Waterloo sessions round 2 -- Commands and Colors Napoleonics this time

The second in a series of battles between Game Store Tony and yours truly covering the same historical ground (The I corps sector at Waterloo) using three different recent games, in this case Commands & Colors: Napoleonics.

Once again I took the part of the French and again my pregame plan was to make my main effort on the right, avoiding Hougoumont. In C&C:N, of course, you can have all the plans in the world, but if you don't have the cards you can't pull it off. As it happened, though, I DID get the cards.

After some back and forth bombardment that went all the French way (the exposed Dutch unit was eliminated despite pulling back to the ridge and the Britsh guns were reduced to one block and forced to retreat behind the ridge for safety) I started my move on the right with the right flank units stiffened by the Young Guard. Tony was no Wellington was was clearly unwilling to wait patiently for the French and the two side clashed in front of the ridge. Meanwhile another Dutch brigade made a foray around Hougoumont as well, although that came to a bad end from close-range French cannon fire.

The battling was bloody but the Young Guard settled into Papaeotte and refused to be moved out of it, leaving the French with a 6-4 edge in flags. Tony decided he had to pull back his decimated troops on that flank. With the pressure eased there was time for Napoleon to play Le Grande Maneuvre to move up several fresh units including, critically, the Guard Heavy Horse. The following turn the Guard Horse crashed into some Dutch light horse using the Cavalry Charge card. The poor light horse hardly knew what hit it as the French rolled SEVEN dice (4 blocks +1 French Guard +2 Cavalry Charge ) and three sabers wiped them out for Flag No. 7. The breakthrough took the Guard straight into that one-block British artillery unit behind the ridge and unsurprisingly it, too, couldn't deny a seven-die attack. Flag No. 8 and victory for the French again!

Meeting my Waterloo Part I - A Napoleon's War session report

Battle of Waterloo scenario setup

Game Store Tony and I embarked on a little project to play all three of the 2010 class of Napoloenic battle games riffing off the same historical scenario -- in this case the Battle of Waterloo.

We started with Napoleon's War - The 100 Days. I took the French while Tony took the Anglo-Allied side. While Tony was new to the game system, he has played quite a bit of the Commands & Colors system, especially Memoir' 44 and Battle Cry, so the basic concepts of this game were familar to him.

I decided to make my main effort on the right flank, basically the French I Corps sector. I did this in part because that's the zone featured in the scenarios from the other two games -- Commands & Colors: Napoleonics and Battles of Napoleon: The Eagle and the Lion -- and parttly because I think that sector is generally the most promising for the French in Waterllo battle games of any sort. I think Hougoumont, especially, is best avoided.

In this game that seemed a good call because Tony's first few moves were devoted to shoring up that flank, occupying the fortfified sites with guns, guys and generals and just making it very unappetizing to go that way. Aside from a stray potshot there was no activity on the French Left at all.

Instead I pushed on the right, with my first target being that end-most Dutch infantry unit. As it turned out they made their square die roll and the charging cavalry and guns and infantry seemed to bounce off them like they were all Clark Kents.

So the battle on that side ebbed and flowed, with counterthrust and melee. Soon some Prussians joined in,a s did the French Guard and other troops and by turn 12 the French were on the verge of defeat, with the victory point score at 6-5 in the Prussian-Anglo-Allied favor. As the British only needed 7 VP to win this was looking pretty bad for ol' Nappy. As a matter of fact it came down to one die roll that turn, as a Prussian horse unit charged some French guns and killed 1 of the 2 cannons! Even worse, a Prussian unit had stolen a march on Napoleon and was one double-time move away from capturing Placenoit! Placenoit is worth 3 victory points for the British.

So it came down to the French needing to win on their half of Turn 13 if they were to win at all. A blast from the surviving gun at the adjacent Prussian cavalry missed entirely, but Tony's celebration was cut short when a second French gun unit rolled much better and rolled 2 sixes out of three dice and wiped the cavalry out. Victory Point No. 6!

So now it came down to the fate of Frischermont, where that very same Dutch infanrty unit that had shrugged off my first attacks had taken refuge. The French Guard heavy cavalry attacked first. It wasn't a charge, so the cavalry would only hit on 6s, but that turned out to be enough as one of the two dice WAS a six. So now the Dutch were down to one figure. A French infantry unit in Papelotte beat the pas de charge and spalshed across the Smohain stream. It had but one die to roll (-1 die for the fortified building and -1 die for the stream) but it was a shock attack so there was a 1/3 chance of success. Sure enough, a 6 was rolled, the last Dutch figure was removed for Victory Point No. 7 and the French infantry advanced into the building and captured Victory Point No. 8 for the win!

So overall a very close game.

It took just 10 minutes to set up the game and the entire episode lasted 82 minutes including setup, explaining the rules and a couple of brief interruptions while Tony attended to customers.

Running with the pack

Some specialization is probably unavoidable for wargamers, given the huge number of games published and the vast extent of potential topics. And I do have my fair share of relatively obscure interests such as the Spanish-American War and the battle history of the M3 Stuart tank.

But I have to admit that I do tend to run with the pack as far as my major interests in both wargaming and military history go. I have multiple games on many of the classic themes that have captured the interests of wargamers since the early days of Avalon Hill such as the Battle of the Bulge, D-Day, North Africa, the American Revolution, Midway and World War I aces.

And nowhere am I probably more of a pack runner than on the topics of Gettysburg and Waterloo. I am somewhat of a Civil War buff, but Gettysburg looms extra large in my collection of games and books even considering that. And I'm really not much of a Napoleonic fan at all -- I don't have much at all on that era.

So I even surprised myself a bit when I heard that Martin Wallace's new Gettysburg game was out and my first reaction was "Damn! And I don't even have it on preorder!"

My interest (and I'm obviously far from alone) in these two battles is hard to explain. While undoubtedly the most famous battles of their respective wars -- well-known even to the general public -- they can't be considered the most important battles of their time. And while exceptionally hard-fought, neither battle was a story of great generalship or maneuver.

But they do have drama and controversy galore and I'll admit a strange fascination with both. If I ever won the lottery I'd like nothing better than to recreate the Battle of Gettysburg from the point of view of several Gettysburg games, sort of a "series replay" between Meade and Lee, using their own words to describe the action.

I currently have the original Avalon Hill Gettysburg and the Smithsonian version. I ave SPI's quad Cemetery Hill and Columbia's block game Gettysburg: Badges of Courage. I have the hyper detailed This Hallowed Ground and the very abstract Dixie: Gettysburg. Undoubtedly the collection will soon include both Martin Wallace's Gettysburg as well as Bowen Simmons', Guns at Gettysburg.

My interest in Waterloo is just a tad less intense than Gettysburg, but it's still clearly there with more than a half-dozen games on the battle itself and a few about the whole Hundred days as well.

I don't know if it's a bad thing to run with the pack, but it's interesting to see how many variations on the theme are possible. My tastes and interests are wide, but I think it's good to have a few areas where you can plumb the depths as well.

Interesting imminent game release from Worthington Games

Worthington Games has a list of upcoming games available for pre-release sale prices on their Website, among them are this interesting one based on their popular Hold the Line system.

I've enjoyed that game systema lot and it makes an interesting contrast to the Commands & Colors: Napoleonics game due out soon from GMT.

The Worthington Games title will use plastic miniatures, shown above, for the battles in the Waterloo campaign. They are generic (as far as uniforms go) and will differ among the nationalities based on color (Red for Anglo-Allied, grey for Prussian and Blue for French), being similar to the approach used in Battle Cry and Memoir '44. The GMT game will presumably use wooden blocks, just as Commands & Colors: Ancients did, which will probably use stickers with the proper historical uniforms as well as block color to show the armies.

The Worthington series uses Command Action Points to limit how many units can be ordered, but players have wide lattitude on which units to order. In the C&C system cards not only limit how many units can get orders, but which ones. Both are good systems.

Martin Wallace's Waterloo: A dramatization of the famous battle in game terms

After playing a few times solitaire and against live opponents, I think a review of Martin Wallace's unusual Waterloo game is in order.

The game caused quite a stir when first announced, especially when Mr. Wallace indicated it was going to be a limited run special edition. Wallace is a justly well-regarded eurogame designer, with some big hits in that field, but Waterloo was his first foray into wargaming.

And there's no mistake, Waterloo is definitely a wargame, although a highly innovative one, and not a merely Waterloo-themed Martin Wallace game. This caused some confusion among many Wallace fans, it appears, and not a little disappointment, as the game wasn't what many of them were expecting. It's not some super-elegant, stripped down intriguing game-puzzle of the sort prized among many eurogamers. Waterloo is full of the sort of procedures, modifiers, exceptions and quirky rules wargamers are used to seeing as their games try to wrestle the chaos of battle into some sort of game system.

On the other hand, Waterloo is not a simulation. In his designer's notes (another wargame staple rarely seen in euros) Wallace expressly denies any simulation intent and says there was no attempt to, for example, make his Napoleonic meeples represent a certain number of troops each or specific military units. But his rules do take into account the different arms of Napoleonic era warfare (infantry, artillery and cavalry) and the importance of troop quality (various rules benefit or penalize Imperial Guard, British, Dutch and Prussian Landwehr, for example).

So if not purely a game, and yet not really a simulation, then what is it? I'd say it's a dramatization of the Battle of Waterloo in game form, more than anything else. I think this characterization accounts for some of the details that euro-conditioned Wallace fans may have found so off-putting. There's a lot of little modifiers to remember and some of them may not make a lot of sense in game terms, but do in dramatization terms. While Wallace denies that there's a simulation going on, his rules do penalize British guns -- not because they were poor, but because there actually were not so many of them as he provides. He explains that they were spread out across the British front, a well-known fact to wargamers. Likewise there are rules for forming squares. Not because they're particularly relevant from a simulation point of view (few wargames set at this level -- roughly brigades -- use squares. that was tactic for battalions) but because, I suspect the British squares at Waterloo were too famous and dramatic element to leave out.

The game itself is probably best known for its use of Napoleonic "Meeple-style" wooden figures to represent the leaders, cannons, cavalrymen and infantry troops. This is not the only unusual aspect of the game, or even the most innovative, but it does illustrate the fresh approach Wallace took to the whole wargame genre -- something that I think many wargamers may have been uncomfortable with. Wallace's design accomplishes many of the same design goals of traditional wargames but gets there in fresh ways. For example, casualty markers and step losses have been seen before, but not quite in the same way as Wallace's use of damage cubes which sort of float around until a moment of truth requires them to be allocated.

Some love the Meeples, some hate them, but they are different. Myself, I think they're charming but they're not just there for decoration. Wallace uses their physical characteristics to include more dramatic elements while avoiding a lot of messy markers or rules. The British troops famously lay down to avoid artillery fire -- the player can lay his meeples down for defensive benefit. Blown cavalry mounts figure in most accounts -- so players may find their fresh upright cavalry units reduced to a "tired" status and have to lay them on their side.

And so it goes throughout the design. Although eschewing the rigors of simulation pretension, the game falls well within the mainstream of Waterloo presentations. One can quibble with design points on simulation grounds, but the overall effect is not "off" in any major way, except perhaps for pacing. It seems to unfold a little too fast, but that may be a function of player inexperience. I think casualty rates may decline a bit as players learn how to avoid costly blunders.

And the game is as intertwined with the history that it represents as any detailed simulation might be, so it's far from treating its theme as a decorative device far removed from the core game elements. Treating all the strongholds alike would have been simpler, for example, but instead each of the three key natural bastions in front of Wellington's line -- Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte and Papelotte -- has its own flavor, based on their historical impact.

Martin Wallace's Waterloo, not unlike Bowen Simmons' equally fresh (although systemically quite different) Bonaparte at Marengo/Napoleon's Triumph, shows there are different ways to skin the cat of Napoleonic wargaming other than hexagons and cardboard counters. From a wargaming design perspective it's an interesting design that questions some conventions and assumptions underlying conventional wargames.

And from a game player's perspective, the game succeeds in providing a very intense and involving and dramatic experience that does evoke the colorful aspects of Waterloo. British squares and impetuous cavalry charges, stalwart Prussians rushing to join the fray, Napoleon's grand battery blasting away and the Imperial Guard pressing forth to carry the day -- or perhaps La Garde Recule!

The physical presentation is absolutely first-rate, far above typical wargame fare and matching many of the nicer euros. As mentioned, the meeple troops will be a hurdle for some, but they do serve a useful game purpose while providing a distinctive look.

I'm very pleased with the game. I certainly wouldn't claim it's the ultimate Waterloo simulation and it's not the only Waterloo game I own. It might be the only Waterloo game in a more game-oriented collection, though, and I'd call that an excellent choice.

Martin Wallace's Waterloo session report No. 2

I had another rare Friday night off from work so I took advantage of that good fortune to head over to Windsor for the biweekly game session of the Central Connecticut Wargamers. I wasn't sure what I might get to play, but I brought four game I'd be interested in trying. The three that didn't get played this time were Onslaught, War of 1812 and Red Dragon Rising. Maybe next time.

The game that did get payed was Martin Wallace's Waterloo, which is what I played the last time I went to the CCW session.

I did better this time with the French, although still coming up short of victory at the end as the British took advantage of a couple of mistakes to win the battle of attrition. The final score was 22 to 17 casualties. While I reached the target of 13 British casualties before the British reached their target of 16, they were able to come back in a very bloody turn that saw every attempt of mine to stay ahead in the casualty count more than matched.

I think the French side is a bit more challenging for new players because there's a lot to figure out in this game, so I decided it was only fair for me to take the French side because I had played once before, while my opponent had not.

Once again I sent a flanking cavalry force around the Allied left, but I ended up not pressing that attack after an initial repulse. I suspect that is a dead end. Instead I concentrated on capturing the three strongpoints and eventually succeeded without too much loss. I committed some Guard to exploit that success, but I'm not sure that was wise as that exposed the Guard to losses and they count double for the casualty victory condition.

We found that attacking infantry has to be careful about being caught by cavalry counterattacks, both sides lose several brigades that way and I discovered that unsupported cannons were vulnerable as well. The British player in particular got a couple of good action draws that let him just cut through my artillery park without opposition. He ended up losing most of the force, but most of it was Prussian or cavalry and did not count for victory.

It was a very intense game and definitely provokes a strong desire to study it in order to do better. I think the Waterloo situation is inherently challenging for the French in any game on the topic. Usually the French have to get off to a good start in order to win. early missteps tend to snowball. I didn't feel satisfied with my progress during the first two turns. By the time I felt like I was hitting my stride the Prussians were starting to be an issue. Because the game is so different from usual wargame norms there's a pretty steep learning curve, but I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. I can't wait to play again.

WBC plans

I'm planning to be at the WBC for about three days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, in case anyone wants to get together for some FTF gaming. I'm not going too heavy on tournaments this year. I think I'm just going to play in the Memoir '44, Battle Line, Lost Cities and maybe Nuclear War tournaments. As none of those are lengthy games and I have no reason to think I'll see much success in any of them I should have plenty of time for FTF gaming.

I'll be bringing along Martin Wallace's Waterloo, Friedrich, Bonaparte at Marengo, Napoleon's Triumph and Axis & Allies War at Sea, but as always I'm willing to play almost anything.

Some more thoughts on Waterloo and other non-traditonal wargames

Actually, it even seems odd to use the word traditional when discussing a hobby that's a little over a half-century old, but most people will understand what I mean -- traditional being the hex-and-counter wargames inaugurated by Charles Roberts/Avalon Hill and made ubiquitous by James Dunnigan/SPI in the 1960s/70s/80s.

For many people hex-and-counter wargames are wargames and they pay little mind to other design choices or even disdain them.

On the other hand, there have always been other ways to skin that particular design cat. Many wargames from the hex-and-counter designers didn't use hexes at all, of course. Area movement and point-to-point maps have a long history in the hobby. And there have always been some games that were outside the main wargame design tradition, such as Kingmaker, Diplomacy, block wargames like Quebec 1759, Axis & Allies and the whole traditional miniatures line.

But for a long time hex-and-counter wargames were definitely where the action was design-wise. This provided many benefits, because the sharing of mechanics and design techniques within a limited universe of choices made it possible for wargamers to digest literally hundreds of wargames in a short period of time. A big draw for series games such as The Great Battles of the American Civil War, the various SPI quad games, The Gamers' various series (SCS,OCS,TCS,NBS etc.) etc. was that it allowed players to concentrate on the battle at hand instead of having to learn brand new game systems all the time.

On the other hand, this self-policing limitation on design tools did have some drawbacks. One of them is that not all situations lent themselves equally well to hex-and-counter wargames. Hexes have geometric limitations that made them problematic for linear warfare and tactical warfare at sea. Counters, being two-sided, imposed limits on fog of war or step reduction unless you added more counters to the pile. Zones of control, combat results tables and well-defined scales often brought anomalies or awkward compromises when applied to specific situations. And as time went on it seems as though hex-and-counter wargames had trouble recruiting new players, while the euro-style games attracted more interest.

Now, like any generalities, these kinds of statements obscure a host of counter examples. Hex-and-counter game manufacturers have gotten pretty adept at marketing their wares to the sort of p,layers who will find them interesting and the Internet has been a great aid. Players can find each other and game makers easily. Many hex-and-counter wargames have turned out to be well-suited for online play, so it's not all doom and gloom.

But at the same time, I am sensing a renewed interest in other design approaches. One very popular line of attack has been what are commonly called card-driven games, which use the detail and flexibility that cards can provide to bypass the chart-heavy approach of traditional wargame designs. Still, most of these designs are coming from h&c game companies and designers and still share many of their attributes, such as cardboard counters and even hexes.

There's a lot more interest in alternative design approaches. While both Axis & Allies and block wargames have been around for decades, both are showing new life these days.

And some designers have explored some completely different approaches to wargame design. Some notable recent examples include Friedrich, Bonaparte at Marengo and Napoleon's Triumph. And I put Martin Wallace's Waterloo in that category. Despite having little in common with a traditional hex-and-counter treatment of Waterloo, the game does good job of capturing the essential features of Napoleonic era combat and I think it's an instructive, as well as entertaining exercise, which is what a good wargame ought to be.

What will be interesting is seeing how Wallace and Bowen Simmons (designer of Bonaparte at Marengo and Napoleon's Triumph) come up with next. Both designers are reportedly working on a Gettysburg game, and both games are likely to appear in 2010. Back in the heyday of AH and SPI it wasn't uncommon to see both companies releasing competing visions of the same topic, so it's nice to see that sort of choice being offered again. The more the merrier.

Martin Wallace's Waterloo session report

This intrigued me from the moment I heard about it. Like Bowen Simmons' designs of Napoleon's Triumph and Bonaparte at Marengo, Martin Wallace's Waterloo is a wargame, but one completely outside the hex-and-counter wargame tradition. It takes a completely different tack from what we've seen before, yet succeeds in being an-honest-to-goodness wargame and not just a war-themed game.

Wallace's design notes emphasize that he didn't mean for it to be considered a simulation and eh wasn't too worried about coming up with an exact order of battle or making each piece represent a particular number of men. Yet the interaction between the arms and the relative strengths between the armies ended up seeming about right and is consistent with the judgements made in similar wargames.

As it turns out I had the chance to play Chris O. at the recent gathering of the Central Connecticut Wargamers. While I didn't know this, Chris had just gotten a copy and posted a request on the club email asking if anyone wanted to try it. I rarely have Friday nights off, but I happened to have this one off and brought my copy of Waterloo, also hoping to get in a game.

This made it possible to play and finish a game within the four hours we had because both of us were familiar with the rules. I think it would have been slower going if one of us had been required to try to teach the game as well as play it. While not a difficult game, the fact that it doesn't really share any of the usual hex-and-counter mechanics mean the learning curve was a little steeper than the usual, even for experienced wargamers.

The general course of the game is simple enough to relate. I drew the French, and I think my in experience with the game hurt a little bit, as the game system is designed to reward the proper execution of combined arms tactics but I wasn't quite sure how to bring everything together. I made pretty good progress on the French right, Anglo-Allied left in the first few hours, and also captured La Haye Sainte, but ended up butting my head up against Hougoumont rather badly.

When the Prussians arrived and Chris got more action discs he was able to take advantage of my unnecessarily heavy losses to push me over the victory point limit. The final score was 16 for the Allies and 10 for the French.

It was very instructive though and I have a lot of ideas for how I might do better the next time. It's a very entertaining game system, though and Chris was a great opponent as well, so while victory wasn't mine, the fun was.

Error in Waterloo's rules, or just awkward wording?

I'm not sure how often it will come up, but there is a possible contradiction between the rulebook and the player aid on when the initiative changes at 7 p.m., or perhaps just unclear wording

According to the rulebook, the French player keeps the initiative "If at the start of the 7 p.m. turn the French holds all three strongpoints."

The player aid states "The Allied player will take the the initiative if the French player does not control one of the three strongpoints."

I think it's trying to say the same thing, which is that the French must hold all three strongpoints in order to keep the initiative. That would be the historically correct interpretation. Hougomont never fell, but the French did occupy the other two.

But I could see a French rules lawyer arguing that he does control one strongpoint and therefore keeps the initiative. I think it's a tortured reading, but I've run into worse over the years.

Waterloo out of the box impressions

Game arrived today and I couldn't resist opening the box right away.

After looking it over most of the afternoon I have to say I am intrigued. It appears to be a pretty original approach to a wargame, reminding me in many ways of games such as Napoleon's Triumph, Friedrich or Hammer of the Scots. The components are fine-looking, in a euro sort of way (I don't mind the meeple troops, but they've gotten a very mixed reception among wargamers, it seems).

Indeed, BGG comments also seem to indicate that eurogamers also don't know quite what to make of it.

First off, despite physical appearances, and Martin Wallace's disclaimer that it's not an attempt at "simulation," let there be no mistake -- this is a wargame. It's probably even more firmly in the wargame camp than Borg's Commands & Colors system. And I think Wallace may be selling his design a little short. While he didn't do an SPI-style system analysis. detailed OB study or terrain walk, Waterloo is not some simplistic or stylistic war-themed game either.

Still, it may be too euro for most hex-and-counter lovers and too wargamey for Wallace's usual fans. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

My only component reservation on first glance is that the dark blue of the French Imperial Guard is hard to pick out from the black color of Prussian regulars under some light conditions. This may not turn out to be a problem in actual play, but it would have been better to have a little more separation in shade, I think.

Are hex-and-counter wargames played out?

For decades when someone said the word "wargames" the images that came to mind were dominated by cardboard counters moving across a hexagon grid. Most purpose-built introductory wargames, from Napoleon at Waterloo, through Drive on Metz to Target: Arnhem feature a hex map, cardboard counters and usually feature "standard" wargame mechanics such as zones of control and CRTs.

But isn't that paradigm pretty much played out at this point?

The appearance and excitement over the new Waterloo game from Warfrog Games prompted me to wonder if the old hex-and-counter wargame is creatively played out. It seems like most of the innovation and excitement in the hobby over the last decade or so has been outside the hex-and-counter format.

While the sometimes feature hexes and counters, the card-driven games that are so popular now more often feature area or point-to-point maps and the very first one, We the People, did not use hexes.

While block wargames have been around nearly as long as hex-and-counter games, there's no doubt they have never been more popular, with genre-originator Columbia Games finding success with titles such as Hammer of the Scots and being joined by GMT with games such as Europe Engulfed.

Even when they use hexes, most of today's most exciting wargames such as Memoir '44 or Tide of Iron don't use counters and they certainly don't use standard wargame conventions such as zones of control or attack=defense-movement factor counters.

And some of the most innovative wargames of recent times such as Bonaparte at Marengo don't use any recognizably classic wargame mechanics at all.

There are still some hex-and-counter games coming out, but once senses that they're not really breaking any new ground and are not forming the leading edge of game design.

Reviewing collectible games from a wargamer's perspective: Eagles Waterloo

I already reviewed Eagles Waterloo a few months ago and don't have anything differeng to say about that particular game. The review is here: http://pawnderings.blogspot.com/search/label/Eagles

Piecepack at Waterloo

Piecepack at Waterloo


An historical battle game using the Piecepack game system.

Pieces needed:

One piecepack set
Four small coins

Set up

Using the lined side of the tiles, set up a rectangular grid of 4 by 5 tiles creating a battle map of 8 x 10 squares. The Allied player will sit at one wide end, the French player at the other. Consider the map’s as being labeled from A to H starting at the Allied player’s side. Consider the rows as being labeled from 1 to 10, starting from the Allied player’s right. So the rightmost square on the Allied side of the map is A-1 and the rightmost square on the French side is H-10.

Place a coin, heads side up in Square A-3, this represents the village of Mont St. Jean and is a French objective. Place a second coin, heads side up, in square G-7. This represents the village of Plancenoit, and is the Allied objective.

Place a coin, tails side up, in square E-4. This represents the fortified chateau of Hougoumont and is also a French objective. Place the fourth coin, tails side up, in square G-3. This represents the walled farm of La Haye Saint, also a French objective.

Set aside the following pieces as the order of battle

Allied armies (12 pieces)

Red Pawn: Wellington
Red Star 5: British 1st & 3rd divisions (Cooke and Alten)
Red Star 4: British 5th & 6th divisions (Picton)
Red Star 3: Britsh 2nd & 4th divisions (Clinton)
Red Star 2: Dutch-Belgians and other allies
Red Star blank: Cavalry Reserve (Uxbridge)
Red Star symbol: Hougoumont garrison
Black pawn: Blucher
Black Moon 5: IV Prussian Corps (Bulow)
Black Moon 4: II Prussian Corps: (Pirch)
Black Moon 2: I Prussian Corps (-) (Steinmetz)
Black Moon blank: Prussian cavalry



French Army (11 pieces)
Green Pawn: Napoleon
Blue Pawn: Ney
Green crown 5: Old Guard
Green crown 4: Young Guard
Green crown 2: Guard cavalry
Green crown symbol: Guard artillery
Blue fleur 5: I Corps (D’Erlon)
Blue fleur 4: VI Corps (Lobau)
Blue fleur 3: II Corps (-) (Reille)
Blue fleur 2: II Corps
Blue fleur blank: III & IV Cavalry corps


How to win:

The French with by capturing all three objectives.

The Allies with by capturing their objective, eliminating Napoleon or if the French fail to capture all their objectives in 10 turns.


Starting setup:

Allies deploy first.
Set aside the five black pieces, they arrive later as reinforcements.

Place the Red star symbol in Hougoumont. Place the other six red pieces on or next to Hougoumont and La Haye Saint within stacking limits.

French deploy second, within two squares of Plancenoit, but NOT next to any Allied piece.

Sequence of Play:

French move
French combat
Allied move
Allied combat
Allied reinforcement
Advance turn marker

Place an unused marker in square G-1 and advance along the G row. The game ends when the marker moves off the map.


Movement

Leaders (pawns) and cavalry units (French green crown 2, all others blank pieces) can move two squares per turn. All other pieces move 1 square. Pieces can move through friendly pieces but must stop when moving next to enemy pieces. Pieces (except leader pawns) that begin a turn next to an enemy piece cannot move. Leader pawns can move their full allowance even when starting next to an enemy piece and need not stop when moving next to one. They cannot move through an enemy piece’s square.

Hidden information

Pieces are kept symbol side up (number side down) at all times except during combat. Players can examine their own pieces at any time, but can only examine enemy pieces during combat.

Stacking

Normal stacking is one piece per square. Leader pawns can stack with any non-leader piece, but there can be just one leader per square. Symbol pieces (Hougoumont garrison and French Guard artillery) don’t count for stacking. Therefore the maximum number of pieces in a square is three: One regular piece, one symbol piece and one leader pawn.

Combat

The player who just moved should designate all attacks by pointing the line on each piece at the target enemy piece. Every piece that starts a combat phase next to an enemy piece must take part in a combat against one of those pieces. More than one piece may attack a single defending piece.

After all attacks have been designated, the attacker may resolve the attacks in any order. To resolve an attack turn over the defending piece and all attacking pieces and add up the respective numerical values. Symbol and blanks are considered “0” at this point.

Roll one combat die plus additional dice as listed below and add those values to the total for the respective side in the combat. Any blanks rolled are considered “0” while each symbol roll allows one numerical result (either a piece value or another die roll at the player’s option) to count double. No numerical result can be more than doubled and excess doubles are lost.

In addition to the base combat roll, a side can roll an additional die for each of the following that applies:

Attacker:
One per eligible leader (Napoleon, Blucher or Ney) taking part in the combat.
One per symbol piece taking part in the combat

Defender

One per eligible leader (Napoleon or Wellington) taking part in the combat
One per symbol piece taking part in the combat
One per friendly piece not being attacked by any enemy piece that is next to an attacking piece involved in the combat.
One if the defending piece is in Hougoumont or La Haye Saint.

For example:

Napoleon, the Old Guard and Guard artillery in one square and Ney and the cavalry in a second square are attacking Hougoumnt, which has the garrison, the Dutch-Belgians and Wellington. Next to Ney but not being attacked, is the British Cavalry.
The French combat value is “5” (Old Guard) plus the value of three dice (Napoleon, Ney & Guard artillery).
The Allied combat value is “2” (DB) plus the value of four dice (Wellington, Hougoumont garrison, Hougoumont chateau and the unattacked British cavalry next to Ney)

Combat results:

Total the respective numbers, making note of the highest single undoubled numerical result. The higher number wins. Each piece on the losing side is retreated two squares in any direction by the victor, but cannot retreat next to an enemy piece (except for a lone leader). If there is no possible retreat path that does not pass next to an enemy piece other than a lone leader then the retreating piece is eliminated. If the winning side is the attacker then one attacking piece can enter the defending piece’s square. The winning side is entitled to eliminate one enemy piece on the losing side whose numerical value is equal to or less than the highest number rolled among the winning dice. If the results are exactly tied, after all modifiers, then the battle is a stalemate and there is no result.

Combat example continued.

Napoleon and his crew roll a “4,” a “2” and a symbol on their three dice. The French use the symbol to double the French Guard’s “5” so the French total is “16” (French Guard, Guard doubled, the 4 and the 2).
Wellington’s defenders roll symbol, symbol, symbol and 5. They use one symbol to double the 5 and the other to double the 2. The third symbol is wasted) The Allied total is a “14” so they lose. If they had won they could have eliminated either the French Guard or the cavalry because they 5 is equal to or higher than both French pieces. But they lost, so instead the French can eliminate the DB @ and force Wellington and the Hougoumont garrison to retreat two squares.

Eagles: Waterloo Review

Eagles: Waterloo was the last in Columbia Games' short-lived foray into collectible card games.

Like Dixie, it plays rather more like a boardgame than a card game, with most of the cards being used as unit and leader counters or terrain markers. Only the few "special" cards are played, card-like, to influence the action.

This isn't surprising, as the game system is an elaboration of the tactical battle subsystem used in Columbia campaign games like Bobby Lee and Napoleon.

Compared to the Dixie series, Eagles: Waterloo is more intricate, as befits the style of Napoleonic warfare, which involved richer interactions than the Civil War battlefield. Combined arms effects and differentiation between units is more important in Eagles. The Civil War battlefield was an infantry fight, with artillery and cavalry playing subordinate roles. Most of the infantry was armed and trained the same as well, so Dixie could treat all of them as similar, with the only differences being size and (at Gettysburg) morale.

In Eagles there are significant differences between types of cavalry and infantry, with the effects of lancers, Guards and other elites, British firepower and horse artillery being among the factors considered.

Units have a "Combat Values" based on their size, which controls how many dice they roll in combat. A CV 4 unit rolls 4 dice, for example. The effect of those dice depends on its "F" (firepower) value or "S" (shock) value. Eagles rules have never been revised, so they missed out on the recent rationalization of Columbia rules which universally switched from high being good to low being good, so an F3 still means 4-6 succeeds instead of the more intuitive 1-3 of newer games. Firepower is used for most fighting, while shock is reserved for certain special cases such as cavalry charges or infantry column assaults.

Rules factor in the effects of formations such as columns and squares and the more open nature of Waterloo compared to the American battlefields. In Eagles terrain cards can only hold one or two units and don't count for stacking, which creates a very different environment from the section-wide effect of Dixie terrain.

The battles in Eagles tend to be short, brutal affairs because of a major change in victory conditions. In Eagles a side wins the instant it controls one enemy sector, instead of the two required in Dixie. This also allows Eagles to dispense with the flanking rules of Dixie because the game ends as soon as the flanking condition is achieved.

Units also tend to be a little more fragile than Dixie units because there are a lot more low morale units, especially among the Prussians and Dutch-Belgians. Some of these are large CV4 or CV5 units that have morale levels of C or D, meaning they fail morale on a 2 or a 1, respectively. The "rally" special card has also been weakened. Instead of an automatic success, playing the rally card just gives you another chance to pass morale, not much of a benefit for a D unit. (It's best saved to mitigate a bad roll by one of your elite units.)

Eagles: Waterloo includes all four battles of the Waterloo campaign as well as a campaign version, so it actually covers about as much gaming ground as the Dixie series.

It plays enough like Dixie to be easy to learn while being different enough that you don't feel like you're just playing Dixie with prettier uniforms.

The collectible aspect of the game is very secondary, merely consisting of different colored borders to reflect rarity: Gold is rare, silver uncommon and bronze is common. This has absolutely no effect on play and, frankly, little effect on collectibility. I was quite satisfied collecting a complete set of uniforms/units without worrying about the color of the borders.

If, however, you do want all the borders to match, complete sets are still available from Columbia.

Eagles: Waterloo is a good light wargame providing the flavor of Napoleonic battles with an attractive presentation of uniform and OB details usually seen only in miniatures games. It plays brutally fast.

I think the game plays best without using the point system, as the point values don't match the game-effect value very well on many cards. Segregating the cards by the historical battle and then drawing randomly from that group provides a good mix of cards that's usually balanced enough. And if not, you can play again shortly.