Sunday 30 September 2018

Nearly Waterloo


French win Waterloo

After some delay we have at last completed the Nearly Waterloo wargame, and it has been posted on the Nearly Napoleonic Battles blog

It made an interesting change to fight a one off wargame, rather than one of our usual 1813 campaign battles.


I gave the French an advantage of 16 infantry brigades against the British 12 brigades.   This may have proved too big an advantage. 

We followed the outline of the historical battle.   It opened with a French corps attacking Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte and Papelotte.   All three were forward of the British battle line, and difficult to support.   The overwhelming French numbers allowed them to swamp the garrisons.

Hougoumont fell quite quickly, but surprisingly La Haye Sainte held out.   This despite the French having more artillery in support than at Hougoumont.   The garrison held because they rolled very good dice for morale as their casualties increased.

The French won, and that result was never really in doubt

We enjoyed the game and will certainly continue with this occasional series of one off games based on historical battles.

You can read the battle report here


I have also done a video slide show of this game so that there will be easy access to subsequent games in the series, rather than have to find them on the blog.  You will find the slide show here




3 comments:

  1. I have read the battle report and watched the video, and I was impressed by both.

    I am currently working on a set of Portable Napoleonic Wargame rules for division vs. division battles, and your example shows that it is possible to fight large-scale battles on a relatively small tabletop and still get the feel right.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Bob

    Thanks for your comments.

    I was pleased with the game. It was not intended to be anything other than a fun game, but in fact it did have a feel of Waterloo about it.

    Also having great fun with the video of the game. Not sure how long that project will last, because it is taking me away from my campaign!

    I have been following your Portable Napoleonic Wargame and it seems to be coming along very well.

    best regards

    Paul

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice read and great vid, interesting!

    ReplyDelete

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