Training for Waterloo at NWS Games Day

Yesterday we had a games day at the NWS, meaning we had the venue for the whole day, not just an evening.  With just a month to go I took the opportunity to setup the table for the 15mm game of Waterloo using Napoleon's Battles.  And good thing I did too as numerous problems were detected.  Thankfully they were overcome and will now not cause delays on the day, which is 13 June.

After moving the table around a few times and having debates about the risk of "Carlo's Corner" (the closest point between the 15mm game and the 28mm game and the issue that it might not allow for passage of gamers or members of the public) we settled on an area of floor space and setup.

While we had the full playing surface (easy when you have printed terrain), we just had the troops as per the Quatre Bras Order of Battle.  That is about a third of the French force and half the Allied (significantly very short on artillery and cavalry).

Not to let the gaming day go to waste we then played half a dozen turns or so, getting a feel for the rules, troops and terrain.  Lots of fun.

We will just be using the Basic Rules from the 2nd Edition.  I now realise I have been doing wheeling and withdraw wrong.

Wheeling

Wheeling costs the frontage of the unit; is increased by the unit's rough terrain cost; there is no backwards wheeling; and if a unit does not have the movement allowance (except if this is due to disorder or a no move or half move marker) it can always wheel on the spot.  Wheels cannot be made within one inch of an unrouted enemy unit. Wheels made by a unit during a move must be in the same direction.  Usually I have always used the wheeling template, but that is not practical when we will have around ten players.

Withdrawing

Withdrawing resets the counter for casualty calculation for routing.  This will mean a unit potentially takes more casualties, but with less chance of routing (based on the erroneous way I was calculating it as being all part of the one combat round).  In our game a British unit got hammered in a combined arms attack losing four casualties (rout number is five).  The attacking cavalry bounced out and the British brigade then withdrew.  It suffered another casualty and I declared (wrongly) that it then routed.  It should have just continued to withdraw its normal move as unformed movement.

There will be more training before the big day as well as some play aids.