The HMGS convention was held at the end of July... biggest ever, said the management. But they're always saying that... and I believe 'em. Around 3,000 attendees, well over 300 games, and over 90 dealers in the sales area.
In truth, for me, the convention turned out to be a PIQUET weekend. I concentrated on, and observed four PIQUET games... timespan around 3 hours each... plus a piece of a fifth game.
Patriots and Loyalists
I played in a game hosted by Scott Holder, using his newly published effort, PATRIOTS AND LOYALISTS (PAL) for the American Revolutionary War. Scott acted as umpire, and there were two British players and two Americans (I was one of the Americans). Scott must have hosted around a dozen PAL games during the weekend, trying to get the utmost in exposure for his rules.
I like the rules... if only because they contain a lot of Simonesque procedures and I feel right at home with them... and after the game, I queried the other three players about their thoughts on PAL. Two of 'em said that after they caught on to the calculations, the game was fine. The third fella, it appeared, took an instant dislike to PAL... nothing was going to disturb his rotten opinion of PAL... and his dislike grew as the scenario proceeded.
When I asked him about his opinion, his comment was to the effect that PAL was nothing but a "numbers game", which, to me, is as dumb and meaningless a comment as you can possibly utter. All wargames are "numbers games"... you juggle numbers to calculate casualties for firing, you juggle numbers in the melee procedures, you juggle numbers in the morale calculations, and so on. I can understand a player not liking the particular numbers to be juggled in a game, but to condemn all the procedures seemed nonsensical. Why PAL irritated him so, we'll never know... he didn't, or perhaps couldn't, elaborate.
Scott had set up the battle of EUTAW SPRINGS, and the field was covered with woods... this made for slow going (maximum move of 8 inches, and most of the time, not even that). The forces were about 4 feet apart at the outset, musket range in the woods was only 3 inches, and so it was very slow going before the Brits and the Americans got to within combat range.
Silly Cows
After my PAL adventure, somehow, I got myself involved in a silly skirmish affair... a raid by Irish outlaws (circa 900 AD) on an Irish village. "Capture the cows!" was the outlaws' mandate.
Each man moved when his name came up on the movement deck cards. He moved, that is, unless he was asleep. And my men were asleep. Despite the sounds of battle down the road, people shouting for help, and the cries of the wounded next door, my men slept on.
Finally, after an hour and a half, the umpire said to toss a 1,2,3 on a 6-sided die... I did... my men mysteriously awoke from their collective comas.
Their first move was 3 inches out the door of the hut... their second move was 9 inches down the trail. And they saw a single figure headed for them. I ordered one of my men to toss a javelin at the fellow, and the umpire said that my intended target was a fellow villager.
And the game was over... my boys had made 2 moves in about 2 hours, and tossed half a javelin. This was definitely not a well-planned game, nor a well-thought-out scenario. There were many WW II games... these well outnumbered the others. Microarmor, 20 mm, and 15mm WW II games were set up everywhere. As I passed by, and paused at, the various setups, they all seemed to be the same to me... there was first a movement phase, and then a firing phase, and every token on the board took aim and fired, necessitating multi-chart lookups on the tables.
The dealers' area was definitely overwhelming in size and scope. Every outlet in the hobby seemed to be there... and what was most enjoyable, was that there was plenty of space for all. No crowding, no pushing.
The flea market was more than adequate, but I noted that the initial prices seemed rather high. The flea marketeers have learned to set their initial prices quite high... if you accept them at face value without a wee bit of bargaining, you're actually taking money out of your pocket which you don't need to spend.
Piquet
The first PIQUET game I observed concerned a Chinese Boxer attack on a British position. In PIQUET, both sides toss 20-sided dice and the high side gets the initiative and moves, fires, etc., while the other side watches. Then they toss again. The number of actions performed by the active side is a function of the difference in die rolls... For example, if the Boxers tossed a 15 on the die, and the Brits tossed a 9, the Boxers would receive 6 'impulse points'.
At first, the Boxers kept winning all the initiative rolls, and the British players' faces were rather downcast as they sat there twiddling their thumbs, unable to do anything. The Boxers moved, the Boxers fired, the Boxers maneuvered, the Boxers approached the British position to within contact range.
And finally, the British won the initiative... when a side wins the initiative, it commences to draw from an assigned card deck for allowable actions. Not all cards are 'good ones'... some are essentially 'wait and do nothing' cards. But the Brits lucked out. They drew a 'reload weapons' card.
When a unit fires in PIQUET, it is marked as having unloaded weapons, and must wait until it can reload later in the sequence. The British 'reload weapons' card was a godsend. As long as the reload card was showing, they could spend some of their 'impulse points' on firing, and then spend some more points to instantaneously reload and fire again... and reload and fire... Which they did, and for a moment, it looked as if the Boxer attack was going to be beaten off.
But the Brits lost their brief fling at the initiative, and once again, the Boxers moved in for the kill.
The two key opposing players in the game were the people drawing the cards. There were three players per side, but two out of the three confined themselves to moaning and groaning or cheering when a bad or a good card was drawn. In essence, it was a 2-player game.
The next PIQUET game I witnessed was presented by Geoff Getz, who authored CHEF DE BATALLION (CDB) some 2 years ago, and wasn't happy with it, and wanted to work the PIQUET procedures in with his CDB.
Getz presented a Napoleonics scenario... in addition to the regular PIQUET tactical deck, he tossed in his own strategic deck.
In the Getz presentation, the sides drew from their strategic decks until a couple of units on the field came to within musket range (12 inches) of one another. All strategic action stopped and the regular PIQUET procedures took over. At this point, the tactical combat kept up until one of the concerned forces was driven back, and the strategic phase began anew.
Getz said he had outlined his procedures only a couple of weeks before, and he was open to suggestions as to how to make the play of the game run in smoother fashion. I should note that here, too, the card drawers were the active players... the other players on the sides didn't do too much.
My third PIQUET scenario was one for the renaissance. The umpire kept the game going solely on the strength of his personality. There were 3 players per side, and as the initiative shifted from side to side, there was virtually no troop movement. Neither side could find and draw a 'move infantry' or 'move cavalry' card, and the forces just sat there on their baselines.
At first, there was a lot of "Hah! Hah! Hah!" going on as each side drew cards and found it could 'mill around' (do nothing), or 'maneuver' (change formation), but not move. But eventually the "Hah! Hahs!" died out.
After some 2 hours, I left the table and when I returned an hour or so later, there were no "Hah! Hahs!", and the troops were still, for the most part, lined up on their baselines. What happened to the movement cards? no one knew.
The fourth PIQUET game which I observed, and in which I was most interested, was a 15mm WW II affair. This was a battalion-level game... 3 or 4 infantry stands formed a platoon, 3 tanks an armored platoon, and so on.
In all PIQUET games, each side has a deck of some 30 action cards... as I mentioned before, some are 'good', some are 'bad'. In the British colonial game I had observed, as well as the renaissance game, each side's deck contained a 'reload weapons' card, and once a unit fired, it had to wait for a 'reload' card to appear. I think that in the renaissance effort, the reload requirement was confined to crossbow units, and not regular bow units. But I was very surprised to find that the same 'reload' cards were a part of the WW II decks. And so, once a tank unit fired, it had to wait until it could reload to fire again.
In truth, for a game set in the era of automatic continuous-fire weaponry, this seemed a wee bit strange. The deck contained either 3 or 4 'reload' cards, and so there was much, much less firing than in the other WW II games you'll see on the table-top. Is the PIQUET method more 'realistic' than the continual turn-to-turn firing routines you'll find in SPEARHEAD or COMMAND DECISION? I'm not qualified to answer yes or no... but I can definitely state it makes for a much slower game.
As in the other PIQUET efforts I witnessed, movement on the field was rather slow, as each side searched for its movement cards. In fact, movement was slower than slow, for in the decks were a couple of 'mechanical breakdown' cards, upon the draw of which a side tested to see if any of its armored vehicles threw a track, etc. With 'movement' cards few and far between, the effect of the 'breakdown' cards was to further slow down the proceedings.
At one point in the game, the Allied players drew an 'artillery barrage' card. They then set out 3 tokens to indicate where they'd like the barrage to drop.
I'm not sure of how many of the 3 tokens were 'dummies', but it caused the Germans to scamper around quite a bit. After the Allies placed their barrage tokens... and I realize that this is hard to believe... but I fell asleep table-side!
I awoke some 5(?) 10(?) minutes later, and my first thought was that I had missed the big BOOM! when the artillery barrage landed. Not to worry. When I opened my eyes, the 3 barrage tokens were still in place... the Allies had thus far failed to draw an 'artillery barrage lands' card.
The fifth PIQUET game I witnessed... and this one for only some 15 minutes in all... was a large Seven Years War battle... many players per side, many decks of cards per side.
Bob Wiltrout, a PW member, commanded one of the contingents, and he was sitting back at table-side, arms crossed, just watching. He said that on his portion of the table, his side just couldn't seem to win the initiative.
I left and returned about 10 minutes later... Bob was still in his sitting-back, crossed-arms mode... still no initiative, he said.
Piquet Opinions
I tried to contact as many of the players who had participated in the games I witnessed, to get their opinions of PIQUET. Of some 10 people I queried, two said that PIQUET was superb, that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, that it was realistic, that it provided a proper fog of war, and that it prevented (as is common in other sets of rules) a player from having absolute control of his troops.
The other eight were kinda wishy-washy on the merits of the game... not enough 'flow', too much waiting time, too much inactivity. When their side drew a card on which they could act, they were overjoyed to be able to do something before they lapsed into inactivity again.
All of the 10 agreed that the format of PIQUET seemed to be oriented toward a one-on-one game. The man that runs the cards is the only one guaranteed to keep busy and do something, while, if assistants are present, the major portion of their time will be spent in watching and waiting.
For my part, I was disappointed... so help me, when the convention started, I was ready to actually buy a copy of PIQUET... but after lots of hours of observing the game, I decided to spend my money in the flea market.
What Bob Jones, the PIQUET author, is advocating, is that a basic single sequence is applicable to all eras, from ancients to WW II, and that with very minor changes in his action decks, he can adjust the procedures to suit the era of interest.
Many, many times on my own table, I set up a scenario and include in the rules a lot of 'cutesy' procedures: commando attacks and air strikes and select-one-enemy-unit-to-fall-back, and damage assessment and so on. After we go through a couple of bounds, we discover that because we were so occupied in resolving the 'cutesy' procedures, the troops have been stagnant, and are still only a foot in from their respective baselines. "Keep the troops MOVING!" is what the other players shout, and I believe 'em.
As for HISTORICON, a good time was had by all.
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© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
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