Re: Initiative - was RE: Piquet

On 28 Sep 2004 at 20:26, The GZG Digest wrote:

> From: "B Lin" <lin@rxkinetix.com>
> 
> However, it seems
> rather arbitrary to have so much of the game depend on a single roll
for
> each turn, with entire battles decided by a few opposed die rolls.

This is an issue with Piquet and the reason for the optional initiative 
rules. It's a major pain playing a game of Piquet for the first time and

getting stomped by bad rolls. On the other hand this doesn't happen all 
that often, and if you play often enough the odd time it happens isn't 
too big a deal.

> The problem with house-mods and the huge variety of them is that when
you
> play at cons or other large gatherings, if all the players are not
playing
> with exactly the same mods, their level of play may be adversely
affected.

I definitely agree with you on this point. It's one of the reasons I've 
pushed several times (with somewhat limited success) for official fixes 
to the problems in SG2. Without a common set of rules you end up with 
people playing radically different games under the same name.

> Historically battles are not won or lost by the commanding general's
> initiative, but by his knowledge of the battle conditions.

<<snippage>>

> These errors occurred, not because the general was slow in giving the
> order after the appropriate infomation was available, but is almost
> always due to incomplete information being available to the general in
> a timely fashion. 

My area of expertise is the American Civil War, and I take exception to 
this. Yes, knowledge of the battle conditions was a major factor in most

(if not all) battles of the ACW. Command initiative was _the_ deciding 
factor in many of the major battles of the ACW. Actually, the initiative

of the _sub-commanders_ were the deciding factors in many of the major 
battles. 

A good example is Chancellorsville. Hooker told Howard to watch his
right 
flank, but Howard did not take the appropriate measures. Hooker didn't 
know that Jackson was planning to assault his flank, but it was a 
definite possibility. Hooker issued the appropriate orders, but his sub-
commander ignored them. Hooker went a step further. He issued orders for

Reynold's corps to move up beside Howard the night before, at about the 
same time Jackson and Lee were devising their plan. For some reason that

was never discovered, it took the dispatch rider 3 hours to travel 5 
miles. Reynolds got the order just before sunrise. By the time his men 
were moving, the sun was up and the Confederates on Marye's Heights
could 
bombard the bridge across the Rappahannock. This delayed Reynolds by a 
couple more hours. As a result, Jackson rolled up the Eleventh Corps 
while Reynolds was en route. 

Hooker told Sedgwick to march from Fredericksburg to Lee's rear as fast 
as possible, but gave Sedgwick too much discretion in his orders.
Instead 
of Sedgwick's corps hitting Lee in the rear on the third day of the 
battle, Sedgwick struck a day later, when a groggy Hooker had already 
moved the army across the Rappahannock. (There are several other
examples 
in this battle, but you get the idea.)

Another example is Gettysburg, where Lee wanted Ewell to attack Cemetery

Hill on July 1, but Ewell didn't (claiming his troops were too tired).
On 
July 2 he pushed Longstreet into attacking the Union left flank, but 
Longstreet was slow to respond. On July 3, Lee wanted Ewell to 
demonstrate against the Union right while Longstreet's Assault (better, 
but less accurately, known as Pickett's Charge) went on in the centre, 
but Ewell attacked too soon.

In each of these cases, the correct order was issued (though you could 
debate the effect Ewell would have had on July 1 at Gettysburg) but the 
battle was lost due to the time it took the order to be received, or due

to the lack of initiative on the part of the sub-commanders.

One thing I really like about Piquet is that it takes away some of the 
player's abilities of co-ordination offered to him by the God's Eye View

and because the player is not actually on the battlefield. Incompetent 
commanders and a clumsy command structure can be more easily simulated
in 
Piquet than in most other games. I'm on the (mostly silent) playtest
list 
for the Piquet naval game. In the Russo-Japanese War, at the battle of 
the Yellow Sea, one of the Russian ships (I think it was the 
Petropavlovsk, but I have a bad memory for Russian ship names) was
struck 
in the bridge and had a rudder jam. Unfortunately, it was also leading a

column at the time. It slipped into a turn, with the ships immediately 
behind it following along. This was the turning point of the battle.
This 
is something very, very few naval wargames simulate. In almost every
case 
a player would know enough to ignore the lead ship. Piquet offers the 
possibility of this situation happening.

Piquet is not for everyone, as mentioned before. I don't find it better 
than other games, just different. When I play it, I play it for those 
differences.

 ---

Allan Goodall	    http://www.hyperbear.com
agoodall@att.net   agoodall@hyperbear.com

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." - Bertrand Russell