Merry Christmas everyone! Today we are off to Waterloo with Waterloo a la Carte

 Having tarted up my 6mm Napoleonic stuff a bit, I thought I'd try out a few rules to see if I fancy anything. I've always struggled a bit with Napoleonic rules, they are generally far too fiddly, but the ones aimed at full battles (my main area of interest) can also be far too abstract and bland. I quite like Command and Colours Napoleonics, but it suffers from the same issues of all the CnC games - it is almost impossible to play remotely, and I find the idea of units waltzing up to the enemy and attacking them with impunity a bit bizarre.

Anyway, one of our lockdwon Zoom games featured 'Quatre Bras a la Carte' from the Flags of Victory blog. It was an entertaining game with some interesting mechanisms, so I thought I'd try the Waterloo scenario.

Waterloo from the south. Hougoment to the left, La Haye Sainte in the centre and Papelotte to the right. Plancenoit is tucked in under the La Belle Alliance ridge. The first three areas are treated as Fortified, which gives a significant defensive bonus, as does Wellingtons ridge.

The French have to destroy seven Allied infantry units and exit five of their own off the north edge in 14 turns. Well, lets see how this goes. The 'units' are a bit abstract, but based on the unit count, I guess they represent around  8000 Infantry or 4000 Cavalry and maybe 100 guns each in this scenario.

I went with an approximation of the historical setup. Dutch Belgians in Papelotte, British and Dutch Belgians on the ridge behind along with the artillery. British Heavy Cavalry in reserve behind and Nosey on the ridge. La Haye Sainte is garrisoned by a light infantry unit (Rifles/Brunswickers) who get a significant morale boost in BUAs.

I put the Guards into Hougoment, and a mix of British and Dutch-Belgian units behind with light cavalry in reserve. There doesn't seem to by any scope in the scenario for offtable reserves as irl Wellington deeply echeloned this flank to avoid an outflanking manouvre. I basically ended up stringing units out in a long line, which maybe wasn't the best deployment as it blocked the retreat routes of the units in Hougoment and La Haye Sainte.  

The French were a bit less historical. tbh, I rather slung the French 'plan' together as I wanted to start pushing some lead around. This proved to be a mistake...

On the French right, their Chasseur unit went in the woods to benefit from the morale boost, all the French guns went up on the ridge to provide fire support, and two of their better infantry units backed by both units of Cuirassiers. 

On the left I had some vague ideas about pinning Hougoment and attacking La Haye Sainte (that often works in the Worthington Games Waterloo!). A couple more of the decent French units in the centre, and their two conscript units on the ridge above Hougoment. French Light cavalry on the extreme left. Again, tbh I'd have preferred to keep this in deep reserve. 

The game uses an Action Point system, a 4+D3 for the French, 3+D3 for the Allies until the Prussians roll up. The French rolled up 7AP and the right pushed up to Papelotte, supported by one of the Cuirassier units. The artillery could have fired, but as it only disrupts at long range and I wasn't in a position to attack, there was no point. 

With points to burn, I pushed a couple of units towards La Haye Sainte. I'd cleverly put the French guns to block the infantry move, so they ended up advancing in sequence. I'll maybe do that differently next time...

Over in the right the French had enough APs for a cavalry charge, this is a special form of attack which gets various bonuses, and I shot in a unit (a Corps?) of Cuirassiers with artillery support which disrupted the British unit on the ridge, then charged them. They took a hit but simply retreated and it left my cavalry blown on the ridge, adjacent to all those guns!

The Allied riposte was fairly devastating. The artillery blew my disrupted cavalry apart, and the Heavy Brigade charged the French infantry inflicting a hit.  Fresh units which take a hit can use it to retreat instead, but they chose to stand and take the hit as I didn't want to be charged again (cavalry can only charge if they don't start the turn adjacent to the enemy). The Dutch drove off the other French infantry, who chose to retreat.

The Voltigeurs managed to push the Dutch out of Papelotte while Ney rode over to rally the damaged infantry unit. Those blown cavalry look tempting....

The British cavalry are duly destroyed. So, that is a learning point, cavalry need a bit more prep and support before flinging them into the depth of the enemy position! Sadly the British now reoccupied the ridge and the Dutch pushed the Voltigeurs out of Papelotte. 

On the French turn, we pushed them out again, with artillery support. The Dutch troops aren't the best to put into the village, even dropping a combat dice, they are fairly easy to hit as their morale is poor.

I am not sure about all this retreating, it makes it very hard indeed for the French to actually destroy anyone as per their victory conditions.

Having taken Papelotte, I push against La Haye Sainte, including wheeling some of the French guns directly adjacent. This gives the guns a decent chance to hit, although in the buildings those light troops have a morale of 6 (ie I need 6s to hit them), so still pretty tough... the attack doesn't make much progress and my guns take a hit instead of retreating. 

The British light cavalry charges and my guns are destroyed. I push up some more infantry instead. The Dutch are pushed back again but no hits.

The British cavalry retires back behind the ridge again and I lose yet another infantry unit! The La Haye garrison rolled two hits, which is an instant rout, I think. On reflection, maybe it isn't? Need to think about that.

The first of the Imperial Guard roll up east of Plancenoit, and the Light cavalry march over from the left flank.

Wellington rides over to join the Dutch north of Papelotte and they just march back into position again.

British infantry advances off the ridge to make some room and provide flank support for La Haye. This is a mistake as they are bombarded by artillery then charged by the French cavalry.

The French Lancers are in turn despatched by another British cavalry charge. The Prussians are rolling up in strength now, and both the Imperial Guard units are on. The British retake Papelotte again, this is so frustrating. The Prussians are actually much easier to destroy than the British in their strong positions, so the Guard head off to duff them up.

One Prussian unit down as the Guard get stuck in.

Meanwhile Ney is roaming around behind Papelotte with the Voltigeurs to no apparent purpose.

The Guard obliterate another Prussian unit, unable to retreat. At this point it is impossible for the French to exit five infantry units from the north edge as they are all too far away, so the Emperor throws in the towel.

Well, that was a bit of a learning experience, not Napoleons finest hour! I'm not convinced I was playing the hit allocation correctly, but more fundamentally, I didn't come up with an initial plan for the French. The British position is really tough, and the French need to plan their attack before they deploy any troops. I made some silly mistakes and threw in the units piecemeal, which produced the expected result. I also basically threw away both sides cavalry in individual charges. It needs a bit more planning and prep than that. I did notice that no-one ever formed square, there didn't seem to be much point, but against massed cavalry, rather than individual units, it might be a useful thing to do.

I think that one warrants a re-play, and I'll think about the setup more beforehand. It is maybe still a bit too abstract? I'm not convinced about lumping all the guns together into huge Grand Batteries for each side either. Anyway, it rattled along quite fast once I got going as only half a dozen units activate at a time.