Sergeants™ Board Game FAQ

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.

The most common questions regarding the SERGEANTS! games concern the sighting rules:

1) Unless automatically sighted, it is left to the players to determine if they wish to demand that an opposing inverted unit be sighted. A player may demand that an opposing unit be sighted (which may reveal that a sighting unit is real and/or has binoculars) but may not demand that an opposing unit reveal if it can be used or sighting. The reason for that is that fake units may not be used for sighting. Since a sighting demand is voluntary, the opposing player is unsure if the possible sighting was not demanded because the player only has a fake unit available for sighting or because he wants it to appear that only a fake unit is available, etc.

2) Using rule 8.1.5, during his or her Turn, a player has the ability to invert any units that can no longer be sighted. This can be one during a player’s Turn but, normally, the best time to do this is at the end of the player’s Turn. This rule is positively not the clearest or most complete rule ever written and has resulted in a number of questions but the answers always boil down to two situations:

Situation One) Under rule 8.1.3, units are automatically sighted if they are fired. If nothing else, the noise and the muzzle flashes are causing enough commotion to attract enemy attention, regardless of the distance. If a unit was sighted because it was fired during that player’s Turn, including firing during a close combat, it can only be inverted if not in the line of sight of any opposing unit or units (which may be inverted fakes that cannot be seen, but this information may not be demanded), regardless of the range.

Situation Two) If a unit was sighted for any other reason than firing during that player’s Turn, it may be inverted if no opposing unit is close enough to possibly sight it. Here, the player must assume that any opposing units that could be used for sighting are both real and that they have binoculars.