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The Seven Years War campaign has moved forwards in fits and starts over the last week or so, but the core mechanics seem to be holding up, and in one or two peripheral areas where they didn't we have quickly reached consensus about what to do. Wargames campaigns have to serve two purposes: they have to be entertaining in their own right and, even more importantly, they have to generate table top battles. These two elements aren't always compatible because, as in real life, one basically doesn't want to fight a battle unless one has a pretty good chance of winning, and that doesn't always result in much of a game. Indeed during the last campaign we had to develop pretty strict rules about how quickly one was allowed to voluntarily withdraw from the table and at what cost. It was a pleasant surprise therefore that the first battle of the campaign turned out to involve two reasonably matched forces. The slightly smaller Prussian army was attacking the Austrians. This isn't as odd as it sounds because the Prussians are somewhat better in terms of what their deck (remember Piquet is a card driven game) allows them to do. So, how did it turn out?

Piquet has a system for rating units that is flexible within certain parameters. On the night the Prussian turned out to be fairly average for them, whereas the Austrians turned out to be pretty damned good, which was slightly worrying for the Prussians. These had six turns to drive the Austrians from the field or lose shedloads of National Will points. Initiative you will remember is determined by each side drawing a domino from a bag, with turns ending when either side finishes their deck of cards or when both sides draw the same domino, a one in twenty eight chance. On the first turn the Austrians got all the initiative, whizzed through their deck and the Prussians suffered minor damage from artillery fire and hardly moved. The second turn wasn't so one sided, but the Prussian attack still didn't really get into gear before the Austrians had once again run through their deck. The start of the third turn was better for the attackers who got a unit across each of the two bridges, but then they were both routed by musket fire and retreated to whence they had come. The only hope for them at this point was that they had drawn a 'ford' stratagem card (meant to be a secret, but rather given away by the way they had moved up to a supposedly impassable river). Would they turn their card again in time?

In a word, no. The third turn ended abruptly when identical dominoes were drawn. Then the first dominoes of the fourth turn were also the same. As were those for the fifth. And the sixth. Four draws in a row were identical (odds of 614,656 to 1) and the game was over after an hour or so, with a few casualties to the Prussians and absolutely none to the Austrians. If it had been a one off game we would have played on, but in the context of a campaign we couldn't. It certainly wasn't the fault of the way the campaign is designed, just one of those quirks of Piquet. As the Austrian commander I ended the night perhaps somewhat the better off as I am in control of the battlefield and the enemy has had to withdraw. However, I'm not sure such a good opportunity to cause damage to Frederick's forces will come round again very quickly and perhaps in the long run the sudden end to the evening will prove to have been to my detriment.