Prufrock's Wargaming Blog

Prufrock's Wargaming Blog

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Gaming Waterloo 200: a conundrum!

I was speaking last week to a couple of friends, and it turns out that they are interested in doing a 200th Anniversary refight of Waterloo. They are not hardcore gamers, and I will not have the time or finances to get figures painted, so my tentative plan is to cobble together some rules, make up a gameboard myself, and populate it with wooden counters of the 60mm-by-30mm, 100-yen-store-hardware-section variety.

The game needs to be able to accommodate 4 to 6 players, be played to completion in 2 to 3 hours, and give a reasonable feel for the historical battle. It would also be good if it were portable and durable, as it might make a nice change to play at a local drinking establishment rather than at my place.

My first thought was to use the Neil Thomas One-Hour Wargames rules, but as they require quite a bit of book keeping for casualties, twenty or so units a side might start to get a bit unwieldy.

Another option would be to adapt the Lost Battles fresh/spent concept and pull together rules of a more abstract nature, but the danger with abstraction of course is that it may not be quite so appealing to newer players.

A third option would be to use a simple boardgame and blow up the gameboard to the right size to fit with the wooden blocks.

Anyway, plenty to think about...

8 comments:

  1. I wonder whether the new Blucher game with the 100 days expansion might meet your needs. It is not the sort of thing I would go for but I do hear good things about it from reliable people. It sounds quite like what you want and a lot less work.

    And congratulations on the semi final, fantastic effort. A really exciting final lined up now. I am pinning all my hopes on Wales coming good later this year. They definitely have the best players in the NH but how they play as a team??

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    1. Many thanks for the suggestion, John. I'll take a look at Blucher and see if it might fit the bill.

      Yes, the cricket was a real thrill! Wonderful stuff, though I did feel sorry for the South Africans. Morne Morkel and Tahir were immense under pressure and you never like to see a champion like Steyn made to look mortal. But what a game from our men! Outstanding :)

      Wales will certainly be one of the teams to watch, but do they have what it takes to win three tough games in a row? As you say, it will come down to how they work as a team, and how much they can buy into playing as a collective. I think England are going to be very dangerous, and any one of them, Ireland, Wales, SA, NZ and Aus could take the trophy. I don't think France can win three in a row, but they'll be good for an upset or two, I'd say. Will be a very even competition, and hopefully the best WC yet!

      Cheers,
      Aaron

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  2. Aaron,
    if you make counters, this site might be of help
    http://www.juniorgeneral.org/load.php?Period=0
    and these rules might be of interest
    http://www.rpbergman.com/wargames/oneday.htm

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    1. Excellent! Thanks Bill, that looks very promising.

      Cheers,
      Aaron

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  3. Not hardcore gamers you say? Do you have a copy of Napoleon's Lats Battles quad game by SPI/TSR? It is a pretty easy game to play. You could adapt it to a free form miniatures game. It is like many earlier hex and counter games where you compute the odds, roll on a CRT and exchange/retreat/eliminate units based on the result. They are great fun.

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    1. I do, thanks John. It is a good option, but I want to avoid hex-and-countery-ZOC-retreat-eliminations and that kind of thing as much as possible so will be investigating other avenues as well!

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  4. Commands and Colors Napoleonics has a Waterloo scenario, I don't know if you could accommodate 4-5 players though.

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