Not long after Bob Jones sent me an early draft of his new Piquet rules, I changed jobs and moved away from my regular gaming buddies in Maryland to South Jersey. In between finding a new gaming group and temporarily living alone in an apartment while my wife sold our Maryland house, I found myself doing a lot of solitaire gaming. And what a pleasant surprise it was that Piquet proved such an accommodating set of rules for solo play.

Of course, the challenge in playing any miniatures rules solitaire begins with an initial reality check: whose side am I on? My side or...my side? If you are playing solitaire merely as a way to learn the rules, or to try out a homemade variation, it's probably not a question that requires a lot of soul searching.

But can you actually take sides in a solitaire contest and expect a reasonable level of challenge and excitement? Can you "be" the Union player and still have your alter ego take on the Confederates in a Little Roundtop scenario? Can you avoid feeling guilty afterwards for having slaughtered the rebs hecause they foolishly decided to attack uphill in column? Backwards?

The truth is, in any solitaire game you can "inadvertently" forget to have your opponent do the right thing. But in Piquet, because its unique initiative system is linked to a turn of cards--each stipulating a specific action at that moment--you'll find a much greater liklihood of a reasoned outcome for your worthy opponent. (In other words, you won't be such a pushover for yourself.)

At the same time, Piquet's cards work almost like a bookmark in clearly defining a point in time in your solo battle. You can pause the action for an hour or three days and easily come back to the same spot without having "lost your place," or lost track of what you intended. If it's late in the evening, and you begin a new turn, you can play just a small piece of it. With other rules, you often have to finish the entire turn- which can take a good bit of time--lest you come back the next day, hopelessly confused as to what had moved and what hadn't.

Here's an ACW solitaire scenario I played frequently, using Piquet. Because I was in an apartment where space was limited, and because my army is 25mm, I needed to make a few adjustments for size.

Adjustments

First, I bought a 6 x 3 hollow door that cost $17 at a lumber yard and mounted it on table leg brackets that sold for about $12 at the same store. After the battle, the table folded up for easy storage. I then compressed my scenario, eliminating march-on time, going instead to the very heart of the fighting. I created an equal sized force for both sides, composed of 13 units - 9 infantry regiments, 2 cavalry regiments and 2 batteries - one of horse, one of foot. I then made notations on my maps to where each of the 13 units would begin. I divided the table into thirds and tried to spread each side's 13 units as equally as possible on it's half of the table - including some units off the table, marked as reinforcements.

Then I put 13 chits in a cup - one for each army's units - but drew only 9 for each side. I placed those 9 units on the table, the premise being the missing units had already been driven off the field, or even had failed to arrive.

Sometimes the game would finish in a single evening, sometimes card by card, over the course of many days. Experiment with your own initial placement and the number of units you pull for each army. By the way, since the scenario is hypothetical, the units are "generic Union and Confederate.

USA	Leadership	Cmnd. Imp. Die	Command Radius
Div. CO	Average	D20	12 inches

1st Brigade Leader		Skilled	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
1 1st Rgt	D8	D12	D6	D10
2 2nd Rgt	D10	D10	D6	D10
3 3rd Rgt	D8	D6	D6	D8
4 1st Bde Art.	D6	D8	D4	-
2nd Brigade Leader		Average	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
5 1st Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D6
6 2nd Rgt	D8	D10	D6	D6
7 3rd Rgt	D10	D12	D6	D8
3rd Brigade Leader		Poor	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
8 1st Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D6
9 2nd Rgt	D8	D10	D6	D6
10 3rd Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D8
Cavalry Leader		Exceptional	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
11 1st Cav Rgt	D6	D6	D8	D8
12 2nd Cav Rgt	D8	D8	D8	D8
13 Horse Art.	D6	D6	D4	-

CSA	Leadership	Cmnd. Imp. Die	Command Radius
Div. CO	Average	D20	12 inches

1st Brigade Leader		Skilled	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
1 1st Rgt	D8	D12	D6	D10
2 2nd Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D8
3 3rd Rgt	D10	D10	D6	D6
4 1st Bde Art.	D6	D10	D4	-
2nd Brigade Leader		Average	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
5 1st Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D6
6 2nd Rgt	D6	D12	D6	D8
7 3rd Rgt	D6	D6	D8	D6
3rd Brigade Leader		Poor	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
8 1st Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D6
9 2nd Rgt	D8	D12	D6	D10
10 3rd Rgt	D6	D10	D6	D6
Cavalry Leader		Exceptional	D20	12 inches
Unit	Quality BDV	BDV Fire	BDV Melee	BDV Morale
11 1st Cav Rgt	D8	D6	D6	D8
12 2nd Cav Rgt	D8	D10	D6	D6
13 Horse Art.	D6	D10	D6	-