When I was first asked if I would like to review a new rules set, my immediate reaction was to question whether it was really worth it. Most rule sets these days follow the same basic pattern, lets face it. So you are only really looking for different nuances being placed on the same basic theme. But, they said, these look a little different and when I actually sat down and read them, they really are. Yes, you have everything as you would expect with the basic scale set for 25mm with a simple adjustment to 15mm, but the actual operation is really different.
When you build your force lists you refer to a Card Divisor Table (CDT) which defines the composition percentages both by period and country. It also imposes limits on the number of command groups you can have. Once you have your force list constructed, you are provided with a sheet to copy to do this, the next step is army characterisation. This covers every commander and unit, with commanders getting command radius differentials depending on quality. Add to this the roll correction table where the French leadership 1802-1812 gets +2 and the Austrians -2 and things are hotting up.
The C-in-C is even worse off, since his rating affects the whole army, an abysmal die roll here and you are stacking the odds against yourself. Each of your units gets rated with modifications for weapons etc. and they use different dies depending on how good/bad they end up, everything from a D4 to a D12, and even a D12+ to bolster up the good guys. So you are already losing control to the die rolls, but there's still more to come.
Referring to the same table you get a divisor which you divide into the total number of units in your army. A nice touch is that guard and elite count double - roll out the Old Guard. Now you deal out this number of cards from Army Characterisation Deck to get the number of morale chips plus any special cards like brilliant commander, extra reload which are included in the sequence deck. Every unit needs a morale chip and you suffer penalties if you can't achieve this. Without morale chips you can't do a lot and what fate hands out is what you play with until you can rout some enemy units, so make them count.
If you dive in to take command of a command group, then that costs as does relinquishing it later, and all the time you have to beat the dice. Everything that you do in these rules carries with it a price tag in terms of initiative or morale, so you are being forced to make decisions on a changing base - how good did you think you were?
The turn is another departure from the norm. It operates quite neatly really, with each C-in-C rolling a D20 and the highest roll having the initiative, called impetus, for the phase. The difference between the rolls are the number of impetus points you have to spend or possibly stash away for use in opportunity fire later. You use the impetus points to allow you to turn over a card in the sequence deck - another innovation. This deck is constructed from detailed tables covering the countries broken down by time periods. The tables seem pretty good at reflecting capabilities of the armies but of course as they get shuffled before each turn, you don't know what order they will appear. Nothing like getting a Dressing Line when you desperately need a Musket Reload; cheers you up no end.
The impetus clock keep tabs on how many impetus points you have left each phase and accumulates them on a second till twenty have been used when you start the next turn. If you have just got 9 impetus points but the cumulative is 18 already you only get to use 2 of them. The remainder are lost, but you are allowed to express mild disappointment.
Though its called a Napoleonic supplement it actually covers the period from 1790-1820 and even has the details for the 1812-1814 war in the USA but obviously the vast majority of the detail covers Napoleon's rise to fame and glory.
In summary these rules are really good for the solo gamer since you have the construction, event, ratings of units controlled by dice throws, even the actual turn action is in a deck of cards with chance more in control than you. You can even set up markers for the enemy units (some real, some dummy) and only assign ratings when contact actually occurs. The scope for experimentation is all laid out here with the basics already provided so the only limitations will be your own imagination. So if you are ready for some excitement or fancy a change, then these could be what your looking for but in any case always have fun.
(Piquet will be available through Bryan Ansell. The "deluxe" version will be £30 postpaid to England. The "UK" version (un-boxed in Ziplock Bag, no dice, uncut cards, no metal or plastic parts.) will be £20.50 postpaid to England. We are currently in discussions for group deal for SWA members, at time of writing).
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