History Main / WeHaveReserves

* Done frequently by the Soviet Army; in WWII Party Commissars (otherwise known as political officers, even though they weren't technically officers in the military sense and were dismissed in 1943 anyway) would shoot those attempting to retreat. This was portrayed in ''Enemy At the Gates''. (Not that is is a [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory paragon of historical accuracy]], mind you.) And is a frequent appearance in those [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Fantasy Counterpart Cultures]] standing in for Soviet Russia.
** The Soviet and Nazi armies' overall casualties were 1,3 to 1, which one should consider a reasonable and neccessary price for defeating the most powerful army of those times. People usually overestimate both the actual size of the Soviet army and the amount of human resources of the USSR. Wehrmacht was significantly outnumbering the Red Army at least until 1942, and having the land where 1/3 of the population lived occupied by the Germans, the Red Army actually suffered from the *lack* of reserves. Though the Soviet commanders saw any particular soldier less expendable, they wanted to keep their units (companies, regiments, divisions and so on) as intact as possible - not because they were too kind to their subordinates, but because should the unit suffer too many losses, it is going to fail the mission, and the commander is going to get sacked or even executed.
*** Disputable to the extreme. The Wehrmacht itself never outnumbered the Soviets (you only even got CLOSE by throwing in the Romanians, Hungarians, volunteers, etc. al), and the crucial call up of the poorly trained and armed reserves who nevertheless grossly outnumbered the Germans (particularly the fairly small spearheads they actually faced) was pretty much the deciding factor in the battle for Moscow. While it is true that the Soviet Union was not as bad as most think regarding the willingness to order units to fight until utter destruction, they didn't avert this trope to that degree either.
*** Would you please prove your words and name two or three *particular* Soviet divisions which fought in the battle for Moscow and consisted of 'poorly trained and armed reserves'? During the battle of Moscow the Soviet command even redeployed the forces ready to penetrate the blockade of Leningrad, using them to replace the armies lost after the defeat at Vyazma - because nobody wanted to employ poorly trained people who were unable to hold the line and therefore had no use. Then, let's look at the numbers. At the beginning of the war the Soviet forces on the west of the USSR had 2 680 000 men, while Wehrmacht had 3 117 000 men against them, and also had 650 000 Finnish and Romanian allies. It is 1 to 1.4, and Germany is ahesd. September 11, 1941 - the Red Army has 3 463 000 on the front, the Axis forces have 4 022 000. 1 to 1,16, Germany is ahead. November 1, 1941 - 1 to 1,9, Germany is ahead. The Red Army was unable to perform a successful counter-offensive until the December, 1941 because only then it managed to at least slightly outnumber the opposing Germans. *the data is from 'When Titans Clashed' by David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House*

** King Pyrrhus won several battles over the Romans but [[PyrrhicVictory found his army getting weaker whereas the Romans were able to use their manpower to bring their armies back up to full strength]].

* An interesting example from Iain M. Banks' ''The Player of Games:'' the protagonist is freaked out when he realizes how much the Emperor personifies this trope, even though the reserves he so casually sacrifices aren't people but pieces in a very elaborate game. (The reason he is freaked out is that the game is expressly designed to mirror the player's values and philosophy - meaning that the superficially charming and civilized Emperor has revealed himself as AxCrazy.)

* An interesting variation of this happened in {{NCIS}}, during the investigation aboard [[SecretProject the ship they weren't allowed to know about]]. After they recover the [[McGuffin nuclear weapon]] and leave, a missile blows up the secret ship. One of them asks "how did they knew we got off?". The answer? "I don't think they knew".

* In ''CallOfDuty: Modern Warfare 2'', [[spoiler:General Shepherd]] calls in an airstrike on top of his own men to stop Captain Price and Soap from getting to him.

** RealTimeTactics games, which follow RTS game mechanics, generally avert this trope by giving you fixed units in the game, though this gives another problem of destroyed units being LostForever (except in ''WorldInConflict'' which allowed reinforcements to replace lost units). Some modern RTS also avoid the "WeHaveReserves" type gameplay by taking psychological issues of individual units into account, which makes sending troops into suicide missions tactically prohibitive.

* Notably averted in OriginalWar from Altar Interactive, a RTS with RPG elements. In the single player game (and multiplayer with the right settings), every person who dies is actually KilledOffForReal. Each of them has a name, skills and a face. You know them. When any of them dies, it's a loss not just for the war cause (the reinforcements are very limited) but for you as the commander personally. Over the whole storyline - if you let four guys die in the first mission, you are going to have to do without them for the rest of the game. The Russian/Soviet faction in the game employ this trope quite a bit though and the Arabians even more so - even then though, the losses are permanent and the soldiers are not very happy about it.

* In ''SouthPark: Bigger, Longer & Uncut'', the general preparing for battle splits his soldiers into two operations: Operation Human Shield, consisting of the black soldiers, the all-important first attack wave expected to take heavy losses, and Operation Get Behind the Darkies, consisting of everyone else. Naturally, [=OHS=], being lead by Chef, subverts the entire plan--by ducking.

* In MagicTheGathering, decks built around Goblins not only employ cheap creatures whose only purpose is to get a bit of damage in at the opponent before dying any one of numerous ways, but creatures that give you beneficial effects for intentionally sacrificing them.

-> Losses are acceptable. Failure is not.
-->-- '''[[BigBookOfWar The Tactica Imperialis]]''', ''{{Warhammer 40000}}''

** The Roman reaction to the disastrous battle of Cannae, the bloodiest day in Roman history to that point, with up to 70,000 Romans killed? Build another army.

** The Roman reaction to the disastrous battle of Cannae, the bloodiest day in Roman history, with up to 70,000 Romans killed? Build another army.

** 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.
*** That is actually a common tactic invoked by the Atlantic Federation, they used the same trick in the book in Endymion. For the Earth Alliance this is the only way to make sure you can have an advantage over ZAFT which was pummeling them to submission

* ''YuGiOh'' has a card called "Human Wave Tactics" that allows a player to replace low-level normal (no effect) monsters at the end of the turn they're killed. (Ironically, all eligible monsters are absolutely useless offensively. [[SpiritBomb Having hordes of monsters in your graveyard, however...]])

** It's also worth noting that during the climactic battle of ''Return of the Jedi'', the Rebel fleet closed to spitting distance with the Imperial fleet so that the Death Star couldn't safely fire the superlaser, a tactic which would not have worked if the Empire were invoking this trope. Of course, there's a difference between a valuable starship and individual soldiers that seem to be minted by the battalion, at least (as mentioned above) to ''most'' of the Empire.

** After the Vong Invasion and the Empire coming back, they seem to have stopped this the [=TIE=] Fighters have shields (and had since the days of Thrawn), and stormtroopers [[strike:know how]] are allowed to aim now.

** Similarly to Malak's example down below, the novel ''Death Star'' has the titular superweapon test fired on a prison planet. The gunner who fired tries to believe that this is okay because the inhabitants of the planet had been sentenced to life there, but he knows there were some guards down there too who weren't evacuated. Interestingly, before the Death Star heads to Alderaan someone brings up the criticism that hey, that was a prison world, what nasty-but-life-sustaining place does the Empire send convicts to now? The response is that one, there will be fewer convicts now because more people will hesitate to break the law, and two... there are other prison worlds.

** The trope more or less coined the phrase 'Pyrrhic victory' where King Pyrrhus won several battles over the Romans but found his army getting weaker whereas the Romans were able to use their manpower to bring their armies back up to full strength.

*** On the other hand, Thrawn does say of the Noghri: "One group or another will succeed. Until then—a few Noghri, more or less, ''won't seriously drain our resources."'' Just in case you forgot that Thrawn is indeed a {{Magnificent Bastard}}.

** Yeah. Thankfully we had Walter Cronkite to make sure we knew we lost the damn war. Good thing we have Dan Rather to fill that role for Iraq and Afghanistan now.