Novara, the refight

Or, the blog makes a return to its real purpose, There was no discussion of politics last night, except perhaps one or two murmurings that I had been too kind to the evil old bat.

Baroness Thatcher after drinking the blood of small children

Anyway, what of the game. Firstly, and disappointingly, from the French side of the table the quirky, wacky, zany diagonal nature of the layout wasn't anything like as obvious. In fact one might as well have been playing across the table. Very dreary. I have no doubt that the Olicanalad blog will contain a write up with pictures etc so just a brief run through from my point of view. I've said it before, but in my view the sign of a good set of rules is that one can set up exactly the same game twice and have it play out completely differently. The whole Piquet family of rules meet that requirement for me. About the only thing that was the same last night was the group of Swiss skirmishers on the extreme right wheeling onto the flank of the Landsknecht pike block. Oh, and the fact that the French lost. It was a closer run than the previous week, partly because Peter Jackson once again threw some of the worst dice possible. Had we been playing standard Piquet there is the real possibility that he wouldn't have turned any cards at all. On the other hand I as the French opened with a sequence of cards and dice rolls that enabled my light cavalry to flank and then see off a unit of Gendarmes and a small pike block. This, it seems to me anyway, is unlikely to have happened in real life but was possible and, under the 'Hell Broke Loose' rules is unlikely to happen but is possible. Job done. So, big kudos to James and Peter for the rules, which I very much enjoy playing and probably still would even if I understood them.

Peter and James - respect is due

I have been studying the non-transitive dice and sadly can find no wargaming use for them. The problem is the very skewed number distribution on each colour; such as one of them having 5 fives and a blank for example. I have now passed them on to James to ponder over and am quietly confident that he will find some suitable, non-cheesy, role for them on the table-top.