"West Point Waterloo - Photos and results" Topic

Last weekend thirty gamers descending upon West Point Museum for a great weekend of gaming.

There was a briefing on Friday evening, which included an excellent show and tell from Chris Maine, of the kit he would be using in the recent Waterloo reenactment as a member of the 3e Cuirassier – those swords are long….

On Saturday we played the game[s] in the Large Weapons Gallery of the museum, which staff had closed off from the general public for the day.

We started at 9:30 AM and finished at 6:45 PM. We played between eleven and twelve turns, with the French triumphant in all sectors of the field. The weekend was finished with a celebratory dinner in a local restaurant. Great memories…….

Many more photos here
link

Full results here
PDF link

Thank you for looking

Wow! Thanks for sharing this.

Great stuff guys, nicely done in the grand manner. Just what you would expect from our American cousins.

Was good to see my old chum Ed Harding in the attack on Hougomont. He's all the way from Edinburgh via Chicago you know.

That may be one of the best looking tabletops I've seen yet! You have definitely perfected the use of teddy bear furred terrain.

Looks like another fine game, congrats!

Can you tell us more about how the French pulled off such a resounding victory?

GdeP

That's definitely the best looking 28mm battle I've seen in a long time. Good job!

Awesome looking game!

Our Battle of Waterloo the French won as well. They destroyed Alten's division and split the centre.

However the French lost the Battle of Ligny.

@Jim
I knew Ed was Scottish, I was born in the West Midlands but spent a little over a year living in Carluke, near Wishaw as a kid, so the accent is pretty familiar. Purchased my first box of Airfix Waterloo plastics in a little store in Carluke in 1969…. those were the days!
Ed traveled with his son and Mark, driving in from Chicago.
The furthest anyone traveled for the game was probably California, next came Puerto Rico and Florida. And a good number drove up from North Carolina….. I was lucky, West Point is pretty much on my doorstep, being about 60 miles from my home.

@Ligniere

Ed was my club secretary back in 1980 when he migrated off to the States with his family. I never heard from him until a couple of years ago.

See my blog:

link

Glad to see he kept the hobby going and is in good company.

@GdeP
Here's the breakdown, in my opinion.

I was handling the La Haye Sainte/Papelotte table, and there the Anglo/Allied side held the initiative for about two-thirds of the game. LHS was assaulted four times, finally falling to either the 54e or 55e regiments. The grand battery had used their 12 pounders to degrade the defenses there, and that was very important. Papelotte fell to an infantry assault before the fall of LHS, and that was followed quite quickly by the fall of La Haye.
In the center Donzelot's division had successfully crossed the Ohain road before being stopped by Bijlandt's third line [lots of defense in depth…], and then overturned by Pack's British veterans. Marcognet's division, supported by a division of Milhaud's cuirassier pounded the two Hanoverian brigades of Best and Vincke. Ultimately, it was the cuirassiers that overthrew these two brigades, both Best and Vincke falling to the thrust of cuirassier swords. Seven out of eight battalions were destroyed in these multiple assaults. Morand and the Guard Chasseur division followed up by assaulting in the same path as Donzelot. The Scot's Grey's made a desperate counterattack in an attempt to stop the Chasseurs, and were stopped in their tracks by a volley from the 2.2e Chasseurs.

On the Hougoumont table the French appeared to focus on assaulting Alten's division, and at games end both Halkett and Kielmansegge's brigades were in collapse, the 33rd Foot losing a standard. Mitchell's brigade had also been overthrown by Jerome's division, the 1/23rd Foot also losing a standard. Foy assaulted Hougoumont, crippling the Nassau and Hanoverian Feld Jagers and at one point captured the buildings, but were then ousted by a counterattack by the British Guards. The French high water mark saw Duhesme's Young Guard division, supported by Roussel d'Hurbal's carabinier and cuirassiers smashing into the allied line. The allies poured reserves into the fray, committing both Chasse's Dutch-Belgian and Olfermann's Brunswickers, but the quality simply wasn't there compared to the French attacking forces.

Plancenoit was very much a case of the French overthrowing the early Prussian heads of column as they attempted to gain ground to the west of the Bois de Paris. The divisions of Domon and Subervie were supported by the Guard Light cavalry, and it was quality and quantity that ultimately ensured that Schwerin and Sydow could not make headway. This meant that the Prussian infantry struggled to gain the necessary deployment area to engage the infantry of Lobau. The French had also made the decision to employ Friant's Grenadier Division and Desvaux's Guard reserve artillery. The Landwehr regiments of Bulow's corps were always going to come off second best in that struggle.

So, in my opinion, it was the decisions taken by the French players before the game[s] that made the difference. The Guard was split between all three tables giving them an opportunity to have a definite and positive influence on the outcome on each table. The Anglo/Allied choices were more limited, and this gave the French the initiative, which they seized and never really let go.

French losses were about 11,600, whilst Anglo-Allied loses were about 27,500.

@Ligniere

Just in case your American chums ask who is this 'Mad Mitch' when he is at home.

Well, here he is:

link

@jim
That's a great newspaper clipping – I think Ed and me used the same barber….

@Ligniere

It will be interesting to know how many of the older American wargamers have heard of Mad Mitch.

@jim
That's a great newspaper clipping – I think I used the same barber as Ed…..;-)

Thank you, Nigel!

You all avoided the tragic mistakes of the actual battle, and used combined arms very well. Ney launched the cavalry too soon, and reserve formations of cavalry "went along to the ride," with no infantry to support them.

Putting Guard units into reserve for each action on the field turned out very well! Not sure how the real Napoleon would have accepted that!

Amazing to be on the attack the whole time, yet inflicting double casualties!

GdeP

Wow, what a tour de force, congratulations Nigel on a stunning display and what looks like a model of organisation. Great stuff.
Cheers
Jonathan

Great writeup! Thanks for sharing. Shame my travels prevented my attendance.

Good looking game in a great location !

Phil

Some highlights from the Hougoumont table and adjustments to Ligniere's presentation.
Once the French pushed/hard pressed the defenses around the Chateau, this allowed Ed H with the YG to attack from the east side and force out the guards from chateau. This was turn 11.
On turn 12, the British countered with a Hanoverian LDWR battalion and re took the chateau. Can you BELIEVE THAT!!!!
The French securely had all the woods and gardens though.
I feel if the full length table was used and the fact that the British deprived the La Haye Saint table of the reinforcements and placed them on this table causing us to be out numbered ~2.5 to 1, my Jerome-Pire's forces would have had a significant difficult time holding the that side of the table and supporting Foy to penetrate the woods all the way to the Chateau. The British actually spent most of the game on the offense which gave us great artillery targets along with Chris's gallant Carabinier's charges to take out a lot of units in a short period in the open between the two chateaus.

I would guess it seem to come down to, as a bottom line, good organization and coordination of the French forces against a poor one by the Allies (due to a traffic jam created by moving everything forward and in a hurry- does Austrians come to mind….). The table width, that I grumbled about during the game planning, ended up becoming an asset for my forces's survival which also impacted/contributed to the result. It would be good to get Allies opinion.

MG…. out!

Ligniere: Thanks for the photos and the play by play. I was looking forward to them. John Miller