Heh. I think I've seen (in the string table) references to 'lost a tentacle' and 'lost a pincer', too.
'Lost a head' is somewhat rare, for obvious reasons...
Speaking of abusive, if you've ever played Europa Universalis, the AI would actually sometimes exploit the 'interrupt move' issue: since crossing a province boundary took time, and any attack on the moving stack would completely erase all accumulated progress on the move no matter how trivial the fight, it would delay you with tiny attacks. Infuriating, completely nonsensical, and probably deliberate.