WATERLOO WEEKENDER

[barr7430]

Chaps,

I really enjoyed out refight of Waterloo. The biggest turnout of Gentlemen yet and and one of the most exciting. I especially want to thank Bob for a tremendously well thought out and visually familiar table set up. I will remember for many a long day the sights of D'Erlon's Corps doing exactly what it should have done on June 18th 1815 AND the awesome vista of the Black Hordes of Prussians arriving in those huge winding columns beyond our right flank. Great banter in the bar afterwards and how will we top the combination of JM Barrie's birthplace, Ronald ' BONnie Scotland' Belford Scott, Bob's tales of throwing people over the side and WENDY (Adrian)

Here's to the DOUBLE HEADER: LIGNY & QUATRE BRAS

Precisely when are the LIGNY & SAMURAI games in next years calendar.. Dale still never told us!!!

[sharnydubs]

Another visually stunning game up to the normal standards. First time for me not to be in the thick of the action so interesting to watch the game dynamics and individual personalities.

Mike excelled this time with his dice throwing whilst Charles in his first outing with the LoGW successfully managed to roll just one 10 out of 52 dice when threatening with the Grande battery. It says much for Charles that he showed no frustration and just accepted the result.

Some frustration howvere on the East wing from the newly painted Prussians desperate to get into action but alas their input was too late to affect the overall outcome.

Dave O'Brien seemed to be in the thick of the action all weekend and played a pivotal role in assaulting the main allied ridges. Andy was ideally cast as the aggressive cavalry commander, Uxbridge.

An observation I would make is that we always finish our games mid Sunday afternoon with a good two moves still left to really finally determine the outcome. I'm not suggesting that we delay our finishing times beyond 3pm as the take down times and return travel times make that impractical. Perhaps we need to look more at getting stuck in as quickly as possible from the start. Remove some of the special events, have troops in advance positions on the battlefield, otherwise much of our infantry spends the entire game marching and not getting into any action. Realistic maybe but not always as satisfying for those players whose roles are on the finges of the activity. Just a thought .

I thought the open space worked much better for the cavalry this time. Lots of sweeping cavalry charges- cavalry vs cavalry, cavalry breaking squares, cavalry over running artillery batteries. And it was good to see that no-one got bogged down in siege tactics or trying to take over towns.

Barry's rules are becoming much easier for us all to understand now and I think the most recent modifications worked better. I still struggle with some of the support rules in the morale section but that may just be me. I would be happy if a raw 6 or 8 dice role was an automatic morale pass so that there is always a chance for a unit to stand no matter what has happened around them.

The Airlie works well for us as a venue although its service standards are slipping. The lack of lighting at the west end of the table was a real distraction. I was also slightly put off to see that the coffee cups weren't even removed by Sunday morning when we started day two. Minor gripes maybe but given the effort everyone puts in to presenting a visual display it would be nice to be able to see all of the figures!

Some lovely new painted units on display. Barry's Prussian artillery battery for Adrian, Kev and Adrians' new Prussians, Colin's Brunswickers, Dale's still drying Hougomont and Dave O'Briens excellent 1812 figures complete with a superb vignette. Also great to welcome Peter McC with his excellent collection of allied figures.

My thanks to Dale for organising again, Bob for the terrain co-ordination and Barry for handling all the OOB's and labels.

Peter

[obriendavid]

I totally agree Peter, the weekend was superb and a great way to celebrate my birthday. Perahps if we had taken an extra hour or so on the Friday night to layout most if not all the figures might have made a difference to the final outcome but then we would have missed all the fun of Adrian and Wendy in the bar. I hope your neck is feeling better? The game might have flowed slightly faster at first if it had only been the artillery that was restricted to half movement until the ground dried, I don't remember reading of troop movments being hampered. Having said that the battle might have been all over before the Prussian arrived if D'Erlon and Kellerman hadn't been hindered by the rain and a succession of bad movement dice.

Cheers
Dave

[barr7430]

All good points guys.. yes the Airlie did slip a little in terms of attention to detail but not enough to make any real difference (except for the permanent gloom over Hougomont...probably just the gunsmoke for the grand battery!). The rules are still developing and in some respects have become more sophisticated that I had ever intended.. remember they were actuall a one-off antidote to melt down by General de Brigade (which we suffered during Dresden). There will always be some aspects of a rule system that someone is not 100% happy with but I have not designed them to make everyone happy! I have tried to reflect :

Logic
Reality(as much as it can be represented with toys)
Common sense
Historical examples

The acid test is actually some of the extremely bizarre decisions and points of order challenges that you highly competitive and dare I say, credibility stretching LoGentlemen demand of the rules!!!!

Wheeling a cavalry brigade through two friendly squares to attempt to hit an enemy unit is really not a question that I should have to rule on too often but it does happen (and did at the weekend). That is where I get stretched a little because, application of common sense would in most cases eliminate totally the necessity for an Umpire to get involved in these kind of useless conversations and speed the whole process up.
The desire to win clouds people's judgment and if we were a bit more realistic sometimes, then the rules clarifications would not be necessary.

OK, off the soap box now but I think everyone will know what i mean.

These big events are really what is all about. We have a cracking bunch of guys, great venues, wonderful collections, great banter and social interaction.. the hobby doesn't get much better than this
Long live the LoGW!

[thinredline]

We only throw "dead uns over" the wall B

Gonna nickname Kellerman -"The Cat" pretty obvious why, but he still has six lives left.

The rules seem to be getting easier to understand - or maybe that is what they call "familiarity" or am I becoming more intelligent

My thanks to Paul & David for taking over command, they equitted
themselves with distinction - as would be expected -naturally.

We do seem to be getting these "little affairs" down to a tee, and already looking forward to the next un - ARRRRRRGH.

Thinredline

[kingsleypark]

Can I just add my thanks to all the lads who made me feel most welcome on Friday and Saturday. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to be there on Sunday to see the French victory come to fruition.

It was great to be part of such a large, visually stunning and impressive wargame. The standard of painting on some of the figures was a joy to behold and has whetted my appetite to get the paintbrushes out again (if I can find them!!).

Thanks again!

Vive L'Empereur!!

Dave M

[Peter McCarroll]

It was a super weekend and I would like to thank you all for letting me be part of it. It was great to play in such a large game with a good crowd and I really appreciate the huge organisational effort that was required to allow the weekend to run as smoothly as it did.

I can't wait to see Barry's photos so that I can relive the whole experience.

[barr7430]

Chaps,

I have about 80 good pics from the weekend. I don't want to clog up your in boxes so if you want some let me know which ones and I'll send them specifically. If you down load them directly from the site the image quality will not be as good as the original pix. I'll keep posting as the days go by so let me know whenever..

cheers

B

[obriendavid]

Chaps,
I have about 80 good pics from the weekend. I don't want to clog up your in boxes so if you want some let me know which ones and I'll send them specifically.
B

Hi Barry, I would appreciate it if you could send me the pics you took of my 1812 figures, the small preview shot you get on your camera looks a hundred times better than my feeble efforts.

Cheers
Dave

[barr7430]

I've got the gallery section going now in sub categories of two to three hours. The battle unfolds quite nicely. I think we'll get 6-8 pictures in each sub cat.

[obriendavid]

Barry, with all the spectacle and fun of the game I forgot to congratulate you on your rules. For such a massive game it seemed to run very smoothly and the times we did get you across to clarify things was really to keep the speed of the game going, we could have worked out the results for ourselves but it would have just taken longer. This was due mainly to lack ot practice with the rules and knowing where to find the info we were looking for rather than any problems with the rules themselves.

The only other problem was trying to keep Uxbridge under control and stick to historical tactics but that was nothing to do with a problem in the rules. The fact that he had managed to get Ponsonby, Vivian and Vandeleur killed off along with numerous brigade commanders didn't seem to dent his enthusiasm for getting stuck in. Surely a worthy opponent to face Kellerman.

The only special rule I think you should add is that I never have to dice for movement allocation. Rolling six 1's and 2's on the trot for movement is more than anyone should have to take Fortunately my dice rolling seemed to improve once we got stuck in with the bayonet.

Cheers
Dave

[barr7430]

Dave,

thanks very much re: rules comments. I reached for General de Brigade when I got home just to see if all of the MODS we we're introducing to my rules were starting to make it similar(in complexity terms) to GdB. I am pleased to say that even with all of our most recent amendements we still are no where near it

What we have achieved with these big games is a level of momentum which I think we'll find it hard to beat. I was trying to calculate the number of turns we managed. Did we start at 0700 hours game time?, three turns per game hour until about 1400 when we changed to 30 minute turns which we continued with till 1700 or 1730?

20minute turns(3 x 7 hours) = 21
30 minute turns(2 x 3 hours) = 6

Did we really managed 27 turns on that table

That is amazing.

Dale gave up his career as Gallery Slave Over-seer to Umpire!!!! He was getting to you a couple of times with his Hurry up Harry approach particularly rich because it was your birthday

Anyway, the dialogue post match has also been useful. Maybe on the big games(as Peter said) we could cut out some of the early events and get the troops on the table the night before.. if that had happened...

1. The Garde would have swept the Allies remaining divisions from the ridge.
2. You could have turned round and thumped the Prussians
3. I could have secured Plancenoit
4. We'd have offered terms to the British Guards Brigade

And still had time to eat a light supper in a cafe and then on to the theatre somewhere in central Bruxelles!!

[PaulMc]

Hi Chaps,

What a weekend! The most enjoyable wargame I've ever taken part in. Many thanks to everyone involved. I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Paul

[barr7430]

Reflecting on the weekend's experience I actually felt I learned a lot about the battle that I had never really appreciated before, stuff which is pretty difficult to get without physically playing the game. One of the most important things was actually having your Corps in the right place as the battle begun. The limited repositioning choices we were given on the eve of the battle, ie moving three Divisions, really helped our plan
Also, the distance that the Prussians had to cover even when they had arrived meant it was impossible for them to help the Allies who were by then really on the ropes. That was so frustrating for Adrian and Kevin.


A very significant comment from one of our Corps commanders (who had been totally absorbed in his own fight) was when he 'came up for air' and took a wander over to the opposite end of the battlefield...
"It's a whole different battle over here!".

How many of those poor blokes must have stood in the same spot all day that day just getting shot at and not having a clue what was really going on.

Everytime as CinC I got involved in pushing figures around I totally lost the 'big picture'.. a bit dangerous

These weekends are turning out to be educational as well as enjoyable!

[Anonymous]

Just to say that I have seen a copy of the Osprey Battle of Bosworth book and I can confirm I have seen a picture of the legless Sir Percival Thirlwall holding the Royal Standard although he does look as if he is standing in a - ( never doubted you for a second Adrian ) but I am still trying to track down missing Polish seamen from the 70's!
enjoyed the weekend as always, looking forward to seeing everybody again next year.
Kevin ( schnapps )