Back to Waterloo

Worthington’s Games take on the Waterloo campaign of 1815

The rear of the bo which should give you a flavour of what is to come

The 1815 Waterloo campaign is one of my perennial favourites with a fondness for it going back to the days of Airfix armies, Bruce Quarrie’s Airfix Magazine Guide and THAT film. There is something about it that never ceases to inspire me although in many ways elements of it have always remained tantalisingly out of reach - primarily I suppose because despite all of the ink that has been spilt over the years about the campaign and the battle we only have a series of educated guesses as to what happened and when. I have dabbled with using figures and played numerous board games on the subject over the years and even attempted a version using Waddington’s Campaign as the basis. I also nearly took part in a 54mm Little Wars inspired refight so it is safe to say my interest in Waterloo is well established.

I noticed the above game advertised on one of the Facebook Marketplace groups and so I immediately made a beeline for it. 

The game uses a system that is very much Command and Colours light in that there are similarities to Richard Borg’s design but without the use of command cards. Instead of blocks there are three armies made of up of generic looking figures presenting infantry, cavalry and artillery made from hard plastic and scaled at between 15mm and 20mm. The armies are red, blue and grey and I am pretty certain that a follow up volume included the Russians in Green and Austrians in white. I also believe that there was a standalone expansion book that covered the war in 1812 against the USA. I will check BoardGameGeek later for confirmation. The game contains map boards for Wavre, Ligny, Quatre Bras and Waterloo itself. There are also some counters for use to differentiate troop types - skirmishers, heavy cavalry, horse artillery, that sort of thing - as well as for the three main commanders. The rules are very straightforward and games are expected to take between an hour or two.

The scenario cards - note the reinforcements for Quatre Bras and Waterloo….

The figures

The rules, play sheet and the counters.

The use of generic troop types means that the figures (120 in all) would be eminently suitable for a Portable Wargame style set up and when used in conjunction with any of the commercially available plastic figures for the period a pretty nifty set could be raised. I am not about to do that anytime soon but it is handy to have the wherewithal if required. In the meantime though, I will be able to easily get my Napoleonic Waterloo period gaming fix in a simple but effective way.

Certainly this is one I am pleased to have in the collection and I will look to try and tack down the expansions etc in due course.