Hanoverians and Waterloo

Mark (my regular gaming opponent) and I have been going through our current collections of lead and at first look we thought we were going to be short of figures for the Allied Hanoverian brigades.

I'm using A. Cameron's booklet on 'Wargaming The 100 Days' published many years ago by Tabletop Games. This has a full breakdown for each Division and Brigade down to the number of men present at each battle for each infantry battalion and cavalry regiment. It also has deployment maps for each of the four main battles as well as the small rearguard skirmish at Genappe.

We are planning to use the Shako rule set for the Waterloo game and there is a recommendation, when putting on large games, to divide all the returned figures for men present by 800 to arrive at the number of battalions to use for the opposing Armies. We understand that doing this helps to balance the amount of battalions on the table for opposing armies to allow for the fact that battalions and regiments could be large or small. In doing so I thought using 800 for cavalry was not going to give a good representation of regiments present. So I've divided all cavalry returns on both sides by 600 which does seem to give a better balance.

Back to the Hanoverians...between Mark and myself we only have a smattering of Hanoverians certainly not enough for four Brigades even at the reduced number of Battalions. So I started to do some research, firstly by picking the Hanoverian Men at Arms book off my bookshelf, followed by a little research on the web. I then started to wish I'd not started as I was coming across much conflicting information on the Hanoverians at Waterloo and their uniforms. So I put together the following spreadsheet which is my interpretation of Hanoverian uniforms from all the available information so please do not take it as gospel.

After putting the above list together I've heard from Mark that, if we over looked uniform details, we could possibly get away with spare British infantry battalions for the Hanoverians at Waterloo. As we are running out of time to pull this game together this might be the best option.

BUT... I must admit I'm starting to find the Hanoverians quite interesting even though they were short lived and will only be used for the 100 days war. There seems to be the possibility to have Brigades with some mixed uniforms and not just British uniforms in Red coats and either Belgic or Shove Pipe Shakos. So I would very interested to hear from anyone who can add any further information to that that I've collected above. We are already thinking that if it all goes well gaming Waterloo might become an annual event. So I might work towards building more accurate Hanoverian Brigades for future games, especially as I've already purchased four battalions worth of lead.