Having heard a great deal about the Piquet game system, the Conflict Simulations Club of Bloomington, IN, finally gave the system a trial run in late November. The following is a report on the game and our group's impressions of the system.

Piquet

The rules system, created by Bob Jones, has been the subject of a great deal of debate over the years, aided in part by Mr. Jones' willingness to engage his critics online, and his -- at times -- prophetic proclamations about the revolutionary nature of his creation. The game system consists of a core rule book and a series of supplements that cover periods of warfare from the dawn of war through Vietnam. The core rules have been revised and the supplements are in the course of getting updates. Additional supplements for naval and skirmish rules are spoken of on the online Piquet yahoogroup.

At the heart of the rules is an attempt to break up the structured sequence of events that occur in most game systems. By using a deck of special cards, Piquet breaks up the sequence of events on the table into discrete bits that arise in random order as players turn over cards during their turns. Players get to act on cards by winning a head-to-head d20 roll with the opposing commander. The winner of the die roll gets "impetus" equal to the difference between the dice scores to spend on taking actions. Essentially, it costs an impetus point to turn a card and another point to take any action. By design, the game produces runs in which one side gets lots of impetus and does a lot while the other player reacts and waits. Since nearly every die roll in the game is a competitive head-to-head roll, the non-phasing players at least always gets to throw dice.

Fog and chaos is further introduced to the rules with the random generation of fighting qualities and morale of units.

As this brief summary suggests, chance plays a large part in the game. Critics see that as a flaw which could allow one side to crush the other army while his hapless opponent watches, more or less helpless. Defenders of the game's mechanism point out that historical reports of battles often stress the unpredictable and chaotic nature of battle. In their less careful moments, Piquet's advocates suggest critics are trapped by their need for control and security.

My interpretation of the system is that it places a great emphasis on decisions made by players. At nearly every event, both the phasing and non-phasing player are faced with a variety of decisions, i.e., whether to spend precious initiative on a particular card, whether to spend morale to force a morale check on an enemy or whether to buy down an opponent's initiative with morale chips.

Archon

The Archon supplement to Piquet covers the ancient period (a separate supplement covers medieval battles). Although many pages long, the changes Archon introduces to the core rules are logical to anyone who is familiar with this era of gaming. The area in which the core rules are most stretched in Archon is opportunity actions by the non-phasing player. In the core rules, the player without initiative can interrupt the phasing player to take one of three actions: Shoot; Launch a cavalry charge against the flanks or disordered units; Force a cavalry morale check (with these, Foot must take a morale check if a cavalry unit is within charge reach).

At least two of the above are events that happen more in the horse and musket era, or later. In the Ancients game I ran, it did not make sense to me that the cavalry in question could threaten infantry from the front, so I disallowed such cavalry morale checks. Secondly, only Roman legionaries, with a one-shot pilum, and skirmishers had any missile weapons in our game, so the opportunity to shoot was low. Opportunity fire plays a much smaller role.

The only real house rule I imposed on the game was one that greatly limited the effectiveness of skirmish infantry missile fire. All combat mechanisms in Piquet are designed to be decisive. A single head-to-head die roll can blow an enemy unit virtually off the map. Skirmish infantry is somewhat less effective in the rules, but I thought they were still too tough, so I used an optional skirmish fire rule in Archon that limited the effect of skirmish fire against all but other skirmishers to causing disorder.

The Game

The battle was loosely based on the Battle of the Trebbia, 218 B.C., between Carthage and Rome. Piquet simulates the generalship of great captains by letting the player insert "Brilliant Leader" cards into his sequence deck. These cards act as wild cards that let the player do whatever he wants with the card. This proved handy for the Carthaginian commander during the game. To simulate the less inspired Roman leadership, I put a Command Indecision card in the Roman deck. When this card comes up, the Roman player loses all remaining initiative for his phase.

At Piquet scale -- about 250 men per stand for the heaviest infantry -- the Romans had four legions with their cavalry and some Gallic auxiliaries. The Carthaginians had the usual mix of Spanish, Gauls, spearmen, cavalry and a couple elephants. By the Piquet points system, the battle was about even, but with so much dependent on the random die rolls that determine unit quality for the scenario, no point system can promise an even game.

As it turned out, the Roman player was cursed with rolling very average unit quality while his Carthaginian commander rolled a freakishly high number of eager and determined units, giving them a higher base die for combat and morale rolls. The Roman commander grudgingly admitted that the superior Carthaginian quality was historical in this case -- at Trebbia, the Romans stood out all morning in the cold without food while the Carthaginians prepared in their camp.

The Romans seized a huge pile of impetus early in the battle and marched in array across the battlefield. Both armies bulked their cavalry on their right wing and planned a crushing flank blow. However, the Romans lost their impetus advantage as the lines got close. The Carthaginian horse overran the Rome's Gallic auxiliaries and rolled up the legions. Late in the battle, the Romans routed the Gauls on the Carthaginian left and finally had gotten their legions into contact with the Carthaginian history.

At that moment, the Romans turned up a Heroic Moment card followed by a melee resolution card. This meant they would get an extra up modifier on any subsequent melee. The legions might just cut their way through the middle of the Carthaginian line as the flank collapsed. Unfortunately for Rome, its last impetus was spent on flipping the melee resolution card. The Roman general would have to win a fresh d20 die roll to collect impetus to spend on the card. The Carthaginians won the roll and its cavalry smashed into flanks and rear ranks of the legions, putting an end to the battle.

The Aftermath

The random and nonlinear nature of the game was a hit with the players. As we were still learning the game, we got some of the rules wrong, but we didn't find ourselves squabbling over whether the rules made sense at any point in the game. The Roman player felt, fairly, that his infantry didn't get enough positive modifiers for its armor and the veteran status of some of his troops. If I ran this scenario again, I'd make some adjustments on the OB.

The one major qualm we all have had about the game system is its suitability for multiplayer games. The system is very good at squeezing a lot of fog and chaos into a two-player game, but by breaking up the sequence it generally means that only one person is acting at a time. In contrast, in an "I Go, You Go" game (that Piquet rejects), all six players would have been involved every turn.

Despite that criticism, we all felt the game was both enjoyable and in keeping with the spirit of history. We will certainly give it another go or two in the next few months.