Today is the 210th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. It is also the 10th anniversary of our Waterloo 200 mega wargame, held at the Hall of Heroes FLGS, Campbelltown, Sydney, Australia in 2015. Twenty Aussie wargamers from all over Eastern Australia played out the game with over 6,300 plastic and metal 28mm figures, fighting over 5 large tables - 30 square meters of terrain! I claimed at the time in the local media that this was the largest ever Napoleonic wargame held in the Southern hemisphere, and have yet to be contradicted! Judge for yourself:
My collection of 28mm figures has long since disbanded, but this year, on Sunday, I hope to recreate something of that epic game, but this time using Epic scale figures.
No T shirts this time though 😒
Once again I am dependent upon a team of mates, smaller this time, but just as committed.
The possibilities with Epic scale figures are well, epic! We use the excellent Valour & Fortitude rules which are ideal for very large games.
My original plan was to represent half of the Orders of Battle of the three armies, bath-tubbed with each Division represented by a Brigade. However, a couple of major contributors had to drop out half way through the project, so we are now at one third of the OOB with Divisions represented by Brigades - a total of 108 infantry battalions of 80 figures each, and cavalry and guns in proportion...that being said, all Prussian brigades that made it into action are represented.
With the agreement of the 3 CinCs I have tweaked the OOB to give the French a slightly greater numerical advantage than they had on the day...1.2:1 initially against the Anglo Allies, then equalising and finally falling to 0.75 against once the Prussians are fully on table.
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| The top half of the Order of Battle - with 4 days to go its mostly green! |
The concept is to have a fairly historical table set up and deployment, but with Plancenoit moved slightly to not cramp fighting in a corner. Obviously we have favoured the eastern side of the battlefield and ignored Hougomont completely - the western edge of the table starts where the gardens ended.
My concept for the objectives was to encourage fighting right across the table, so these are a mixture of key buildings, farms and of course Plancenoit, and breakthrough points or cutting lines of communications.
Significant lessons are bring learnt from our not-so-regular practice games...this last one set around Quatre Bras:
Our final practice is on Thursday evening, and the big game on Sunday! God willing, a full report to follow!
