Tuesday 29 March 2016

The epic battle - Waterloo

Well, we finally achieved getting our act together and had a very enjoyable day refighting The Battle of Waterloo. This all took place before Christmas so sorry about the very belated blog.

I'd purchased this Waterloo terrain many years ago but never had the space to put it all out as intended. Normally, on gaming nights, we only have space for a 6ft x 4 ft board on which parts of this terrain have been used to create terrain on these smaller boards. After gaming Quatra Bra and Warve earlier in the year it was mentioned it was a great pity that we could not game Waterloo. This was "Red Rag to a Bull" and it took a while but finally we managed it.

We borrowed some tables to create a 10ft x 6ft space and squeezed them into the lounge of a gaming friend. Unfortunately the tables did not give a totally flat area which resulting in some tiles not laying flat, this can be seen in a couple of photos. We also had to reduce the width by one row of tiles but we don't think this had too much of an affect on the deployment.

In the end there were only three of us taking part so we tossed a coin to see who was taking which troops, this resulted in one French General and two British. Even though we'd spent much of the year collecting and painting figures to fill in the gaps of our joint collections, we still had to make some compromises and it took us a good couple of hours deploying the 2,500 or more figures ...

Deployment looking East to West Hougemont in the foreground
Deployment looking East with Papelotte in the foreground
Troop deployment around Papelotte
6th Cavalry Divison poised for action on the French left flank
The Allies right flank
French start the attack
The race for Hougemeont is on. British Advance towards the farm as the French come down off the ridge
The Battle for La Haye Saint begins
Units converging on Hougemeont
It's hotting up with attacks going on at La Haye Saint & Hougemeont and French Cavalry find a gap between the two.
British Cavalry advance to meet the French Cavalry and drive them back.
End of the day
We had to call it a day around 23:00 as one of the 'Generals' had to be at work at 6:00 the next morning. The battle had a few more turns to go before the Prussians would arrive but the overall consensus was the Allies had, so far, been very lucky to hold back the French.

Would we do it again... you bet!


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I have been wargaming for 10 years in which time I have finally settled on two eras, Napoleonic and WWII, both in 15mm (1:100). Most of my ramblings will be about gaming in these two eras. An attempt will be made to record my wargaming interests, building of armies, ideas, interests and hopefully some games played.