This is the fist of what I hope will be an ongoing senes of articles fcr the PKD. It grows out of ane of the most important objectives of Piquet, namely not to be dogmatic. While many rule sets are just cobbled scrapes of mechanics, good rule sets are derived from a philosophy and a canceptortheary. One of Bob's philosophical tenets for Piquet is that any system should be alive in the sense that it should be able to allow gamers to modify, change, extend and even replace parts in the system and still have a workable, playable game that is consistent with the philosophy of Piquet.

Or stated in another way, we should be able to play dle same game differently. To be avoided at all costs is the carving into stone of the "OFFICIAL" rules and their associated "OFFIClAL" interpretations handed down from upon high by the Great Rule Giver. Not only does this take a lot of pressure off of Bob (and if you have never published a rule set, you don't know what an advantage that is!), but it allows us to play Piquet the way we want to play it and still be part of the greater Piquet community.

This philosophy has already shown itself to be very successfiul as you well know if you subscribe to the Piquet Internet list server where there is always an active discussion going on about some modification or another - many of which have already been incorporated into Piquet II. Eric Burgess' new column elsewhere in this issue on heretical house rules is another reflection of this philosophy. What I hope to do with this column is to desaibe to you more radical approaches in gaming mechanics that are built upon the basic Piquet philosophy but take, sometimes, very different approaches in unplementation.

Over the next several columns I will be describing to you an approach I have taken in doing a tactical Napoleonic wargame that that come bines Piquet and Chef de Bataillon. When I designed Chef, I had many of the same design objectives and philosophical concepts as Bob did for Piquet. The are wide differences in terms of perspective and mechanical implementation but the similarities were great enough that I was curious to see how the two could be blended together with some other really weird stuff.

The result, which has had many names but is currently know as CdePK, is proving to be a very fun game. The mechanics include a variation on the Piquet initiative system, the elimination of the move distance as it is commonly known, a complete integration of morale and combat so that there are no separate morale checks and some other odds and ends.

If you are not familiar with Chef, it is a tactical level game of the Napoleonic period that uses a ground scale of one inch equals ten yards. The stated troop to casting ratio is five troops to one casting, however, in fact the number of castings is of no relevance. The companies are made up of a number of elements that may be thought of as a standard number of troops. A three rank infantry element represents 30 men, a two rank infantry element, 20 men and a cavalry element, ten troopers. The one commonality that all elements have is that they are all 0.75 incheswide. The depth of the element and the number of castings mounted on it are of no importance.

In this column I will describe the variation of the Piquet initiative system that I use with CdePK:

The Card Deck

The card decks are structured essentially the same as in Piquet, with one deck for each side's commander. I tend to favor keeping the number of cards in the deck reasonable (under 30) so that they will turn over fairly quickly. I also use the Militia, Regular, Elite Reload card rather than generic Infantry Reload. Rate of Fire is an important part of tactical combat and the cards do an excellent job of representing this. Note, however, that I have modified the firing process substantially so that there is a much smaller differential in fire effectiveness among types of units. As a result the pnmary firing advantage of elite troops is the rate of fire as represented by the cards. More on this in a later article. Another thing I do is keep the deck face down so that no one knows what card is next on top.

The Card Definitions - Cards basically represent the same events in CdePK as in Piquet There are some differences in the combat related cards because of the mechanics used there, but that is also beyond the scope of this article.

Initiative - CdePK has tvvo types of initiative, Commander Initiative (CI) and Unit Initiative (UI). Commander Initiative is generated by each commander casting 1d20 as in Piquet, but is administered differently. Unit Initiative is derived from CI and is represented on the table by the placing of chips beside each unit. A formation (collection of companies) basically can not take action without UI and it uses up UI by doing things such as moving changing formation, fighting, etc. UI is transmitted to the formation by the commander giving some of his CI to the formation, i.e., one pip of CI rolled on the die can become one chip of UI for the formation. Note that there are no opportunity chips as in Piquet for reasons that will become clear in the play ofthe mechanic.

Commander Actions - As stated, each commander will roll 1d20 and the casts are compared to determine the higer (if there is a tie, it is the end of the tum, reshuffle and reroll as in Piquet). However in CdePK, the low player is not out of the action entirely. The player has a choice of four actions that he can do: Draw, Play, Send, or Pass. These actions are defined as follows:

Draw - For the cost of one pip of CI the player may do any of the following: Pickup and look at the top card of the deck and discard it face down without revealing what it was. Pickup and look at the top card and put it in his hand if there is room. This is a variation of an optional rule in Piquet. Each commander may create a hand of from one to five cards, depending upon his rating. He may place a card in his hand if he has not reached his limit.) Discard a card fromn his hand to the discard pile without revealing what it was. Pickup and look at the top card and turn it face up on the deck. This will end the Draw action, the Draw action is also ended if the player runs out of pips.)

Note that there are mandatory cards that must be placed face- up if drawn. These are Brillliant Leader, Command Indecision, Confused Withdrawal, Fanatic Action, Heroic Moment, Major Morale Check, Naval Phase, Stratagm and Uncontrolled Charge. These cards rnay not be held in the players hand and must be acted upon as in Piquet.~

Play - For the cost of one pip (CI) the player may do any of the following: Immediately place a card from his hand face up on the deck. (This can anly be done once per Play action and must be done the very first thing.) Activate a subordinate player (or formation to use the card that is currentlyface-uponthedeck. (This can be done as many times as the player chooses and has CI pips to play.)

Send - The commander may send any or all of his remaining CI to a subordinate player or formation. He may do this as many times as he has CI pips available.

Pass-If the player is the low initiative player, he may elect to pass and expend no CI on any action.

The Sequence

The high CI player will complete one of the Commander Actions defined above; he cannot Pass. The low CI player will then have an oppportunity to do a Commander Action. Since he is currency the low player, he may elect to Pass, saving his CI. When the low CI player has completed his actions, the CI of the remaining two players is compared again to see who is now has the most pips left. This player is the high CI player and gets to do a Commander Action. ~ If the CI+S are equal the player who had the highest cast will be considered the high player. This process is repeated until both commanders have used all their CI. This continues until one of the commanders has run his deck or until there is a tie initiative cast as in Piquet.

This mechanic produces a rapid switching of initiative between the two sides which I feel is appropriate to the tactical level of CdePK. Low casting players can still accomplish things if they husband their pips for the right moment, and especially if they have put the right cards in their hand. (And the reason I do not need to use opportunity chips to protect the low initiative side as in Piquet.) And when both sides get high casts, there can be a whole lot of rocking going on!

Next issue I describe some more really weird stuff on how I move formations without using any move distances.