Correct me if Im wrong but werent the Parade Guards and the Tankers the only SS who actually wore black?
I doubt the color of the chit has anything to do with being PC since I dont see how a color can offend people.
Now something that gets to me is when people use symbols in lieu of the Swastika, I completely understand why designers/artists wont include it in the game but just leave it off, dont bother trying to put something else in its place, or swirling it.
In the European theater: Wehrmacht = gray SS = black U.S. = green or olive U.S.S.R. regular = brown or a dark mustard color U.S.S.R. guards = red French = light blue British and Commonwealth = tan
In the Pacific theater: U.S. = green or olive Japan = Yellow British & Commonwealth = Tan
The only differences in units of the same country that immediately come to mind are the German SS, the Soviet Guards, and the U.S. Marines in some games. Why people insist on reinventing something that works just fine....
I think it is also to allow games to be sold in Germany without having special editions just for them.I believe there are laws in Germany that prohibit certain references to the SS and I seem to remember that the color black for counters is one of them.
It's a very controversial issue in the ASL world. The reasoning is that no other nationality gets a second colour for it's specialist troops - to make a special exception for the SS is to glorify and/or glamourize them. Personally, I tend to agree. I don't want to see special treatment for a bunch of war criminals.
It's a very controversial issue in the ASL world. The reasoning is that no other nationality gets a second colour for it's specialist troops - to make a special exception for the SS is to glorify and/or glamourize them. Personally, I tend to agree. I don't want to see special treatment for a bunch of war criminals.
I suppose you could justify it by saying that the Waffen SS were an army within an army like Napoleon's Imperial Guard...in many ways an entirely separate organisation...
Also I just remembered that most games featuring Japanese forces seem to colour their counters yellow...perhaps some cause for offense there...
It's a very controversial issue in the ASL world. The reasoning is that no other nationality gets a second colour for it's specialist troops - to make a special exception for the SS is to glorify and/or glamourize them. Personally, I tend to agree. I don't want to see special treatment for a bunch of war criminals.
I suppose you could justify it by saying that the Waffen SS were an army within an army like Napoleon's Imperial Guard...in many ways an entirely separate organisation...
Also I just remembered that most games featuring Japanese forces seem to colour their counters yellow...perhaps some cause for offense there...
I can't think of any modern game gives the Soviet political troops (NKVD) a special color. And I can't think of any modern game (other than Clash of Arms with their bizzare unit color schemes) that gives the Imperial Guard their own color.
I agree with the traditional colors for WWII troops ... but I'm fine with SS not being given a special color.
I really don't see why the Waffen SS should be black. Didn't their infantry normally wear camouflage smocks during WWII? Wasn't black just for their dress uniforms?
Actually black is not historically speaking the right color for Waffen SS units. Black uniforms were worn by the Allgemeine SS and sometimes Waffen SS but not at the front and mostly prewar.
Only soldiers in panzers had black uniforms (like the panzer soldiers of the regular army) not the rest of the Waffen SS troops, who wore field grey exactly like their regular army counterparts. This means that only a small percentage of soldeirs of a SS Panzerdivision wore black uniforms, and none in other SS units. .
The only major difference in color was that the Waffen SS troops wore camouflage smocks over their field grey uniform (although some regular army units and luftwaffe units like the Hermann Goering division did the same).
So the Waffen SS units in the panzergrenadier serie of Avalanche Press are the most accurate historically although wargamers just like to see the Waffen SS in black.so Avalanche Press issued bkack Waffen SS counters for the panzergrenadier serie.
It's a very controversial issue in the ASL world. The reasoning is that no other nationality gets a second colour for it's specialist troops - to make a special exception for the SS is to glorify and/or glamourize them. Personally, I tend to agree. I don't want to see special treatment for a bunch of war criminals.
ASL? The game with rules for Prisoners, Commisar executions, Banzai Charges and No Quarter?
Those players get their panties all up in a bunch about black counters?
Am I the only one that sees the hypocrisy in such PC BS?
The discussion of the morality of using black SS counters goes back as long as I have seen discussion of wargames on the internet (and I started frequenting Consimworld many years ago).
Like it or not, as shown by the many enthusiastic replies here, black counters do make SS units "cooler" - so it is in effect a way of glorifying them.
If you don't have a problem with thinking of the SS as the "cool" part of the German army, black SS counters can hardly offend. However, many wargamers don't like to single out the SS in any positive way so for them, black counters do look out of place: It's one thing to simulate a historical conflict involving the SS, but quite another thing to put the SS troops on some sort of pedestal in the process.
Add to this the fact that the SS itself was very conscious of the image they projected for the purpose of propaganda: The liberal use of a "cool" color like black, designer clothing, nifty unit badges (eg. the totenkopf shown in the Mitchell & Webb clip above), etc.: They projected an image of being cool bad motherfuckers, lethal and professional, and the fact that wargamers 65 years after the end of the war still cherish their black counters really shows how well that worked. As has been pointed out, regular Waffen SS troops did not wear black uniforms during the war, so what exactly are we trying to convey with the use of black counters? The same thing the SS itself was aiming for, as it turns out.
Now, I am not calling for anyone to boycot black SS counters (I know I am not) even though some wargamers do. But at least, whenever I catch myself thinking how nifty those black SS counters look, I try to give an extra thought to exactly why I think that is...
