minions share a group wound threshold, and that you take any wounds suffered from the threshold total, removing one minion for every 5 wounds suffered from the total threshold.

However say you have your minions spread out at different range bands, and the PC's fire at different minions. PC1 fire and does 3 damage(after soak) to minion A, while PC2 fires and does 2 damage to minion B. Two minions were hit, totallying 5 damage between the two, and one is supposed to die? Doesn't seem to make any sense, it hardly seems plausible that the first trooper is standing after taking 3 wounds, but the second one drops at only 2.

How are other people handling this? Seems more logical to just track wounds seperatly for each tooper minion.

I've been running minions is squads as that makes the most sense to me. Groups like the Stormtroopers would be working in squads anyway as a disciplined military force. That's the easiest way to keep it straight imo.

Just keep minon groups engaged with eachother. They move as a unit together, fire at the same target together, and die … together

If they aren't together, then they aren't a minion group. That means their Proficiency drops, but now they are able to engage targets of their own choosing (rather than making a group attack against a single target). Nothing in the rules requires a minion group to stay as one group throughout a whole encounter. So, feel free to break the group up (into more groups of fewer guys) as needed.

One more question, as this i was unsure regarding this. A minion group of 3 troopers. They all attack the same target, as you have pointed out. Does that mean a 3 minion squad shoots 3 times at the same target, or only once, with upgraded proficency?

As a group, they make one attack, but being a group improves their skill, so they get more Ability dice upgraded to Proficiency dice.

In my opinion there is an error in the rulebook with regard to the minion group wound threshold.

The general rule is: When a character's total wounds exceeds his wound threshold, the character is defeated (see Rulebook p. 19).

So, a single Minion with a wound threshold of 5 is defeated when suffering a total wounds of at least 6.

The rule for minions fighting as a group are (see Rulebook p. 44): "For example, a unit of five Minions (each with five wounds individually) might have a pool of 25 wounds. For every five wounds inflicted upon the unit, one member of the unit would be eliminated."

I think, that's not true. It has to be: "For every six wounds inflicted upon the unit, one member of the unit would be elimanted." Otherwise the rule on p. 19 is contradicted.

There is the same error with Critical Injuries (see Rulebook p. 45): "If a group of minions suffers a Critical Injury , it suffers one minion's worth of wounds." That's not correct too. The rule should be: "…, it suffers one minion's worth of wounds plus 1."

By the way, in the Adventure Book on p. 22 there is the correct ruling: "For example, when the stormtrooper group passes 5 wounds, one stormtrooper is defeated. When the total wounds suffered exceeds 10, the second stormtrooper is defeated. When the total wounds suffered exceeds 15, then the third and final stormtrooper is defeated."

So, is this an error in the Rulebook?

I'm pretty much positive the intention is to have minions (and anyone really) drop when their wounds equal their threshold. Every example I've seen uses it that way, and tracking wounds for every nameless mook to -1 instead of 0 is silly. Using the term "exceeds" was a bad choice on the part of the writer.

The offical answer from FFG's Chris Gerber to my question is:

Björn,

The text on page 44 of the rulebook should read:

For example, a unit of five Minions (each with five wounds individually) might have a pool of 25 wounds. When the total wounds the unit suffers exceeds 5 wounds, one member of the unit would be eliminated.

The Critical Injury text on page 45 is correct. Remember, as stated on page 15 of the Rulebook, "An attack may also generate a Critical Injury if the target suffers at least 1 wound." This means that an attack that generates a Critical Injury will eliminate at least one minion in the group because the minion group will suffer one minion's worth of wounds plus at least 1.

Enjoy the Game!

Chris Gerber

Then I asked two further questions:

Hi Chris!

Thanks for the answer.

I have two further questions.

(1) The enemies of the five minions (with a wound threshold of 5 each) have to inflict 30 wounds to the minion group to eliminate all five minions. Am I right? That is 6 wounds for the first minion, 6 wounds for the second minion, 6 wounds for the third minion, 6 wounds for the fourth minion and 6 wounds for the fifth minion, for a total of 5 x 6 = 30 wounds. Does the "pool of 25 wounds" make any sense? For what is it good for?

(2) If an enemy inflicts a critical injury (due to a triumph) and a total of 6 wounds to the five unharmed minions (with a wound threshold of 5 each), then two minions will be eliminated. Am I right? That is one minion for the critical injury and another one for the 6 wounds. The total wounds of the minion group are 11 (that is 5 wounds for the critical injury plus the 6 wounds). But normally 11 wounds are not enough to kill two minions. You need 12 wounds to kill two of the minions. The result of such an attack has to be at least 12 total wounds. So, it cannot be right that a critical injury counts as one minion's worth of wounds.

Regards

Björn

The answers are:

Björn,

1) If the minions (each with a wound threshold of 5) are in a group, than one minion is defeated each time the group's total wounds exceeds a multiple of 5. When the total wounds suffered exceeds 5, the first minion is defeated. When the total wounds suffered exceeds 10, the second minion is defeated. And so on - until the total wounds suffered exceeds 25, at which point the final minion in the group is defeated.

2) As stated above, 11 wounds would be enough to defeat 2 minions.

Thanks,

I'm honestly boggled at the logic in that. So, it takes 6 damage to take out the first stormtrooper, but only five damage each to take out the others. It seems more consistent to just have them defeated on the 5s and save the "exceeding the threshold" stuff for nemeses and henchmen.

It takes 11 damage because you only count the soak value once per attack, not for every minion.

So if the minions have a soak of 1 and a wound threshold of 5 each, and there are five minions, then it would take 26 damage to kill them all in a single attack (highly unlikely, however, unless you had explosives).

In this example, if you attacked the group and did 11 damage, 1 point would be diminished by soak, 5 damage would kill the first minion and 5 damage would kill the second.

The next attack would still just have 1 point of soak, then the damage to the minion.

Blue Dog said:

No. That's not correct.

If the minions have soak 1 and a wound threshold of 5 each, and there are five minions, then You need to get 27 damage to kill them all in a single attack. That is: 27 damage minus soak 1 = 26 damage which exceeds the total wound threshold of 25. Remember: You have to exceed the total wound threshold to kill all minions of a group.

If You attack the group (five minions, wound threshold 5 each, soak 1) and do 11 damage, 1 point would be diminished by soak 1, so You have 10 damage left over. This is not enough to kill two minions. You need to exceed 10 to kill two minions with a wound threshold of 5 each. So, 6 damage would kill the first minion and the other 4 damage don't kill anybody.