Trial and mostly error

There are many interesting and important things happening, both in the world at large and in the Casa Epictetus. I am however going to write about wargaming. We have spent a couple of Wednesdays on a playtest game of the latest version of the hybrid Piquet/FoB rules for the Peninsular War. Sadly, it turned out to be of fairly limited use in determining the current state of things because of a legacy element from each of the predecessor sets.

As I've mentioned before classic Piquet occasionally throws up completely one-sided runs of initiative. We put up with it because we rather like the less dramatic, but still significant, fluctuation that one normally gets. Unfortunately in this game one side didn't get to shoot for an entire evening while the other marched up and assaulted them, making it hard to determine how the ranged fire attack and defence factors were working out. In the latest edition of the newer rules there is a nice pre-game phase, which once again we rather like. This time around there was good and bad news for the Allies. On the one hand they were able to deploy across an area more than twice as large than that usually allowed; on the other hand 60% of their force was late to arrive, leaving only a small number of units to take advantage of this set up flexibility. The part which was left was itself half comprised of cavalry, hardly a balanced force. The rest of the army did eventually turn up, just in time to do nothing.

Where does that leave us? Well, I think we all agreed that the present skirmish rules were better in theory than they are in practice and there was once again much discussion as to why most other rules writers don't really bother with them. I think there is a consensus that we would like some Napoleonic chrome, but firstly not at the cost of unplayability and secondly not the sort of chrome that has more to do with wargaming urban myth than with what happened historically. On top of that, judging from James' parting comments, our hybrid is going to look very much like classic Piquet anyway.

This bit is really an aide memoire for me, but if I were to be asked which bits from FoB 2 that I would like to keep they would be:

• Different defence dice based on quality
• No difference between Cavalry and Infantry move cards (although I'd be happy to see Type III/IV cards)
• Melees fought to conclusion
• Ability to halt units with opportunity fire
• Lull cards rather than Dress the Lines/Command Indecision
• No Major Moral test until zero morale chips
• The pre-game set-up (but I would prefer to see the return of the chance to gain extra cards in the deck)

Things in the hybrid from FoB 2 that I would be prefer to see go:

• Losing morale for stand losses
• Rallying back the first stand loss
• Army Morale cards affecting the phasing player
• Moving and manoeuvring on the same card 
• Always having to remember if one rolled odd or even

The things that seem to have wandered in from elsewhere that I like:

• Perpendicular beaten zone for infantry
• Charging from a flank requiring the centre of the front of the charging unit to be behind the front of the charged unit (plus similar rule for charging the rear)
• The firing from the flank definition, which I can't quite articulate at the moment, but is essentially the one from Lasalle.

Things I'm agnostic about:

• Morale challenges
• Superior numbers in melee (I think the FoB 2 system may work when we work out what tactics to use)
• Rallying - initiative pip or morale chip

FoB2

So, my venture back into the life of work has ended, not with a bang but with a whimper, and I am able once again to turn my attention to wine, women and wargaming; obviously, due to my teetotality, without the wine. So it was that I found myself in the legendary wargames room having another bash at Peninsular Napoleonics. When I was last there we were playing Lasalle, and it was looking promising. However, in my absence it has been found wanting and put back on the shelf. Scanning along those same shelves James' eye lit upon Field of Battle 2, and it was decided to give those a go.

I have mentioned before that the Piquet family has two main strands: the original, of which we use a heavily amended version for the Seven Years War, and a newer, simpler adaptation called Field of Battle (known as FoB), of which we use a heavily amended version for Italian Wars, Crusades etc. The reasons behind the development of the newer version are essentially reduced complexity leading to quicker games plus the elimination of the large initiative swings (for which read long periods of one side standing around doing nothing) to which the original game can be prone (*).

At some point Brent Oman, Piquet head honcho, developed and released FoB2, but I had never previously played them. James' email summons to the game made it plain that for the first run through we would play them as written, without introducing any house rules. Anyone for whom this isn't the first of my blog posts that they have read will naturally know what to expect. Peter and I arrived to find that he had in fact changed the musketry ranges. His reasoning for that was that in his view they are really written for a mid-19th century, American Civil War type game and need tweaking for the dynamics of Napoleonic warfare, the validity of which view also became apparent as various cavalry charges swept across the table before infantry had even had time to consider forming square.

I didn't find anything that particularly irritated me. They are faster moving - both in terms of distances covered and casualties incurred - than any of the Piquet versions we have been playing, but I'm sure one can adjust tactics when one gets the hang of it. Given that further house rules are inevitable (**) it almost seems redundant to comment in great detail, so just a couple of first thoughts:

• There is a Peter Pig style pre-battle 'Fate' routine which affects setup etc. When we last tried the equivalent for 'Square Bashing' we rolled lots of dice and in the end there was not much impact on the game. Here we rolled somewhat fewer dice and there was not much impact on the game. Still, we rather liked it and will try it again.
• The unit classifications and how they manifest as defence and attack dice are quite elegantly simple to use, if not to generate.
• In what I think is a new rule, one can cause the withdrawal of units through ranged fire as well as melee. I think I approve, although the exact mechanics of their interaction with supporting units perhaps needs a bit of clarification.
• The fighting of melees to a resolution (similar to a number of other sets of rules) is welcome, but the benefits of attackers outnumbering defenders seem a bit lightweight.
• There isn't enough morale. I have an overall observation about Piquet which is that it is very difficult to judge what is the correct amount of morale chips that each side should have. However, whatever that level is, it's a lot higher than these rules say.

*    Although read here for an example of it happening in FoB as well.
** While compiling this post I have received from James a list of suggested house rules. As he says that he is going to make some new sticks for measuring ranges it would seem that the rules are going to be around for a while; having said that he made some beaten zone templates for Lasalle and they didn't last long.

Lasalle de wargames légendaire

“When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.”  - Dr Seuss

If there's one thing you know about your bloggist by now it is that he likes to party; and by party I mean play with toy soldiers. It was therefore with great delight that I found myself once again in the legendary wargames room after a gap of some months. The delight was immediately tempered by the realisation that the room was the temperature of an oven; but we played on.

We were playing Lasalle, a game that I had never tried before. The turn sequence is slightly odd, but I have to say was extremely easy to pick up. And the game also moved along quickly enough, taking only two and half hours to arrive at a situation where neither of us could win. Still neither scenario design nor choosing which tactics to adopt are that easy with a new set of rules. My conclusion is that getting stuck in is much better than hanging about, but that gaining an advantage in terms of numbers of units when attacking is important as well. I haven't any advice to give on how one might achieve both at the same time, but there is not much in the way of command friction, so once you've worked it out it should be reasonably easy to replicate. So, I enjoyed them and would like another go in due course.

Old School

During my absence from these pages I actually took part in a couple of games courtesy of Mark 'Ilkley Old School' Dudley. During my wanderings trying to keep one step ahead of the forces of Babylon I found myself temporarily living just round the corner from him and indeed from Tim and Euan as well; a veritable denseness of wargamers - which I believe to be the appropriate collective noun. Anyway he kindly invited me round. Game 1 was either Charge or the War Game. I know that they are different and I also know from experience that one is quite a bit better than the other, but I'm buggered if I can tell them apart. Or perhaps I'm buggered if I can be bothered to tell them apart.

Game 2 was a run through Lasalle. I think that Mark was keen to try these because he had played and enjoyed Maurice (of which I have a copy, currently languishing along with everything else in the marital home). My memories of the game are a bit vague except that I strongly suspected that we weren't playing properly as it seemed impossible to cause any damage with artillery. Also Mark had a suspiciously pokey unit of Hussars who saw off Tim and I's heavy cavalry remarkably easily.