Piquet Ramblings 3: Chipping away at your morale.

Frederick ran from his headquarters in terror. All around him, his soldiers were routing, their eyes wide with fear. Suddenly, a horseman galloped out of the smoke with an extra horse.

Frederick recognized the old marshal. "Dessau?"

"Mount up, you young fool! The Hungarians are upon us!"

Frederick hopped upon the Dessauer's spare mount. Through the night and into the next day, the pair rode to put distance between themselves and Frederick's latest disaster. Frederick marvelled at the Old Dessauer's endurance in the saddle. It was hard to believe the old bastard had been campaigning for 45 years.

They finally came to a small estate and stopped for some much-needed rest. As Frederick settled down behind a bottle of red wine, the Old Dessauer sat in front of the fireplace, warming his boots in front of the licking flames. They sat for a while until Frederick broke the silence.

"My plan was sound. My infantry failed me."

The Dessauer turned his head and stared through Frederick, "Your cavalry was destroyed by the Austrians. You pushed them forward and they were overwhelmed. It's no surprise that the infantry was shaken."

"But the infantry was in the center. The cavalry were under a separate commander on the right."

The old veteran shook his head and growled, "The infantry was in the center. That is true. But they saw your cavalry crushed and routed from the field. Do you think this had no influence on their morale? Do you think because they serve a different general that this rout would have no effect on them? This is not a game. These are men."

Frederick mulled this over as he drank his wine. He was not finished, "But why DID the infantry run? I acknowledge that those infantry regiments had routed earlier in the morning, but they were rallied and in good order!"

The Old Dessauer creaked out of his chair and walked close to Frederick. He leaned into the young general and whispered in his ear, "You rallied them. That is true. Do you think that they forgot the fear they felt earlier in the day? Did they forget their flight? Do you think the destruction of our cavalry bolstered their courage? They are men, Highness, not game pieces, and the sooner you understand that, the sooner you will become a general."

When I first started to play Piquet, most of my attention was focused on the card sequence decks and the impetus initiative process. I overlooked the morale system and assumed it was just some quantitative measure of the army's endurance. "Army A has 30 morale chips, so when Army A suffers 30 losses, something bad happens." While this is true, the morale chip system actually has a few other aspects that I find interesting.

CHARACTER COUNTS.

Your morale chips are normally determined by cards you draw from the Army Characterization Deck (ACD) before the battle begins. Morale chips can also be established by a particular scenario. The player draws a number of ACD cards based on the size of his army. A better army might draw more ACD cards. For example 1862 Confederates draw an ACD card for every 3 units. 1862 Union draws an ACD card for every 4 units. Elite and Guard units count as two units for ACD draws. A 10 unit Confederate army with 2 elite units would draw the same number of ACD cards (4) as a 16 unit Union army.

The ACD cards can give you a variety of effects. There are 36 cards that give you from 2-10 morale chips each. Then there are 16 cards that each benefit your army's Movement ( add a Movement card), or Command (add a Leadership card or an Opportunity Pip), or Combat (Add a Melee or Reload card, or Morale (bonuses to Morale checks). 4 Stratagem cards can give you 1 of 24 possible sneaky battlefield surprises from a Hidden Ditch to a Flank March to a Stirring Speech.

So, it should be apparent that the ACD deck means that the same army can be very different from battle to battle depending on which ACD cards are drawn. One army might have a lot of morale chips and a guide that can show them a secret path through the woods (Strategem) while its opponent might have less morale chips but an extra Cavalry Move in Open card and UP1 die for Regular Infantry morale.

The one requirement is that you have to get at least as many morale chips as you have units in your army. If you don't meet this minimum total, you have to give up your special ACD cards and and replace them from the ACD deck until the army morale chip total meets the minimum.

Okay, so I pulled my Army Characterization Deck cards for my Early French Hundred Years War army. I have 18 units in my army and my army list gives me an ACD card divisor of 4. In the Early French HYW army, my men-at arms are Elite if they remain mounted, so against my better judgement, I leave two units of knights mounted and hope for the best. The two Elite units boost my unit total to 20 and allow me to draw 5 ACD cards.

I draw an 8 morale chip, a 4 morale chip, a 3 morale chip, an "Add a Brilliant Leader card", and an "Extra Artillery Move" card. This gives me 15 morale chips, 3 less than my unit total. My Early French army needs good leadership to overcome the impulsive nature of its men-at-arms and no artillery units, so I discard the "Artillery Move" ACD card and draw a 9 morale chip card to replace it. Awesome result! A total of 24 morale chips. This levy of early French HYW troops must be well-led and motivated indeed!

THE SIGNIFICANT EMOTIONAL EVENT

Okay, so my army has 24 morale chips. Once I finish a turn in which I have a unit routed, routing, or destroyed, the Major Morale Check card is inserted into my Sequence Deck for the remainder of the game. When I draw this card, I compare the total of my destroyed and routed units with my opponent's total. If I have more losses, I have to take a morale test versus the net difference. My Army CinC can take this test (usually with a d20) for the entire army and has a good chance of passing it as long as I can pay a morale chip for the test. Even if he fails the test, I can then have sub-commanders pay morale chips to take a similar test. By passing this test, they are protecting their units from the Major Morale Check.

If my army has no morale chips left, I can't pay for my leaders to assume the Major Morale Checks and units have to test using their own morale dice. This is typically going to be a d4,d6, or d8 depending on the quality of the unit. Considering that this roll might be versus a 3 or better, units can quickly become disordered or rout as a result of these failures. Running out of morale chips means that my units no longer look to their leaders to motivate them. Every unit now is out to take care of itself. And when it comes to my armies, that usually means running away.

So now that I know what lies at the end of the battle for my brave French knights and their spearmen and various levies they dragged to the battlefield with them, the question is: How do I get to the dreaded status of "NO MORALE CHIPS"?

SPEND THEM LIKE YOU'VE GOT THEM.

I lose a morale chip for each stand loss my 4-stand units take during the battle. I also lose a morale chip each time they lose a melee, rout, or disorder from a failed morale check. So, if my French pavisier unit is in melee, and loses the melee die roll 8-2 ( a difference of 6=6 hits), it loses 2 of its 4 stands (3 hits per stand) in melee, loses the melee, and routs unrallyable (because it was tripled). From this melee alone, I lost 2 morale chips for the stands, 1 morale chip for the melee loss, and 1 morale chip for the rout. A total of 4 morale chips ripped from my total of 24.

You can also spend morale chips to rally your units. When an Officer Check card is drawn from your Sequence Deck, you can spend a morale chip to attempt to rally a routed or disordered unit. Unfortunately, you have to pay the morale chip even if the rally is unsuccessful. The obvious problem is that if you no longer have any morale chips, you can't rally your units anymore. Not fun.

Most of this probably seems pretty familiar and the system seems to basically just measure the exhaustion of the army's morale. You lose morale chips as you suffer setbacks and when your army has suffered enough damage, it won't rally and eventually will break down on a Major Morale Check. There are quite a few sets of wargame rules with systems like this, but the next aspect of the morale chip system is what I like to call "Morale Ascendancy"...okay, I don't call it that. I'm not a complete dipshit, but that basically is what happens SO HERE IT IS:

GETTING THEM ON THE RUN.

In some rulesets, you take morale checks every time certain things happen: A unit loses a combat, a unit is within 12" of a slain commander, a unit is within 12" of a routing unit, etc. In Piquet, YOU decide when your opponent takes a morale test. In fact, you are challenging your opponent's morale. If you caused any hits (not even stand losses) on an enemy unit in shooting or melee, you can challenge the target's morale. This called a Tactical Morale Challenge. The target rolls its morale die (usually a d6) vs. a challenge die the size of which is determined by how much damage you caused on the target.

Cavalry can make a similar morale challenge called a Cavalry Morale Challenge where they can challenge the morale of a unit that enters their general charge zone. Heavier cavalry roll a higher challenge die. Your heavy knights can basically scare the shit out of low morale units that are ordered to approach them. "You want us to get closer to the giant armored bastards on horses!?!"

What makes this cool is that to issue a morale challenge, you have to SPEND a morale chip. If you win the challenge and disorder or rout the target, your opponent also gives up a morale chip, so that's a wash, but if you lose the challenge, your target is fine and you're down 1 precious chip. This means that players will be judicious about when they will challenge morale. Players are less likely to waste morale chips (and gaming time) on challenges they are unlikely to win. Morale challenges will happen where it matters the most, but a player always has the option to gamble and roll the dice on a close challenge if it matters to him.

A player can also spend a morale chip to get one re-roll of a morale check. So, if you get totally boned on a challenge like his d6 vs your d12 and you roll a "1", you can say, "That's bullshit." and roll your d12 again. But it will cost you.

It also means that an army with NO MORALE CHIPS can't challenge its opponent's morale. If the English have been kicking the ass of my French all game long, is an English unit going to suddenly fail morale when it suffers a setback from some missile fire? If they have the French down to NO MORALE CHIPS, it should be pretty clear to the participants that one good French crossbow volley is not going to turn the tide.

THE TIDE TURNS.

This brings up another interesting aspect of the benefits of reducing your opponent to NO MORALE CHIPS. When your opponent would have to normally pay morale chips, but he can't because he has none, you GAIN morale chips. So as your troops merrily hammer away at your poor battered opponent, their morale actually improves. It's as if they can see the impact and feel the momentum as the battle swings in their favor.

Here's an example.

I'm leading in morale chips 5-2. One of my French knight units wins a melee, kills 1 stand and routs its English opponent. The English player has to give up 3 morale chips, but can only pay 2, so I gain 1 morale chip. 6-0. An English longbow unit fires and causes a 1 stand loss (-1 MC), but can't challenge my morale because they have no chips. My French confidently brush off the setback. 5-0. I fire a Genoese crossbow unit and cause a 1 stand loss to a longbow unit. The English again can't pay the chip, so I gain 1. 6-0. I then gamble on a morale challenge with my new morale chip and challenge the longbow unit. 5-0. It fails the challenge, it can't re-roll the check because it has NO MORALE CHIPS and routs (-1 MC), the English can't pay the morale chip, and I get it back. 6-0. Even worse for the English player, with NO MORALE CHIPS, his longbow unit can't be rallied and will rout off the table.

Finally, one of the least common uses for a morale chip is to buy down your opponent's initiative. The common complaint about Piquet is that you have to watch while your opponent uses all of his impetus. The buy down allows you to spend morale chips to reduce the amount of Initiative your opponent won by, but since you don't get those morale chips back, this is definitely a decision to be made only in the most desperate circumstances. Or it's a great way to finish off your opponent by reducing his impetus when you've opened up a big lead in morale chips. I always forget to do this.

Okay, so I hope I've been able to explain a few of the interesting aspects of Piquet's morale chip system.

1. It treats the army as a whole and casualties suffered on one side of the battlefield impact the whole army, not just the poor bastards who survived them.
2. It streamlines the morale check system and lets the challenging player decide when and where morale checks are made.
3. Once you have your opponent on the ropes, your army gains in confidence and is better able to ignore setbacks.

Some supplements, like Hallowed Ground Grand Tactical scale, even allow you to transfer morale chips to subordinate commands. In these games, the morale chips are treated like an abstract form of reinforcements, artillery batteries, extra ammunition that the CinC can move from command to command as needed.

In the end, the morale chips give you a quantitative measurement of an army's fighting endurance that is divorced from the numerical strength of the armies.

Piquet Ramblings 2: Being Braxton Bragg

A quick disclaimer to start. I don't consider myself a great writer. I'm a wargamer who takes the time to share some of his thoughts about gaming with whoever might be reading this blog. I'm not convinced these articles will be well-received. My battle reports with nice pictures always seem to get good reviews, but I'm not sure how much interest there is for articles that don't have eye candy attached.

I'm also a certified Piquet Zealot, so I feel a need to spread the word about Piquet, a set of wargaming rules that have been around for a long time, but receive very little attention compared to some of the more mainstream rules in our hobby.

As I've played wargames, I've learned that the games I want to play are those games that place the greatest focus on command and control issues. When I read accounts of battles, there are a few influential leadership factors that affect the outcome in most of them:

• rapid decision making vs. command failure/timidity
• clear vision vs. fog of war/commanders' perceptions and misconceptions of the battle events that are occurring
  
• inability vs. ability to adapt to the battlefield and unanticipated events
  
• insubordination/command failure of sub-commanders vs. initiative and decision making of small unit leaders
  

As game players and history readers, it is easy to criticize our historical counterparts. We have a bird's eye view of the battlefield. No clouds of black powder obscure our impeccable view of the battlefield. We don't have jerk-off subordinates who hate us and want to make us look like idiots. (Well ,most of us don't.) We are making decisions in a comfortable room with a ready supply of food, booze, and a good night's sleep.

Some rules simulate command problems by restricting or preventing movement, but even with these rules, the players still have a general idea that they will be able to perform a certain series of actions based on established turn phases or turn segments. Most rules guarantee you that after your opponent has moved/fired/charged, you will be given the opportunity to do the same. I understand this type of game convention is common and standard in most rules, but until I played Piquet, I never really felt the same doubt and uncertainty that many commanders seemed to experience in military history. In a real battle, you don't KNOW that you're going to get a Move Sequence.

Piquet presents the player with an unusual method to introduce the chaos and command friction that most armies experience once the bullets start flying.

WHO GOES FIRST?

Each army commander competes for Initiative. In the standard Master Piquet rules, each side rolls a d20. The high roller wins the Initiative and gets the difference in the die roll in Impetus Pips. The winner has the "Initiative". It's basically his turn. So, if Robert beats John by 9 on the roll, Robert gets 9 Impetus to use during his Initiative.

WHAT CAN THE TROOPS DO?

Each army has a Sequence Deck that consists of a set number (usually 25-30) of cards. It costs 1 Impetus Pip to flip a card from your Sequence Deck to be your active Impetus card. Your units can only perform the actions that are allowed by this active card. So, if you have an "Infantry Move in Open/Light Terrain" card active, you can move your infantry units. If a "Musket Reload" card is active, you can reload you musket-armed units. If you want to move your artillery, you have to wait for the "Artillery Move" card. If you want a unit to change formation ("That cavalry is on your flank!!! I can clearly see it approaching from my helicopter viewpoint!"), you have to wait to flip the "Deployment" card.

Some advantageous tactical situations do allow you to act without a card. For example, if you want to melee, you normally have to wait for a Melee Resolution card. Until you get that card active, your unit will stay in contact with the enemy and is only considered engaged. However, if you flank the enemy or contact a disordered enemy unit, you no longer have to wait for the Melee card and can fight a melee with him right away. It pays to turn a flank.

Unfortunately for Robert, acting on all of these cards is not free. You also pay Impetus Pips to act on the active Sequence cards. So, if Robert has 9 Impetus Pips, he has some decisions to make. If one of his infantry battalions has a threatened flank, and he flips a "Cavalry Move in Open/Light Terrain" card, he might want to fire a few units (1 Impetus each), move some cavalry units (costs Impetus), or flip more cards from the Sequence Deck (1 Impetus per flip) in an effort to find that "Maneuver" card he needs to change the facing of his threatened battalion.

Just like armies, all Sequence Decks are not created equal. Poor armies will have Sequence Deck that are less efficient than better armies. Great leaders have better cards that help their army's Sequence Decks:

• One card that reduces efficiency is the "Dress Lines/Milling Around" card. This card is basically a wasted Impetus Pip when it flips. No actions can be performed when it is active. Bad armies have more of them.
  
• Poor and Abysmal army commanders hurt their armies' Sequence Decks by adding "Command Indecision" cards to the deck (1 if Poor, 2 if Abysmal). When a Command Indecision card is flipped, it burns off all of the remaining Impetus Pips and ends the Initiative. A real attack killer.
• Skilled and Superior army commanders help their armies' Sequence Decks by adding "Brilliant Leader" cards to the the deck (1 if Skilled, 2 if Superior). A "Brilliant Leader" card acts like a wild card and can be used as any sequence card that would be available to the army. In a way, it lets the better historical commanders improvise out of the restrictions of the card sequence system.

Sequence Decks can include cards that allow special strategies or battlefield effects that reflect the strengths or weaknesses of the opposing armies.

If you have no more cards to flip from your Sequence Deck or the Initiative die rolls tie, the turn ends immediately. This creates a built-in variable turn duration that can leave players gambling if they have to achieve battlefield objectives by a certain turn.

THE STRESS OF BATTLE

Another cool aspect of the Piquet Sequence Deck system is how losses on the battlefield degrade your Sequence Deck. In some rule sets, your Army of Northern Virginia fights just as well on Turn 1 as on Turn 8 when half of the army has been destroyed. Most of us can agree that an army probably doesn't respond as well after it has suffered what my old battalion commander used to call a "significant emotional event." In Piquet, you shuffle your Sequence deck between turns and pull out cards for the following reasons:

• 1 card for each routing, routed, or destroyed unit
• 1 card for each killed sub-commander
• 1 card if Command is Poor
• 2 cards if Command is Abysmal
• 1 card if commander-in-chief is commanding a command group himself
  
• 2 cards for a dead commander-in-chief

The removed, useful cards are replaced with the aforementioned "Dress Lines/Milling Around" cards. So, as your army suffers stress and damage, its Sequence Deck becomes less efficient. You lose cards that would have let you actually do things on the battlefield and they are replaced with cards that waste your Impetus.

The final card that is inserted into the sequence deck is your Major Morale Test card. Whenever your army has a unit destroyed, routed, or routing between turns, this card is permanently added to your Sequence Deck. The card sits in your deck and forces a Major Morale test, basically an army morale check, when it flips, but since the turns end irregularly, it is not guaranteed to make an appearance.

IT'S FRUSTRATING TO BE IN COMMAND

So, you understand that your deck might be good or bad.

Maybe you can accept that, but the hardest part of the game for players to accept is that they are not guaranteed to win Impetus back after their opponent wins it.

In the lame example I gave, Robert won Initiative and had 9 Impetus. Robert might win Initiative again. And again. And again. Meanwhile, John stares with disgust at his Initiative die and watches Robert flip cards and move units with gleeful abandon.

You aren't completely helpless during your opponent's Initiative. Each player does get a few Opportunity Impetus Pips that he can use to make opportunity charges with cavalry or fire in his opponent's Initiative, but the supply of these Opportunity Impetus Pips is limited and can only be replenished when he regains the Initiative.

It's difficult to have a plan and deployment for your forces and then watch your opponent's cavalry dart around your flank and set up a flank charge. But disasters like that happened a lot in military history. Maybe your corps commander never saw the cavalry coming because of a dip in the terrain. Maybe he ignored your orders because he's nobility and you are the son of a farmer. Maybe the courier you sent was killed by an unlucky cannon shot. This shit happened all the time.

Own that feeling of frustration and then you can maybe end a game and say, "Wow, Being Braxton Bragg really sucks."

The key is understanding that eventually the tide will(might) turn in your favor. Every time your opponent spends Impetus, he can't be sure that you won't win the Initiative on the next Initiative roll. In the long term, the die rolls should even out.

This type of simulation isn't going to be for everyone. Some players don't want to be Braxton Bragg. Some players won't like the irregular and uneven action that is generated by the combination of Impetus and random card draws. However, few rulesets can take two players and make one into McClellan and one into Lee the way Piquet can.

In all fairness, I use the poker deck system for Initiative which replaces opposed d20 die rolls with draws from a standard poker deck. One side gets the black cards and one side gets the red cards. Face and 10 cards add 10 to the following cards if they have the same color. This gives Impetus results of 1-19 with Jokers ending the Turn. The poker system at least reassures the player whose ass is getting kicked on Impetus that there are some cards in the deck that might throw some Impetus Pips his way.

The opposed d20 die roll is hardcore Piquet. No guarantees.

A great advantage of this unpredictability is that the Piquet system is also a great ruleset for solitaire play. Since you don't know which card is going to come up or which side will win and keep the Initiative, it's easy to play both sides without subconsciously favoring one side over the other.

So, I recommend checking out the rules. Piquet master rules are only $5 on the piquet.com website! Rules questions are answered on the Yahoo Group with a response time that would make a fire department proud. Once you read through the standard rules, you can then decide if you want to invest in a supplement for your favorite period. Did I mention it's only $5? For a printed rulebook? Okay, I'll stop now. $5!

Piquet Ramblings 1 : Listening at the Campfires

Young Frederick sat in his headquarters and issued instructions to his generals. Once his plans were made clear, his commanders quickly left to attend to their assignments and prepare for the next day's battle. All except one.

The young king noticed that the prince of Anhalt-Dessau still stood staring at the battle map. The Old Dessauer was shaking his head as he pointed to the map. "This hill is the key to your plan, my King. If you cannot hold it, we will be swept away before your attack strikes their flank."

Frederick knew Dessau still thought his role was to instruct him on the art of war and swallowed his anger as he responded to his old teacher. "I realize that, Leopold. You'll notice I've stationed the grenadiers there. My best infantry."

"Frederick, the grenadiers are in no condition to fight. You marched them all night to reach the battlefield and they are exhausted. They will crack at the first challenge."

Frederick rolled his eyes. "Even if that is true, they are supported by my guard cuirassiers. Their battle record is unmatched. "

"Frederick, their commander is a foppish coward. He can barely ride his horse during parades. The cavalry have no faith in him."

"Very well. Are there any regiments in my army you would recommend, Dessau?"

"Regiment #18."

"Old man, they are fresh recruits, barely outfitted with their uniforms!"

"My king, they are indeed fresh men. Their health and enthusiasm is not ground down by the wear of the campaign. I walked through their campfires last night. They have few foreigners and are all recruited from Pomerania. The soldiers are in good spirits and eager to prove themselves."

King Frederick looked up the regiment in his muster book. "Leopold, my battle roster disagrees with you."

The Old Dessauer stepped so close to Frederick that his nose filled with the smell of musty uniform and stale tobacco. Frederick stumbled backwards. The Dessauer caught Frederick by his coat, pulled him close, and growled in his ear, "My King, your roster lies."

There have been many battles in history where veteran elite units underperformed and raw untested units showed surprising and unexpected quality in the heat of battle. A variety of factors can contribute to irregular performance in battle: lack of supply, heavy prior casualties, poor or excellent unit leadership, exhaustion, political motivation, regional rivalries, religious inspiration, luck, or extra ammunition. Many of these factors would be hard to detect by the army commander as he watched his troops march off the road and into battle line.

Units in Piquet usually have a Fire Die, a Melee Die, and a Morale Die. Modifiers in the game can improve or reduce the type of die the unit rolles for its test.

Piquet has a nice process wherein you roll on a d20 for the quality of your units before the battle to see just how good they are. Until you roll for their quality, you don't know what lies in the hearts of your little metal men.

The most likely result is Ready. Ready will give the units average dice for Fire, Melee, and Morale.

High quality rolls can give better results like Eager or Determined. A low quality roll might make the unit Battle Weary, a result that will give the unit bad dice.

The most interesting result is Vacillating. A Vacillating result means you roll again for the current quality, but the unit quality has to be checked again and can change when the unit is in its first combat.

Certain armies have modifiers to this Quality Roll to reflect the army's strengths and weaknesses. For example in 1862 American Civil War, Union artillery might add 2 to their Quality rolls while Confederate cavalry from the same period might also add 2.

You do have some intelligence about how good your units might be. There is a range of quality you can expect based on the unit's description. In the American Civil War, your infantry will usually be rated as militia, regulars, or elite. An elite unit will usually be pretty good even if it gets a Battle Weary result, but a Determined militia unit can be a match for it. Regulars are slightly better in melee than Militia.

Militia units tend to be the worst. Battle Weary militia infantry are unlikely to last very long in a fight.

I (along with many other Piquet players) take this a step further. I don't roll for the quality of my units until they have to use their quality to achieve something on the battlefield. So when I launch my main attack against my opponent, I just have to hope that brigade at the spearhead of the attack is feeling good today. If I get a Vacillating result, I don't record the unit's dice on my roster so I'll remember to check Quality for the unit again the next time it has to use dice for something.

So, if you want to defend a critical objective during a battle, do what the real generals did. Assign it to an elite unit and hope for the best. Of course, if your luck is anything like mine, your elite units will be Battle Weary and your Militia will be Determined fanatics.