"Waterloo 199th - Halfway through the project!" Topic

On Sunday the Waterloo 200 project team met up at the Hall of Heroes, at the halfway point in this 2 year project, for our latest practice game.

Report here:
link

Quite the project going on there! : )

Excellent stuff!

Tally Ho!

Hello my good friend Sparker!

Another magnificent looking game. How does the chateau scale out for your actual game next year? It looks fabulous but we found in our games both 25mm and 6mm that we couldn't use a model that looked like the chateau because of scale. When we tried to use all the buildings it scaled out to the size of a town. In both scales we had to reduce the complex to one building to get even close to a matching ground scale. Is the scale of the complex an issue for you guys as well, or are you just going to ignore it because it looks so good?

Best regards,

Glenn

Looks very good…..

Thanks very much gents!

Hi Glenn – we were worried about this, and indeed with our model of La Haye Sainte – but it doesn't seem to be an issue in practice – once we get out to the 5 tables they won't dominate so much. And we are saving a bit of footprint by reducing the size of the orchards and gardens that surrounded it.

And with Black Powder rules we are in simply breaking it down into bite sized chunks, so hopefully the fighting won't bog down too much.

All though granted it will be odd that the footprint of Hougomont and Plancenoit will be the same!

We also removed a couple of the small buildings (cart shed and part of cow sheds) and used the shorter corner wall to reduce the overall footprint down to about 80cm x 80cm. Still probably too large, but as Sparker pointed out we will be playing over 5 tables (each 12' x 6') so it does not feel too bad. The gap between Hougoumont and LHS will still be ~10'.

Hougoumont was treated as three sections: enclosed area to south of chateau, enclosed area to north of chateau, and the garden area.

Hello Sparker & Pioneer!

Thanks for the insight.

We just noticed that when you have over scaled buildings (too big of a footprint) they become even more domineering then they were historically. The actual forces defending might be okay, but in many cases they are often undermanned due to the difference in scales (model vs units). The attacker can generally concentrate more units (including artillery fire) at any time which will often give him an unhistorical advantage. It does, however make it more difficult for him to maneuver around the bigger obstacle.

We all know it's just a game, so anything will work, it's simply a matter of how picky you want to be in your compromises when trying to do something historical. You fellows are obviously happy with your choices, and I can't wait to hear Sparkers AAR next year.

Best regards,

Glenn

visually stunning, masses of troops, great project. Thanks for putting up the blog.

I'm no expert on Hougomont, how accurately is it represented (apart from the scale and footprint issues) ? Great job on he buildings, they look superb.

stu

Thanks Stu.

Well, its recognisable as Hougomont, it represents the tactical conundrum of the original, and it looks good on the table. Frankly, good enough for me….

What is the ground scale anyway?

Cheers,

The Bandit

Hi Bandit – sorry to be tardy in responding…

No fixed ground scale as such, you'll be horrified to hear, these are Black Powder rules we are using. However the lack of a definitive ground scale, or indeed time scale, hasn't bothered us in the past!

This is as close as they come to defining such things:

"…Nor have we attempted to define and regulate every detail of play – it is taken as read that participants are sensible, manly fellows, who will quickly resolve any doubts and incongruities in and appropriately sanguine fashion."