"Blucher - Waterloo - 'The Full Monty!" Topic

On Sunday the Wollongong Wargamers refought Waterloo – all of it!

Blog post here:
link

What a fab wargaming fest!

Good and fair observation about the photogenic aspects of the game, I had not thought of it in that way but the comment is spot on.

Nice work, cheers for the report!

Players who pay no attention to scenario instructions and victory conditions? Sounds like the Corlears Hook Fencibles.

Sparker,

Wow! The whole damn thing!? That's truly amazing. Certainly you're 28mm Naps are awe-inspiring, but the 15mm looked pretty grand as well, certainly with the size and scope of the game. I may have to give Blucher a look…

V/R,
Jack

We the allies didn't totally ignore the scenario victory conditions, we decided that defeating the French army was a better path than holding on to all the BUAs.

A bad choice as we misjudged the pace of the game and number of turns to be played, but the BUAs we did attempt to hold were indeed swamped.

All participants are keen for a re-match of what was a great game.

David F Brown

Well done and played! Thanks for posting.

Thanks all for all your kind comments. Any re-match will also be fully blogged…(you lucky, lucky devils!)

Hello my good friend NFWS!

Thanks for sharing another wonderful event with your crew. I'm just not sure what would have been better, the game or the view!

I see that upon reflection the victory points or conditions might be reworked for the next replay. I've never played in a victory point/condition game that left me with a realistic feel. Yours seems to be the classic example of what never rings true for me. Napoleon's objectives at Waterloo were never to hold the chateau's/villages. His only objective was to destroy the Allied army. The chateau's/villages were simply stepping stones to that objective. If the Allied plan changed as it did in your game so would have Napoleons concern about the chateaus/villages. My suggestion is you should toss out all the victory points/conditions and simply use casualties, moral loss, army cohesion (if you have them), etc. as a better way to evaluate who won and lost. You need a system that measures the effectiveness of both sides. The side who has lost the least wins! A system that locks you down to hard points simply does not reflect the realities of the fluid and unpredictable nature of warfare.

Hope you can use some of this.

Best regards,

Glenn

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for this. Yes, never fear, Blucher allocates the win by default if one side or other's Army Morale falls below 50%. However by close of day neither side was close to breaking. To be fair to the Anglo-Allied decision making, perhaps if they had fought harder for Hougomont and La Haie Sainte etc their morale might have cracked….

One thing I've learnt about Waterloo games, its very hard to set a scenario which gives the outnumbered French any motivation to attack a strong defensive position….

I increasingly think 'what ifs' are the way ahead, for example a balanced game could be had if the Prussians don't show up, or if it didn't rain the night before and the French can attack earlier in the day…

Hello again my friend!

In 2015 we played Waterloo 3 times and found the French were motivated to attack, but very cautious on occasion and just reckless on others. It basically boiled down to who played Napoleon and how he controlled his Corps commanders. Wellington also changed his battle plan and execution with every different person who played him.

We took the Prussians right out of the game along with the French who were assigned to stop them. We treated Placenoit as a separate game. It was very interesting as all 3 games had a mix of different players and it was never clearly established that one side or the other was victorious.

Hopefully you will remove VPs/conditions from your next game. Regardless, looking forward to seeing your next report on one of the most challenging battles of the period.

Best regards,

Glenn

I would think that any table top game is a 'what if' scenario as regardless of the objectives, forces and terrain, you have different decision-makers.

Your game is a good example.

That is what I think is another problem with victory conditions--they are based on previous decisions rather than what the battlefield goals were at the time. Neither side would have declared victory simply for taking the Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte or Mt. St. Jean for that matter.

There is such a thing as 'Ground of Tactical Importance'. Welly would probably have considered his right, and therefore his LOC back to Antwerp, threatened if Hougomont had fallen…

But as I said above, specific victory conditions are the only way to give the French the chance of a balanced game if you are keeping the Orbats and ground conditions accurate…

There is such a thing as 'Ground of Tactical Importance'. Welly would probably have considered his right, and therefore his LOC back to Antwerp, threatened if Hougomont had fallen…

Navy:

Evidence? Wellington was certainly concerned about that LOC as it was, which is why he had 10,000 other troops covering it only a few miles away. Terrain that has tactical importance means that it has tactical significance by itself… it doesn't need Victory Points awarded for capturing it. Napoleon didn't think it was all that important. He simply wanted it attacked as a diversion. It was Reille that tried to actually capture it.

But as I said above, specific victory conditions are the only way to give the French the chance of a balanced game if you are keeping the Orbats and ground conditions accurate…

Then it is a competitive game balance issue, not something having to do with the actual significance of a piece of terrain visa vie the goals for the battle, why it was fought in the first place. That's fine, but let's call it what it is: An effort to balance the game. Unfortunately, that add-on for play balance is construed to have similar significance for the actual battle, which they usually don't. Terrain can be the goal of a battle, such as a bridge crossing or a crossroads…or to protect a LOC… but if that is the case, then those objectives become battle-winning goals, not just one of several victory point objectives.

Napoleon certainly didn't decide to fight at Waterloo because he felt he needed to capture the Hougoumont or any other particular terrain. They had intrinsic tactical value in achieving the actual battle objectives…which could have been achieved without capturing the Hougoumont. Napoleon seemed to think so.

Hello my friend Navy!

'Ground of Tactical Importance'

Excellent point, my problem with that has always been that once you apply VPs to the ground that you feel is of "tactical importance" you have boxed in the game to the limits of your point of view. Which puts handcuffs on the players and restricts them to playing your game, not their own. There is of course nothing wrong with that except the players certainly lose a sense of the actual problems that faced the commanders and are not free to establish their own "Ground of Tactical Importance."

"give the French the chance of a balanced game"

Another clever idea on your part, but it does seem to work against the natural imbalance of the battle. It's sort of a contradiction to why some people want to play historical battles. I've always played historical battles to challenge myself to see if I can do better than what happened historically (fully appreciating the fact that I'm playing a game). Once the objectives are changed by someone's point of view using VPs I'm lost and upset. Now I might as well be playing snakes and ladders as a number of the possible battlefield dynamics have just been thrown out the window. I've been robbed of the full suite of possibilities (the actual full Monty) and forced to play someone else's game.

I think to get the best out of historical battles all the players have to stand up to as many of the natural challenges as possible and be free to create their own plan of action without the encumbrance of artificial VPs. This year we took this challenge head on and now play every battle twice. Both teams switch sides for the second game and we total the scores from both games to see who the overall winning team is. It's added another layer of challenge to everyone which seems to have also raised the bar on the level of enjoyment. It's also created an hilarious level of banter, table top talk, emails, etc. that didn't exist before.

As an added bonus we have also included the commander and player challenges. Every commander that wins a game scores a point towards becoming a Marechal of the club. At the end of the year the player with the highest score gets his baton which entitles him to pick his command at any game in the following year and strut around the club like a peacock! For the other players if they get a positive mention in the AAR they also get a point towards joining the "Old Guard". Again the player with the highest score is acknowledged for the following year as being a "veteran" and amongst the best players of the club.

Again my friend hopefully I've said something of value to you.

Best regards,

Glenn

"That is what I think is another problem with victory conditions--they are based on previous decisions rather than what the battlefield goals were at the time. Neither side would have declared victory simply for taking the Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte or Mt. St. Jean for that matter."

Yes, but how can you recreate the Battle of Waterloo if there is no fight at the scenes (terrain) of the heaviest fighting? If you don't fight on the ridge or the two fortified farms this is simply a 'what-if' fight during the Hundred Days (which I'm fine with, but you all are discussing historical re-fights).

And the evidence that Wellington and Napoleon considered those pieces of terrain significant is 1) Wellington put troops there, and 2) Napoleon attacked there. No one is saying that winning any one piece wins the battle, but Generals don't limit themselves to battle plans of "go and kill the enemy." Usually (and certainly in the case of Waterloo) the intent of destroying the enemy is laid out in terms of 'you take your division and hold/seize that piece of ground, which will secure our flank/allow us to roll up their flank,' the goal of either being to defeat the enemy (his force or intentions depending on your posture).

Great fight, Sparker, thanks again for posting.

V/R,
Jack

Hello Jack!

"Yes, but how can you recreate the Battle of Waterloo if there is no fight at the scenes (terrain) of the heaviest fighting? If you don't fight on the ridge or the two fortified farms this is simply a 'what-if' fight during the Hundred Days (which I'm fine with, but you all are discussing historical re-fights)."

Well as McLaddie said, all games are "what if", you have different decision makers. There is no escape from that. I've played Waterloo at least 6 times and mostly "historical re-fights" for some 35 plus years. They are all full of compromises such as figure scales, timing, building sizes, unit sizes, rolling terrain, player skill level, etc. I don't think simply calling a game a "historical re-fight" removes it from being a "what if".

The 3 recent Waterloo games that we played had no VPs and there was fighting on the ridge and at all the farms in every game.

"Wellington and Napoleon considered those pieces of terrain significant"

I don't think anybody disputes that, but it wasn't because they had VPs attached to them.

"the intent of destroying the enemy is laid out in terms of 'you take your division and hold/seize that piece of ground, which will secure our flank/allow us to roll up their flank,' the goal of either being to defeat the enemy (his force or intentions depending on your posture)."

Exactly, so why do you need VPs or mandatory predetermined locations to execute this?

Best regards,

Glenn

Hi-ya Glenn,

"…all games are "what if", you have different decision makers. There is no escape from that. I've played Waterloo at least 6 times and mostly "historical re-fights" for some 35 plus years."
I agree there is a 'what if' aspect, but if we're calling it a historical re-fight it has to have something in common with the actual battle; you can't set up the terrain and troops for Quatre Bras and call it Waterloo.

"They are all full of compromises such as figure scales, timing, building sizes, unit sizes, rolling terrain, player skill level, etc."
Absolutely! I think we're actually pretty close on this, and the compromise(s) referenced above is, in my mind, key to this issue. When you set up a wargame you're setting the conditions, ruling what is important to you/what you're trying to accomplish on the table top. Victory conditions/points, to me, are nothing but a way of framing what you're trying to do on the tabletop.

So Sparker was trying to get the players to fight over those terrain pieces and would reward them if they did; they didn't and it changed the dynamic of the fight, no more and no less. But it was his decision in terms of what to factor and what not to factor into the fight.

"Exactly, so why do you need VPs or mandatory predetermined locations to execute this?"
Because it would suck to set up that massive table and all those minis only to have the French commander to say "I don't like the ground, I retreat" and there is no fight, and the game is called a draw because neither side destroyed the other and there were no other victory conditions to satisfy.

Yes, that is a bit exaggerated; personally I like games that have one victory condition, generally tied to a piece of terrain. I.e., whomever holds that hill at the end of the game wins, and we're playing until one side breaks/is destroyed/can't accomplish the mission. Having said that, if the only victory condition is "destroy the opposing force," you run (at least with the rules I use) a great chance of neither side being able to win, as most armies/forces will fall back rather than be destroyed.

So how else to determine victory? Well, if the two real-life commanders fought over a piece of ground (or several), we can likely assume it meant something to them , so why not use that to our advantage on the tabletop. I.e., if you're willing to say that, rather than be destroyed, Wellington would have felt compelled to leave the field had Hougoumont fell (and I'm not here to argue whether Wellington felt that way or not, simply using that as a tactical decision-making exercise for tabletop gaming), we've got to do something about that, right?

I mean, the converse is silly; as the French player, I CANNOT attack Hougoumont because my only ability to win the game is to destroy the British/Allies, and if I take Hougoumont the Brit/Allied player may come to the same conclusion as Wellington and withdraw from the field, thus ending the game in a draw as neither satisfied the victory conditions. Again, there are other ways around this, but I don't see anything wrong with allocating victory points/conditions to key pieces of terrain which would have an adverse impact on the enemy.

So, if we fight to a bloody stalemate, neither of us able to eliminate the other, but I hold all the key ground, we should be able to look at this and say "well, you didn't kill me, but I would be forced to leave as you own all the defensible terrain, thus you carried the day." And that's all those victory conditions/points did, so long as you didn't weigh them so heavily that you could have won the fight by occupying them even though the enemy had somehow outfought you (a scenario for which I can't really think of; I can't win by occupying ground if our only other victory condition was my destruction, and you did that).

Hopefully that makes sense; it does in my head at least, and I admit to being a bit rushed (we're out the door to a baseball game). Take care, and I'll check back soon.

V/R,
Jack

Hello Jack!

Hopefully you being in a rush works to my advantage.

"Victory conditions/points, to me, are nothing but a way of framing what you're trying to do on the tabletop."

Therein lays the heart of the problem. The table itself is a frame. Now you are creating another frame within a frame. In one swoop you have severely damaged if not destroyed the concern about flanks. You can also start to wonder what value if any rear attacks have as well. Outside of the farms etc. you have basically determined that 95-99% of the table is of no value. Does that make any sense?

"So Sparker was trying to get the players to fight over those terrain pieces and would reward them if they did; they didn't and it changed the dynamic of the fight, no more and no less."

So if they didn't affect the game, what was the point? Useless no?

"But it was his decision in terms of what to factor and what not to factor into the fight."

Another major problem with VPs. The game design or values are generally assessed outside of the players control. Players are now dependent on the skills of the designer. I've never been in a VP game that had any real logic to it. Two points here, one point there, they all seem to be applied using some kind of mathematical magic spell. Is that really what you want controlling your games?

"Because it would suck to set up that massive table and all those minis only to have the French commander to say "I don't like the ground, I retreat" and there is no fight, and the game is called a draw because neither side destroyed the other and there were no other victory conditions to satisfy."

In my 40 plus years of gaming some 1,000 plus games I've only seen that happen twice and they were both non historical games (campaigns). However, there were other victory conditions in play and none of them were VPs.

" if the only victory condition is "destroy the opposing force," you run (at least with the rules I use) a great chance of neither side being able to win, as most armies/forces will fall back rather than be destroyed."

Obviously you need to change your rules. I think with most rules the side that falls back is considered the loser.

"So how else to determine victory?"

There are lots of ways to do that without using VPs. If one side withdraws they lose, same if they throw in the towel. Failing that you simply see who suffered the most by loss of units, commanders, army cohesion, and control. Your measurements can be as complicated or as simple as you want. Who lost the most units? Once players realize that their responsible for their actions and not the scenario designer you will be shocked to see the difference in their style of play. Much more intense and thought out. It's no longer simply standing in a huddle trying to figure out how and who can acquire the most VPs. Acquiring VPs is simply a one dimensional and boring game.

" Well, if the two real-life commanders fought over a piece of ground (or several), we can likely assume it meant something to them , so why not use that to our advantage on the tabletop. I.e., if you're willing to say that, rather than be destroyed, Wellington would have felt compelled to leave the field had Hougoumont fell (and I'm not here to argue whether Wellington felt that way or not, simply using that as a tactical decision-making exercise for tabletop gaming), we've got to do something about that, right?"

No. The good players who understand the dynamics of the battlefield will come to those conclusions on their own. So why try to prop up the bad players?

"thus ending the game in a draw"

None of our games end in a draw or a stalemate and we have no VPs.

So unlike you, I'm not rushing out anywhere, but I probably should go lay down somewhere in a dark room.

Best regards,

Glenn

So how else to determine victory? Well, if the two real-life commanders fought over a piece of ground (or several), we can likely assume it meant something to them , so why not use that to our advantage on the tabletop. I.e., if you're willing to say that, rather than be destroyed, Wellington would have felt compelled to leave the field had Hougoumont fell (and I'm not here to argue whether Wellington felt that way or not, simply using that as a tactical decision-making exercise for tabletop gaming), we've got to do something about that, right?

Jack:
First of all, just to be clear, my comments were not a criticism of Sparker's game. It was simply an observation about the nature of victory point allocations in general for battlefield terrain.

Wellington determined to fight where he did because
1. He felt he had to fight a battle for strategic reasons [linking up with Blucher and defending his LOC] and
2. The terrain gave him the best chance to successfully fight the battle.

Napoleon fought there because Wellington's army was there. His goal was to defeat the Allied army decisively. His attempt to decisively defeat the Prussians at Ligny failed… though he forced a precipitous retreat. Neither thought the battle was lost or won because the villages around Ligny were taken or lost.

I mean, the converse is silly; as the French player, I CANNOT attack Hougoumont because my only ability to win the game is to destroy the British/Allies, and if I take Hougoumont the Brit/Allied player may come to the same conclusion as Wellington and withdraw from the field, thus ending the game in a draw as neither satisfied the victory conditions.

Well, here I think is a good example of how victory points skew historical perceptions. Napoleon did not charge the II Corps with 'capturing' the Hougoumont. He simply wanted it contained and hopefully draw in more British troops. Unfortunately Reille didn't follow orders and attempted to take it, which Wellington was happy to have happen as a few thousand Allied troops basically distracted an entire French Corps. It was an error which players are encouraged to follow by tacking on victory points [usually substantial victory points] to take.

Like other terrain with victory points, a piece of land that provides a tactical advantage instantly becomes the reason and goal for the battle. The Hougoumont was a distraction. The goal was to destroy the Allied Army before the Prussians could intervene. That could have happened whether the Hougoumont was captured or not.

There is no doubt that capturing the Hougoumont would have garnered real tactical benefits for the French without any victory points, just as the fall of La Haye Saint provided serious French tactical advantages at the end of the day. It is reasonable to have Army morale affected by such losses of significant terrain along with other considerations.

Again, there are other ways around this, but I don't see anything wrong with allocating morale conditions to key pieces of terrain which would have an adverse impact on an army.

"if the only victory condition is "destroy the opposing force," you run (at least with the rules I use) a great chance of neither side being able to win, as most armies/forces will fall back rather than be destroyed."

That is why many of Napoleon's victories were so outstanding/unique, as well as Waterloo. It wasn't easy to completely destroy the opposing forces--look at Ligny, Borodino and Wargram as examples. However, there is no reason why levels of army destruction can't be set for game balancing and historical purposes. For instance, Napoleon's army was a far more precious thing strategically than the Allied armies [They had several] so, losses wouldn't necessarily have to be equally weighted and still remain 'historical.' Many scenarios do this.

I have nothing against victory points for terrain in an effort to balance a game as long as we recognize how the skews the historical tactics and rationales for battle.

Likewise, my only regret is I couldn't be part of a great game skillfully crafted by one of the best, Sparker! My comments only pertain to the concept of VPs, nothing else.

Guys,

Sorry for the delay! I wasn't taking it as an attack on Sparker, but maybe a little bit of 'this is how to wargame properly,' but mainly I commented just because I enjoy talking bout wargaming.

And sorry, but there are too many points to address individually, the boy and I need to get upstairs and get some gaming in! My overall point would be that victory points are just another tool in the toolbox of how to wargame, and even though I don't use them I can see their utility. Just like any other game mechanism, they can be used to screw things up, but no more than any die roll at any point in a game.

Cheers, and let's get some more batreps posted (everyone)!

V/R,
Jack

Hello Jack!

I knew you understood what we were talking about. My comments were intended for anyone who might be reading a single post and jump to the wrong conclusion. I consider Sparker a very good friend and know that he designs some of the best wargames going and specifically for his mates. My displeasure with the general use of VPs has nothing whatsoever to do with his application in his game.

I simply noticed that some of his players indicated a fresh approach to the application of the VPs might be in order for their next game of Waterloo. I suggested he might want to remove them entirely. He thanked me for my suggestions and moved on. From there the discussion within the thread simply addressed the pros and cons of VPs, nothing else. I just wanted to make sure that anybody reading my posts would understand that.

I agree with your final point that VPs are just another tool in the toolbox and can screw things up. It's the screw up part that removes them from my toolbox.

Anyway, nice to hear from you and glad to see your moving on with your games as well.

Best regards,

Glenn