"Ohain 1815 - a Waterloo campaign what-if?" Topic

What would have happened if Grouchy had done better and pushed harder after Wavre? What if he had been tasked with destroying the Prussians fleeing from Wavre, whilst also disrupting any reinforcements that the Allies might be sending? What if the Prussians had been busy saving their forces that survived Wavre and trying to stop any French pursuit towards the Allies' flanks and rear in and around Waterloo?

This what-if scenario was explored on "Wargaming Addict" Steve's wargames table recently. Nice full photo-AAR here, complete with insightful reflections as always:
link

This is the sequel to his and Dave's Wavre game:
link

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
link
bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com

Great idea. This is definitely on my "to game" list.

donald

Thanks for an interesting and well written AAR. I was inspired to try the BBB rules.

Since the rules are for the last half of the 19th century, what kind of adjustments to the rules are necessary to play the Napoleonic wars?
I just ordered the rules and the European Battles and wonder if I need anytihing more iot play the Napoleonic period?
Trygve

Trygve, thanks very much for ordering the rules. You don't need anything else; BBB works just fine for Napoleonics as it is (so long as you're comfortable with there being no explicit provision for forming squares, because of the scale of the game).

There's a growing collection of Napoleonic scenarios in the group files – Waterloo, Leipzig, Wagram etc; and folks are creating more all the time:
link

Chris

Thanks Chris, look forward to testing the system.
Trygve

Trygve, there are some modifications for BBB that some people have used but I think the rules work perfectly well for Napoleonics at the scale of the game we played. It was a tough challenge for Grouchy, he was able to beat up the Prussians in this game but failed to break through and disrupt the pursuit of Napoleon.

An interesting experience is to play Napoleonics with BBB one week and then go forward 100 years into the Balkans. The change in firepower and the need to change tactical thinking is a shock to the system!