We Have Reserves: Difference between revisions

* In the anime ''[[Now and Then Here and There|Now and Then, Here and There]]'', an insane king orders a superweapon fired on a battlefield where his own men are fighting the enemy. Thing is, he ''didn't'' have reserves (not enough, anyway), and spent an episode or two freaking out over it before deciding to kidnap more people to draft into his army.

** The fact that they're ''children'' makes the use of this trope even more effective than usual at establishing its user as a [[Complete Monster]].

** In ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' the Earth Alliance activates a cyclops system hidden beneath their Alaska base when it comes under attack by ZAFT. The system basically nukes everthing within 10 miles of the base and kills nearly everyone defending it. This actually helps the Atlantic Federation as it kills off most of the Eurasian political moderates and allows the Earth Alliance to pursue a more genocidal path towards ending the war. This is what causes the Archangel crew to finally defect from the Alliance.

*** Muruta Azrael and Lord Djibril, leaders of Blue Cosmos, and by default, the Atlantic Federation both use this as their strategy. They believe their men to be expendable, and in Azrael's case, actually classes some of his soldiers as equipment, rather than personnel.

* Lord Hong in [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]''. In the words of Cohen the Barbarian:

{{quote|Scum. That's what he called his own soldiers. It's like that bloody civilized game you showed us, Teach! The prawns [sic] are just there to get slaughtered while the king hangs around at the back!}}

** While temporally displaced in ''[[Discworld/Night Watch|Night Watch]]'', and in command of a barricade that got out of hand, Vimes notes that a thousand soldiers could take it, but only the last fifty would make it up by climbing the bodies of their fallen comrades.

** The yardstick for measuring ''any'' General in ''[[Discworld]]'' seems to be "massive casualties." While having those casualties coming from the enemy is preferred, having most of them come from your own troops is still perfectly acceptable.

** Even the Dark Eldar have reserves, in a weird way (though not usually in tabletop terms). Almost all of the Dark Eldar race are clones quickly and cheaply, with live born children (called Trueborn) are considered special and are pampered and taken care of (and get their own unit). Oh and if you kill one of the leaders, so long as they get some of the corpse (not all, some) back to the [[Torture Technician|Haemonculi]] within a certain amount of time (usually a day) then the Haemonculi can regenerate their entire body. So even if you kill the leaders, they'll be back later. Some Haemonculi have consider death to be an interesting experience. Reserves indeed.

** Just about the only faction that doesn't have reserves are the Space Marines. That said, they rarely need them, traditionally being sent in for quick strikes and special operations that the Imperial Guard can't handle alone (and if they ever ''do'' need reserves, they can just borrow some from the Guard).

** This is a bit of an interesting example in that sacrificing their own troops is actually a necessity. Skaven are literally designed for it, breeding like the rodents they are based off of and eating more than the average human due to their high metabolisms. If not for this they would suffer from severe overpopulation and political instability (well, more than usual) as a result. Of course, this doesn't mean they aren't evil little bastards.

** In the background Dark Elves do this with slave troops (one story has them herd their recently captured slaves onto the battlefield where they shoot them down to serve as cover, interfere with the enemies cavalry and to demoralise the enemy (it works)) though it doesn't happen in the game itself.