Reporting on a campaign game – Wavre 1815

[Norm S]

I have had my head in a napoleonic campaign for almost three weeks. The ten players plot the movements on their maps and I transfer the various actions to the tabletop and the feed that back in.

anyway, each player is isolated from the other players and can only see their immediate part of the battlefield. So I have been running a campaign diary, so that at the end it can be posted and the players will grt an idea of the bigger picture.

that time has come. I have put the diary up as a blog post (be warned it is around 10,000 words long!)

if this sort of thing interests you, here is a link, you just need to supply the coffee 🙂

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2023/05/wavre-campaign-diary.html

 

[Steve Johnson]

Thanks for organising this Norm and I had great fun in taking part. For those that do read this, I was von Stulpnagel.

[Guy Farrish]

Great write up Norm!

This looks to have been a brilliantly immersive game for everyone concerned (and a lot of work for the Umpire!).

Dealing with the hindsight of everyone knowing (roughly at least) what is going on over at Mont St Jean/Belle Alliance is a problem but the VP changes seem to have worked to solve this. It does somewhat mean that the French have their options of strategic choice artificially limited (but in the light of Ney’s ear chewing after Quatre Bras/Ligny Grouchy did stick to the letter of his orders) and then the Prussians (not being told of the change in VPs) blinded to what may have been obvious to their actual counterparts. No matter – the greater picture was well served by the look of things.

Congratulations to all involved and thanks for such an enjoyable aar Norm.

[Chris Pringle]

Terrific, Norm. Well done to you and all your willing volunteers.

Tabletop historical refights are good fun and can teach many interesting lessons. However, their major shortcoming is the lack of fog of war. Games like your Wavre campaign are much better in that respect. It’s not something any of us could do every week or month because of the time it takes, but it’s well worth doing occasionally. Your campaign seems to have succeeded brilliantly, especially the ingenious changing victory conditions. Great job!

Chris

[Whirlwind]

That was fantastic Norm, very well done to you (and your players) – really enjoyed all of that.  And it has given me a lot of inspiration for how certain battles might be better re-configured as mini-campaigns.

[Author]

Posts