EDITOR'S NOTE: Bruce, who is hetman of the Edmonton Table Top Generals of Alberta, Canada, wrote in to tell of an interesting OTR variation. The scale is "upped"... a unit represents a division, rather than a brigade. Fight Waterloo in 3 hours. using OTR. The basic unit is the DIVISION. - made up of 4-8 1"-wide stands each. Napoleonic variant for OTR is used with the exception that musket range is only 1". Artillery has ranges of 2" for close/and up to 12", 16", and 20" for long ranges. We also play that a leader (Corps commander) cannot spend his last morale pass unless accompanied by the CinC. To slow the game down to a historic pace and to add some hard decision-making we only allow the British and the French to move a limited amount of divisions per turn according to the following schedule. The Prussians are under no such restricton. Turns British French 1-4 2 5 5-8 3 7 9-12 4 9 13-14 5 10 15-16 6 10 17-18 7 10 19-20 8 10 The French start with a Demoralization Level of 16. The British start at 19. The Prussians start at 7. An Army's Demoralization Level drops by I every time a morale test results in a "Stand - do nothing", or worse/and every lost melee. The DL drops by 2 when a unit is removed from the table through casualties or morale. In addition the British and French lose or gain DL points as they lose or re-take the following objectives. French British LaHaye Sainte 3 LaHaye Sainte 3 Placenoit 4 Hougomont 2 Labelle Alliance 3 Merberaine 2 Fichermont 2 Mont St. Jean 6 Note: each objective (except LaHaye Sainte for the French) is considered to be controlled by the force who gains/loses points for it. When an army's DL reaches 0, they cannot advance upon the enemy and take a -20 on all morale checks. The winner is the side who holds Mont St. Jean at the end of 20 turns. At the Canadian Wargamers Group's Calgary convention this October, the Waterloo scenario was played. For the first 10 turns, the battle was a replay of history. The French advanced along the whole front and were met oy stalwart Brits on the ridge. The only interesting wrinkle was that/on the far western flank, the French medium cavalry met and routed the Duke of Orange's conscripts, only to be routed themselves by a volley from atop the ridge. This seemed harmless enough at the time, but it meant that there was no effective threat to keep the British pinned west of Hougomont. By turn ten, both the British and French were down to 10 army morale points. However. the French had yet to take either Hougomont or LaHaye Saint. In fact, the small force in LaHaye Saint had inflicted a number of morale losses without taking one themselves, even though the commander refused to waste his morale passes on his forlorn hope. Turns 11 thru 16 really saw the Prussians put on the pressure. They threw themselves with reckless abandon on the right flank of the French. And although they could not break the Guard Corps sent against them, they were very successful in wearing off morale passes. Without the Guards to give the advance some punch, the British also caused the French army morale, and morale pass supply to dwindle. With 3 turns left/the Prussians had been pushed back and had an army morale of 2. The British still held the ridge and both chateaus, and had an army morale of 8, and the poor French were down to their last army morale point and all the Corps except the Guards were bereft of morale passes. Rather than suffer the final humiliation, Napoleon suggested a quick clean up and an advance to the lounge before last call. Is the game hopelessly unbalanced against the French? Well, no. Had the cavalry on the west flank stuck around/the British would have been in a sticky situation. The British also benefitted from some hot rolling for its units in both chateaus. Had LaHaye Saint fallen before turn 10/the Morale levels would have been French 13, Brits 7. With that advantage the French could waste a few morale rolls against the Prussians and save the morale passes and the Guards to use against the British. Napoleon's major fault seems to have been that he tried to engage the whole British line as soon a possible. When the Prussians showed up and forced the Guard into action, Napoleon had no reserve left with which to push forward the attack against Wellington. EDITOR'S NOTE: The order of battle Bruce supplied was rather interesting when looked at with regard to the restricted movement sequence; note that the chart in the text gave the number of divisions that were permitted to move each turn. In brief, the forces consisted of: French CORPS and NO 0F DIVISIONS I 5 II 3 VI 3 Guard 4 Total 15 BRITISH Uxbridge, Cavalry 2 Brunswick 3 Nassau 2 5th/6th 2 3rd 3 1st/4th 2 2nd 2 Total 1 PRUSSIAN Vanguard, Cavalry 2 Main Body 2 Rear 3 Total 7 Back to PW Review November 1988 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1988 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com