Waterloo Campaign 2.0 - Beginnings

 This was my introduction to my first attempt at a one-table 'Hundred Days' campaign, about 3 years ago: I called it the 'Hundred Minutes Campaign':
A misnomer, as it took a whole lot more than 100 minutes just to prepare, but this is, as the title might lead you to guess, a cut down, laid back, bathtub in a shoebox version of the Hundred Days' Campaign. On one table. The whole thing. There was even a 'Battle of Quatre Bras' and  'Battle of Waterloo'. But there were a fair few other combats besides. This was another indulgence of an idea that has been with me now for several years.  

This time round I put a little more thought into the army composition and the rule set. 

The theatre - looking SW along the line of the 
Meuse and Sambre Rivers

Map and Table Set-up:

The table was set up on the basis of this hex-map.  There were some changes, mostly simplifications of road and river networks.  This time, not only the Meuse and Sambre Rivers appeared on the table, but also the Dyle, Dendre and Heure rivers. That still left a number of streams I might have added, had I enough river!

My table map.

The Armies:

In terms of figures, I had the idea of much larger army corps in terms of figures than I eventually ended up with.  But 9-12 infantry, 2 cavalry and 2 gunners for a 'standard' French Army Corps, though it could just 'fit' a hex grid area, was really too large, especially as the Allied formations (my thinking ran) would have to be larger.  There is another problem with this concept using figures: even at maybe half a dozen figures and a model cannon, the battles would be really be single army corps facing off.  But what that led to was plenty of action!

Allied Cavalry Corps marching through Ninove

Anglo-Dutch:
General Officer Commanding (GOC): Duke of Wellington

I Army Corps (at Enghien): 7 infantry, 1cannon, 2 gunners
II Army Corps (off map, at Ghent): 7 infantry, 1 cannon, 2 gunner
Reserve Corps (at Brussels): Duke of Wellington, 5 infantry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
Cavalry Corps (at Ninove): 7 cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunner

Anglo-Dutch Totals:
19 infantry, 7 cavalry, 4 cannon, 8 gunners, plus the Iron Duke in person.

Blucher surveying his II Army Corps marching 
through Namur

Prussian:
General Officer Commanding: General-Feldmarschall Prinz Blucher
I Army Corps (at Fleurus/Ligny): 5 infantry, 3 cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
II Army Corps (at Namur): Blucher, 6 infantry, 3 cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
III Army Corps (1 hex south of Ciney): 4 infantry, 2 cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
IV Army Corps (off map, at Liege): 5 infantry, 3 cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners...

Prussian Totals:
20 infantry, 11 cavalry, 4 cannon, 8 gunners, plus Marschall Vorwaerts himself

Allied Totals:
37 Infantry, 18 Cavalry, 8 cannon with 16 gunners. 
Leaders: Duke of Wellington and Generalfeldmarschall von Blucher.

The Imperial Guard, marching through Beaumont.
Ahead of them, II and III Corps. Off to the west, Marshal Ney, 
I Corps and IV Cavalry Corps. I Cav Corps heads towards
Soire-sur-Sambre

French Army:
In Command: Emperor Napoleon

Le Tondu

I Army Corps (at Mauberge): Marshal Ney, 5 infantry, 1 light cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
II Army Corps (north of Beaumont): 5 infantry, 1 light cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
III Army Corps (at Beaumont): 5 infantry, 1 light cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
IV Army Corps (at Laneffe): Marshal Grouchy, 5 infantry, 1 light cavalry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
VI Army Corps (entering table on road south of Beaumont): 4 infantry, 1 cannon, 2 gunners
Imperial Guard (on road just south of Beaumont): Emperor Napoleon, 6 infantry, 2 light cavalry, 2 heavy cavalry, 2 cannon, 4 gunners
I Cavalry Corps: 2 light cavalry (lancers)
II Cavalry Corps: 2 medium cavalry (dragoons)
III Cavalry Corps: 2 heavy cavalry (cuirassiers)
IV Cavalry Corps: 2 heavy cavalry (cuirassiers)

French Totals: 

30 infantry, 16 cavalry, 7 cannon, 14 gunners, plus, of course, Le Tondu.

Last time the Prussians were woefully underrepresented. This effort attempted to redress that issue, but it raised another. Those Allied Army Corps - Prussian and Anglo-Dutch - were rather bigger than the French, apart from the Imperial Guard. The Anglo-Dutch Horse were massed into the one cavalry corps; and I continued to field 2 figures in each of the four French cavalry corps.

Figure scaling to real numbers.
This looks very inconsistent, not to say weird, but it seemed to work with the rule set I adopted/ devised for this exercise:
Foot: 1 figure to 4000 men
Horse: 1 figure to 1500 men
Artillery: 1 figure represented about 20-25 guns, or maybe 500 gunners; 1 cannon to about 40-50 pieces.

Note that, although I mention light and heavy cavalry, and the Imperial Guard, I make no qualitative distinction in the allocation of combat dice. One might be tempted to add 1 extra combat dice for the Imperial Guard corps, and perhaps to subtract 1 from, say, the Prussian III and IV Corps, as having a goodish proportion of landwehr. I chose not to do so on this occasion, but it might be worth looking into some time.

Army Corps on the march occupied 2 or 3 road hexes. It was often the case - especially among the Prussians - that not the whole army corps might be involved in a given battle. This had an upside, even though it might not fully offset the downside. The downside was, of course, the absent figures that might have made up the numbers. The upside was that (a) losses were accrued only to the forces present, and (b) you still had the 'reserves' to fall back on or use later. That the losses were accrued only to the forces present meant that if you had but one cavalryman present, then, however many 'hits on cavalry' the enemy scored, one cavalryman was all that was lost.

On occasion I left off one each of horse, foot and guns with the effect that after battle, the formation still had all three arms available. 

French forces crossing the Sambre. First contact at
Charleroi (in the pic just beyond the orange roofed 
village of Fosse, where II Cavalry Corps has entered)

Battle of Charleroi: Lead elements of Prussian I Corps
clash with French IV Corps, led by Marshal Grouchy,
emerging from Charleroi.

The rule set I used for this campaign was one I have used before to test the idea of 'map war gaming' with figures.  Its inspiration of course comes from the Command and Colours/ Memoir '44 types of games.  Here's the link to that article - Sluggard Valley campaign - but as I have made a few small adjustments to the rules - most notably the inclusion of Army Commanders, I'll revisit them here.

Hundred Minute Campaign Rule Set:

1. Movement IGoUGo but each turn, dice for who goes first. Optional. For the first 'Hundred Minute' Campaign I made it simple IGoUGo, the French beginning. This time, the French moved first at Turn One; thereafter I diced for all three armies: French - white; Anglo-Dutch - red; Prussian - green. So it's more like IGoUGoEGo...

I leave it open whether one moves and fights each formation in turn, or moves them all before fighting the battles. Both have their points - to the extent that I do not believe I used the one or other system consistently throughout.  Your choice.

2. The 'Napoleon Rule' 

In the event of the French initiative roll tying with an Allied one, the French went ahead of that ally. Three times in this game, the French got tied scores. Two gave them 'first turn', the other kept them from going last. Any army commanded by Napoleon must have some kind of edge... 

2. Army Corps moved a maximum of 2 hexes along a road (1 hex cross country if forced to do so). Cavalry Corps move a maximum of 3 hexes along a road, including the artillery attached to the Anglo-Dutch Cavalry Corps. On road march a corps may occupy 2 or more road hexes. The Division-sized (2 -figure) French cavalry corps occupied just one hex even on the march.

3. Combat is joined by opposing forces in adjacent hexes.

4. Engaging or attacking the enemy counts as a 1-grid area move, as one side 'moves' into an enemy occupied grid area. The 'move' is notional, the attacking side remaining in the grid area it occupies at the outset of the battle, but with  the leading edge of some of the attacking elements pushed slightly over the hex-side into the battle hex.

Note that if an army corps was stretched along 2 road hexes, it may be only the lead half of the formation may engage in battle - attacking 'off the march', or being attacked on the march. Instead a corps might advance just one space, allowing the rear of the column, moving 2 spaces, to catch up. Then the whole might advance 1 hex and enter the enemy occupied hex to engage in battle.

5. So if an army corps moves 2 hexes to a point adjacent to an enemy held hex, there is no battle. With a 3-hex road move a cavalry corps could move two hexes then battle.

6. Battles between opposing forces in adjacent hexes are not compulsory. Nor is there a 'zone of control' to prevent movement from one adjacent hex-side to another. Recall that the playing area is very compressed from the 'real geography'.

7. Each side rolls one die per figure, plus one for each arm represented. If an army commander is present, add one further die to the combat allocation. Note that the Allied Armies each receive one army commander, the Duke of Wellington and Generalfeldmarschall von Blucher. The French army is commanded by the Emperor Napoleon, seconded by two wing commanders, Marshals Ney and Grouchy.

    Examples:
(i) An army corps of 4 infantry, 1 cavalry and 1 cannon (with gunner) rolls 9 dice: 1 for each of the 6 figures, plus 3 for the 3 separate arms represented.  
(ii) A French cavalry corps of 2 mounted figures rolls 3 dice: 1 for each of the mounted figures, plus 1 for the cavalry arm represented.
(iii) Generalfeldmarschall von Blucher, accompanying II Corps engages the enemy. II Corps then receives 4 (infantry) + 1 (cavalry) + 1 (cannon) + 3 (3 arms represented) + 1 (Blucher) = 10 combat dice.

8. An army attempting to force a river crossing halves its standard allocation of combat dice (rounded up).  For this campaign, there was no bonus for defending or penalty for attacking a 'town' grid area. (I did consider that perhaps some such rule might have applied to attacking Mons, Charleroi, Namur and Brussels, but decided that the battles would take place, as it were, in the fields outside of town. As it was there was considerable action around Charleroi.)

9. Combat
Combats are competitive; both sides roll -

A roll of '1' = enemy artillery hit
A roll of '2' = enemy cavalry hit

A roll of '3' = enemy cavalry hit
A roll of '4' = enemy infantry hit
A roll of '5' = enemy infantry hit
A roll of '6' = enemy infantry hit and 
hazard to army or wing commander if present.

Having rolled the dice, each die pip score is cancelled by a same pip score by the other, until only the unmatched scores remain. The remaining hits then result in figures being removed. A roll of '4' is not cancelled by a '5' roll, and both sides stand to lose an infantryman.

Note that the cavalry corps can be hurt only by rolls of 2 or 3 on the dice, and 1s if they have artillery present. That is why the tiny French cavalry corps are far from mere pinpricks; and also why the Anglo-Dutch cavalry corps is such a formidable formation!

Dice rolls for IV Corps vs (most of) I Corps (green dice).
Prussia has 4F, 2H and 1G present. 7 plus all three arms = 10 dice
France has 5F, 1H and 2G plus Grouchy = 9, plus 3 for 
all arms present = 12 dice. 

9A. Any excess 6s (i.e. not cancelled by an opposing 6) counts as a hit upon the commander and/or his staff. Roll a separate die. 
1 = commander unharmed (Staff officer gravely wounded beside him. 'By God, Sir! I've lost a leg!' 'By God, Sir! So you have!')
2 = commander unharmed (Hat acquires a musket bullet hole, becomes conversation piece for future family generations)
3 = commander unharmed (Spent musket ball raps harmlessly upon his sword hilt. Spannnnggg!)
4 = commander has horse killed under him, but otherwise unharmed (This twice happened to Blucher in this game. Narratively, it had to mean something!)
5 = commander receives an incapacitating or mortal wound and/or is captured
6 = commander is killed in action.

10.  Units that receive more losses than they inflict in terms of numbers of units, must retreat two grid areas or to a town, whichever is nearest. The reason for this is to allow defeated units to break clear of the victorious enemy, which, following up (a voluntary option), can reach the adjacent grid area, but not bring on an immediate battle.  See Rule 4.

11. Attrition.
At the end of each move, or perhaps a fixed number of moves (IGoUGoEGo triples), the losses are totted up on both sides, and each receives back, for each arm, half their overall losses.  Exact halves are rounded up for the infantry; down for the other arms. However the other arms my be grouped together for rounding purposes.
Example:
During the course of the day's fighting, the Prussian army loses 9 infantry, 3 cavalry and 3 gunners.
At nightfall, the Prussians receive back -
-  5 infantry (half rounded up)
+  1 cavalry
+ 1 gunner
+ the choice of 1 gunner or 1 cavalry.

Had Prussia lost 4 cavalry (instead of just the 3) then it would get back 2 cavalry, and 1 gunner (half of 3, rounded down).

This system seemed to work quite well, and something of an improvement over the system I used for Eckmuhl at the end of 2023. The campaign was well advanced before formations began to show serious signs of wear and tear. 

12. Loss of Commanders
Lost commanders are lost for good. That simply means that the extra die for battles at which they were present are no longer is available.

During the course of this campaign, the only commander who was never 'at hazard' was Napoleon himself. Of the other four, two were still in action at its end...

14. There will be occasions in which two (or more) separate formations will attack a single enemy formation. These battles are resolved severally. However the losses incurred in the first action will be removed before the second takes place.

15. Annihilation of formations
Late in the campaign a battle might result in the elimination of a whole formation (or what has been left of it). The figure losses are returned, but, instead of reconstituting the vanished formation, accrue to the nearest formation of the appropriate army as stragglers. The receiving formation becomes a consolidated corps.

This happened more than once, very late in the campaign.

16. Depleted formations may be combined/ consolidated with other (depleted) formations to for a single formation. The French Cavalry Corps may be so combined with each other, or with other corps. As this campaign neared its close this happened with more frequency.

17. Victory Conditions -
Not as simple as one might suppose. If the French capture Brussels and/or forces one or both Allied armies from the theatre map area, that would count strongly towards the victory. But the French must be able to trace a Line of Communications southward over the line of the Sambre River back into France. In this game, there was a large scale battle for Sambre river line that had a considerable impact upon the overall outcome.

The dice scores pared down. Three of the 3s
and one of the 5/6 rolls were redundant.
losses 5 to 1 - a  significant French victory!

The picture tells the story of the first action, at the end of 15th June, 1815. As there was but one French cavalry figure present, that was their sole loss. The Prussians also lose a cavalry figure, and all four infantry - the fifth 5 or 6 score being discarded. Five elements lost against one is a very considerable French victory. That Blucher was not present means the pair of sixes have no other significance.

To be continued...

About the little cartoons. I've copied them here from last time. I quite liked how the Duke of Wellington looks, considering that I have never mastered the art of caricature.