You are old, Father Simon, the young man said,
And your hair is exceedingly grey.
Can you think of a reason the color has changed?
Have you something coherent to say?
Indeed, Father Simon replied to the lad,
I’m acutely aware of the grey.
It’s incessantly groping for dice table-side,
When engaged in a game of PIQUET.
Groping for dice, and the non-action deck,
Can ruin a wargamer’s day,
As he stands table-side, patiently waiting his turn
To engage in a game of PIQUET.
Bob Wiltrout brought over his beautifully painted 25mm medievals, and stated he’d like to work out the rough spots in his new version of a single figure game based on the PIQUET rules, before he presented them at an HMGS convention.
In truth, Bob’s rules really didn’t follow the true PIQUET guidelines. For example, the original PIQUET (which I shall term OP) used 2 decks of cards, one for each side, and most of the decks were full of “useless cards”, cards that prevented you from doing anything… cards that said “straighten your lines”, or “deploy” and so on. In the Wiltrout PIQUET (which I’ll term WP), although there were also 2 decks, the decks had cards which really meant something!
I was pitted against Fred Haub, who commanded 19 little guys… 2 armored mounted knights, several men at arms, and a buncha serfs… guys who couldn’t be counted on in battle. My own force was composed of 14 guys… 4 mounted knights, and 10 men at arms… no serfs for me.
As in OP, we each tossed a die to see who had initiative. But OP uses a 20-sider, while we used a 12-sider. The side with the higher toss, get the difference in points between his toss and that of his opponent’s. and every point difference permitted him to draw one of his own cards.
For the first couple of dice tosses, Fred’s numbers were higher than mine and his men moved out more rapidly. This technique, by the way, is a weakness in the OP rules… a side can continue to roll higher than its opponent and thus keep getting the initiative over and over and over again, so that it literally walks rings around its opponent.
The cards contained the names of the little guys, one card for every figure. Draw a man’s card, and he could advance or, if in contact, whomp on an opponent, or, if an archer, fire away.
Since I had 14 men to Fred’s 19, he had 19 basic cards, while I had 14 basic cards, plus 5 blanks or buffers, which, when drawn, didn’t permit me to do anything.
And, of course, WP also used the dreaded groping-for-dice technique. Instead of percentages for the firing and melee calculations, different size dice (4, 6, 8, 10 and 12) were used. For example, one of my men, Sergeant Wood, started out by tossing a 10-sider in combat. When he was wounded, we reduced the size of his die to an 8-sider. Another hit, and he went down to a 6-sider.
I had 2 crossbowmen, who Bob decided to give a basic 12-sided die when they fired. If the target was in cover, the 12-sider went down to a 10-sider. But at point blank range (less than 4 inches), the die went back up to a 12-sider.
All these dice were met with opposing tosses… the objective was to toss higher than your opponent to score a hit.
Armored knights needed 4 hits to knock ‘em off… men at arms required 3 hits, while the lowly serfs needed only 2. Fred’s force had 3 archers in it, and they were plinking away at my men, getting hit after hit, and I had to close with them to get them out of the way. Bow range was 30 inches, but after many combats, and many plinks, I finally achieved my goal, closed with the archers, and they faded away.
Bob ran a tight game, and Fred and I enjoyed the battle… we ran through it twice, and Bob made several changes along the way. For a one-on-one game, WP, as OP, is quite enjoyable, as both players draw cards, and always have something to do. But it’s my impression that WP will suffer as OP suffers when multiple players are involved. Here, we’ll get lottsa players waiting for their card or cards to be drawn… all standing around, waiting and waiting and waiting.
To me, all card-driven games, which use a single-card-per-unit in a deck, have this same waiting disadvantage. But I have to note that it doesn’t seem to be a problem with other guys… other gamers lap this stuff up, and perhaps it’s a problem in my mind only, and the rest of the wargaming world has bypassed me. And I guess that I’m also the only guy who’s unimpressed with the groping-for-dice procedures, the only guy who prefers the use of percentage dice to compute probabilities-of-hit.
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© Copyright 2002 Wally Simon
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