Early Saturday morning I woke up, made my way down to the miniatures hall and started setting up Waterloo. I knew it was going to be a full day of gaming. any Napoleonic rule set I had played or read before would require 2 days if not a week to play this size of a game. That being said, I knew we could get through the entire battle in one day using Empires at War.
The game had 10 players and everyone powered through the entire game. We kicked off at 10AM and - with a couple of breaks for food and such - we had a result by 10PM. 12 hours. Add about 1/5 hours before for setup and about 1 hour for cleanup and that makes for a long day. This is by far the largest wargame I've put on or played in. More than 4,500 28mm figures and 12 hours of gaming.
You can see the table setup below ...
8 foot wide by 18 foot long. A monster of a game! I was shocked by how close to history this all played out. The French darn near broke the allied center. Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte changed hands several times. The Imperial Guard has to be committed to try to break the allied center before the Prussians broke through at Papelotte. All across the table it was intense action on both sides of the table. Lots of pictures below ... while I took lots of pictures with my phone, John Lantz and Federico Casali also sent along pictures they took.
A quick video below shows the Volleyfire lights in action ...
On Sunday Matt Hilzendrager ran a fun AWI game using Brother Against Brother. I played on the British side. I had a lot of fun playing through this game. While the British has some successes early on, ultimately the Americans managed to pull out a victory.
Well, I can say I had a great weekend of gaming. I'm left with a lot on my mind for KublaCon. I don't think I can run Waterloo again so soon - I need a break before running it again. As such, for KublaCon I'll be likely doing one or two other games - right now I'm thinking of a French and Indian War game and perhaps a Bolt Action Modern game (Europe - Russia Resurgent). Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the pictures.