RE: Piquet

G'day,

> With out going into excruciating detail, it uses an
> alternating initiative system (sort of),

Sort of ;)

You (usually) roll off dice and the winner takes that amount (or the
difference in the rolls or whatever houserule ) as their impetus so you
can end up with lopsided runs which can make things more uncertain yet.
Mind you there probably as many variants of the impetus system as people
who've tried Piquet ;)

> The biggest problem (in my opinion) is that the
> designer has taken virtually the same rules set and
> applied it to all eras. It works pretty well for ACW,
> but not so well for WWII (or strangely, American Rev war).

I don't know much about the more modern periods (either in reality or in
the game as I haven't played them), but it works well for ancients
through to Napoleonics in my opinion. I've also played with other
people's WWI biplane and wooden sailing ship variants and had fun. As
for sci-fi, spaceship wise I had a go at mashing it together with FT,
and while it was fun I actually prefer standard FT myself. Derek has
written some PK inspired spaceship rules which allow for fleets,
multiple players per side (running different factions), psuedo-vector
movement, missile swarms and still play quickly, but unfortunately real
life over took him before he got it to a point for general consumption.
I know a few guys have had a go at combining DS or SG and Piquet, Derek
has at a go at tying Piquet to FMA and I think someone tried a WH40K or
epic combo and someone else a Battletech combo. Quite apart from the
published games I think the basic concept has immense flexibility and
could be extended very usefully to sci-fi, as evidenced by Laserlight's
comments.

Having said all that, the uncertainty and potentially uneven initiative
does mean that it is not for people who like control in a game and its
pretty much one of those things you either really like or really loathe.

Cheers

Beth