"Warlord Games Waterloo starter set mini-review (new player)" Topic

Here's my quick rambling review of the new Waterloo Black Powder starter set from Warlord Games.

Contents include:
Soft back A5 version of the Black Powder rulebook
Quick start guide
12 Chasseurs a Cheval
48 French infantry
48 British infantry
24 Hanoverian Infantry
1x Metal Royal artillery cannon
1x metal French foot commander
1x metal British foot commander
Bases for all above models
Six d6
Card playsheet and casualty markers

DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind I am relatively new to the period. Honestly, the announcement of the starter set got me interested because I do like a good starter set that can help guide me into having a nice collection of figures to play games with. I have a familiarity with Black Powder, having played a half dozen games or so with AWI and others. This is written from the perspective of someone who was totally new to the period. After it was announced and I became interested, I did a little research, asked lots of questions, and ordered the Waterloo set plus a bunch of other units to have some good sized games in my 4x8 table. Yesterday I received the Waterloo set and have been looking over it since.

The quick overview: tons of minis, fantastic production quality, great fluff & starter book, softcover Black Powder rulebook is excellent and now my hardcover can live on the shelf. Quick reference sheet is great. Cardboard casualty markers are a nice touch – only way it could be better is plastic casualty markers instead of card ones, and a plastic cannon instead of a metal one.

I'm really happy with the amount of minis in the box! It's a fairly deep box and is literally packed to the brim with miniatures. Something like 135 of 'em! (always a good selling point for me!)

The units are generic enough that multiple copies would be a good investment. It contains 48 British, 24 Hanoverians, 1 gun, 1 commander vs 48 French line, 12 Chasseurs, and 1 commander.

Plus, new plastic bases and basing guide. The new bases have bumps on the underside for grip on tabletop, which is a nice touch. I hope I can buy sprues of these separately.

The quick play rules pretty great, they nicely distill the Black Powder rules into a few pages of relevant rules – relevant to the forces present. For someone totally new to Black Powder they'd be able to play pretty quickly and it would not be a hard transition to the full rules.

The quick start rules also list half-ranges for smaller table sizes. Interestingly, omitted in the quick start rules are fail-an-order-and-the-turn-is-over from the full Black Powder rules; the forces contained in starter set are smaller scale so you issue orders, one at a time, per unit, from your commander model. This will make smaller games from one or two starter sets more "fair", so if one player fails on his first unit out of four his turn isn't over immediately. Of course, once you expand and read the full rules, you'd "graduate" to multiple brigades per side. The quick-start rules also have you split the Chasseurs into two units, and they fight at normal Black Powder full strength, making it fairly balanced per side, giving you 2 British line, 1 Hanoverian line, and 1 artillery, versus 2 French line and 2 French Chasseur units. It definitely gives a little bit of the feel of Waterloo with defensive British lines versus attacking French units.

Honestly the only thing I'd improve would be increasing the (beautiful) full color 16 page book to 20 or 24 pages and have more scenarios (as there's really only one presented, all of two paragraphs before the sequence of play, and is rather generic, "set up armies on opposite sides of the tabletop"). It could have really benefited from like a couple scenarios. For brand new people to Black Powder it'll be a little difficult than if there was like three scenarios to play in a row to learn the rules. But, it's one of those box sets that if you're interested in gaming in the period, the moment you open it up you are just blown away by the quality and quantity of the contents. I'd be even happier with this if Black Powder was totally brand new to me.

I found myself comparing it to the Perry ACW Battle in a Box; this is a much better starter set than that, though I feel that was less "introduction to the period" and more just "discount on a ton of models" :)

Overall very excellent and the best historical starter set I have seen and a really good sign of things to come from Warlord. And, it obviously worked on me, as I've now gotten quite a bit of models and a healthy interest for the period now! :)

Is it a good value for a veteran Black Powder player? Well, maybe: the softcover book is really nice and if you need lots more core troops, certainly. For someone who has everything they need, then, no, probably not. But for someone like me… I would immediately be thinking about buying a second box if this was my first purchase and I was brand new to Black Powder and hadn't already ordered a bunch of other units. As it stands I am super super happy I ordered this, plus one each of Warlord's British and French Starter Armies, and a few various specialty boxes (95th Rifles, Old Guard, Hussars, Lancers, and a few packs like casualties and commanders, etc).

Good review, I like my box. A couple of extra thoughts, the basic rules show how to become disordered but not how to recover. It is not such a problem as you can reference it in the full rules which you also get, but I suppose it is one of those things that can easily slip by writers who have 'assumed' knowledge when they do these sort of starter rules.

having the basic starter rules all in one place is a very good thing.

None of the units have command sprues, an opportunity lost I feel. If you want them (flag bearer, leader. Drummer etc), you will need to be ordering them from Warlord – and I think these are metals, so if that is actually factored into the price, the 'value' of the starter set can be argued.

I would not hold the Warlord set as being better than the Perry set, it does take the 'starter' idea from a different perspective, especially on price. The Perry ACW starter set is more expensive, but I feel it is a better set for the new to the period player as it includes full units with plastic command sprues, plus the flags to go with it and a more useful amount of cannon. They also provide a (basic) easy play rule set that gives 6 (basic) starter scenario, plus a building and 4 foot of plastic fencing – to me it seems the more 'complete' starter set,

As normsmith mentioned, you may want other command figures but you needn't go for Warlords metal figures because you can order command sprues from the Perry's.

And just to note: It's not "fluff" it's history.

@normsmith, I absolutely agree that I wish command could have been in the set – but I also understand the price of doing plastic sprues would most likely have had that investment factored into the retail cost. Would the box have been worth $150 USD with plastic command? Perhaps.

When I compare to the Perry ACW set – the Perry ACW set is much, much less user friendly. I bought that earlier this year and found I had to do quite a bit of research on various blogs to figure out how to base the units, etc (there's nothing in the box that tells you one of the Union units needs a base of Zouaves for instance)
Because of that, IMHO, the Warlord sets wins over because it is much much easier for a new player to get the box and know what to do to get to playing.

I did actually wind up ordering some command groups from Front Rank and Perry to go with the giant pile of stuff I got from Warlord :)

@IanKHemm, I only meant "fluff" as in, historical background plus pull quotes plus pretty pictures of painted models :)

As an aside, I have been as hesitant to get into 28mm as I have been to start yet another rule set. These starter sets are very tempting though(Black Powder, Bolt Action etc). My issue is the size of the models vs. the range of fire means it's hard to get many units on the table. This is true for most eras even considering the range of a longbow for HYW/WotR. On top of that the added detail means they take longer to paint to a reasonable standard. This has kept me away from Perry's and Warlord figures so far. I'm sure that at some point I'll be pushed over the brink so I hope these type of sets keep coming.

@davbenbak that is an interesting point. If your play space is limited, then 6mm and 15mm makes more sense. For me, I don't mind abstracting the ranges at all – and in my mind, my 24-man 28mm model unit "takes up" the same space as, 650 men, so the 18" range feels less abstract. Just playing with bigger toys to represent large hosts of men.

Blimy, no cav. for the Brits. Blasphemy!

Hi, I've just ordered this for my son for xmas, and just noticed no command.
What's the cheapest way of getting at least standard bearers per battalion. The perry french command sprue is £8.00 GBP and I'd need two, plus British plus Hanover it soon adds up. I note victrix does sprues with multiple command figures, would that work, do you get left overs after building the victrix sets?
Can you just buy standard bearers and nothing else, even if metal?

HappyHiker
I'd be happy to send you some plastic command – I've got spare Perry British/French command figs coming out of my ears.

PM with what you need and address etc
Or contact me through here link

Wow thanks thats really generous of you. I'll pm you if I can work out how to do it???

edit…

Looks like we both need to be paid members to
send/receive PM's :-(

Email sent.

Your blog is amazing, seriously how many figures ?

Nice one Lord Hill, how goes your epic build?

HappyHiker, you're welcome but I haven't received any email – try again?
I don't know exactly how many figs – I don't dare count!

Jabba, the short answer is "slowly". I've been distracted by some French for the last few months. Recoat fatigue!

hmm that's odd, I used the email from your blog stapleton_cotton@ … Is that the right one ?

At the risk of some bot contacting, me maybe you could send me your email ? My address is steveculley at email.com. Change the at to @

Just a quick thank you to lord hill for sending me a whole bunch of command figures, it's going to be a busy xmas holiday!

You're welcome Happy Hiker.

If anyone else needs British plastic command (I have SO many drummers) do let me know.

On this theme, if anyone has any austrian shako heads, I'd be very interested – thanks!