Sunday 7 December 2014

Waterloo Project: RHA at 1:3 .....well, almost!

I'm delighted to have the privilege of showing you Kevin East's latest efforts for his contribution to our La Haye Sainte scenario at 1:3 scale next Summer. This set is a bit special being an artillery battery rendered as a compromise between full numbers (should be about 60-70 figures representing about 200 men) and a suitably busy battery on the wargames table. Kevin tells the full story in his own words:

"Hi all, here’s the latest endeavor from my paint brush for the 1:3 Waterloo games we are putting on during next summer. A Royal Horse Artillery battery at our figure ratio. OK, I know I am missing a third limber (which will be coming from a different collector) and also Chris will be supplying another 6 mounted RHA riders and also a little ‘horse holding’ vignette similar to the one you see here. So once the other collaborators' figures are there then we will have the complete scene we intend.  (Ross's battery sited near the crossroads - CG)



Of course not all the figures will be on the wargames table at the same time,  unlike the complete group photo, as some represent the RHA limbered and in motion (i.e. mounted crew and limbers with cannon) . Horse holding will be there when the artillery are unlimbered and firing ( i.e. the crew dismounted and cannon removed from the limbers). Obvious really, but interesting to note the group photo could never be possible in the game. 



The figure manufacturers are mainly Foundry with pose conversions on a number of them, holding different items, moved arms, etc. This helps the overall look as otherwise too many would have had similar postures. There are also Perry figures; the smithy (which you will have seen before (kevin-forges-ahead)), one of the limbers and all the horses in the horse holding vignette – the latter being converted British Light Dragoon horses at standstill. I removed the reins and carbines by grinding and added strips of a ‘tomato puree’ tube flatted out for the Foundry rider to hold their reins. In this case the mix of the two manufacturers are fine I think. I managed to find an ammunition caisson made by that fantastic company  of all things that are wagon -   Westfalia Miniatures, which has three altered Foundry RHA crew with it. I need to gain a second one for the 1:3 Royal Foot Artillery I will be doing soon – more postage from Germany!

There is also a converted RHA officer rider as a casualty on a home made base similar to the ones that Warbases manufacture with a rotating numbered dial for casualty clarification. I showed this design to Warbases back in 2010 but felt that the 6mm depth (necessary for the 3x 2mm roundels) of stand they required was too deep for my use, and they then put the idea into manufacture. I am delighted they did so. Cool! However, I continue to manufacture my own at 4.5mm in depth!

The recent abundance of figures at 1:3 is doing little for my 1:20 ratio that I am used to! But I have worked out a cunning plan to gain use of the figures for what would be two 1:20 RHA batteries (that is six guns with four figures per gun). Fortunately Foundry’s provision of 3 free guns came when I purchased multiples of the same pack of RHA command…….very useful!  My two limber crews will do just  fine for this situation. I really don’t need another……honest!

I also include a couple of vignettes of rocket troops that were at Waterloo. Being lovely figures from Warlord games. I just couldn’t resist them so here they are. I will base the rocket ladder eventually after our games this summer. (A section of Whinyates battery with the small rockets will appear in our LHS scenario - CG)



Hope you like the photos!
Cheers. Kevin"

Yes, Kev I certainly did and they will bring our game an even more majestic feel once those guns come into action!
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Addendum - another addition to the set , Kevin has done a wrecked cannon to represent a damaged gun temporarily or permanently out of action, that's when we can use his field forge vignette!

Friday 5 December 2014

Waterloo Project: A bit of fun for the Season of Goodwill

Hopefully I'll put up some very fine photos soon of Kevin's latest work on the project but meanwhile....some idle banter and a chance to show your knowledge.
I got a Warlord Games newsletter this week advertising their rather super model of Marshal Ney. Too pricey for me so I forwarded the info to Kevin and Paul, my chief partners in our Waterloo project. I pointed out that a model of Ney will be needed for front line duty in my refight of the La Haye Sainte theatre of the battle. It turned out that Kevin alreday has two versions of Ney waiting to be painted, and so Paul said he would relegate his Ney to the French substitutes bench........

Before we go on have a look at this splendid painting by Mark Churms of our Waterloo Hero.
you can buy prints and originals of Mark's Work here
Mark Churms Napoleonic art

Now, in a whimsical mood, the football analogy got me thinking so I put forward a little idea.
What would be your dream team for the 1815 European Cup Final?
I start the ball rolling with the following:
 Goalkeeper - Arthur "Nosey" Wellesley (safe pair of hands, can be relied upon not to let anything cross the goal line)
Striker - Marshal "Vorwarts" Blucher (keeps on striking even when he's down)
Midfield general - Napoleon "Boney" Bonaparte (can devise and execute brilliant tactics on a good day)
Good all rounder -  Michel "Brave des Braves" Ney (tenacious in attack, stalwart in defence, but liable to risk a booking with erratic behaviour)
Defender - Marshal "Misunderstood" Grouchy (cautious going forward but a master in retreating to the goal line)
And paul added:
Left Winger - Jerome Bonaparte ( always calling for and hogging the ball...)

Any more suggestions?
Only one restriction:
Must have been alive at the start of the French invasion of Belgium on 15th June 1815, so sorry fans of Lasalle, Lannes, Berthier, Sir John Moore etc.
Readers can join in with team positions from Rugby, American Football, Aussie Rules Football etc, if more appropriate than "soccer".

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Normal service temporarily suspended

It's been a long time in coming and I've "bored for Britain" on the joys of architects, builders, ground source heat pumps, insulation, solar panels and sundry craftspersons, but the Duchess and I are finally moving (permanently we hope) as of next week. I thought on my wargaming blog it might be appropriate to show some photos of the space I've negotiated for myself on the ground floor.


This will be the first time in my married life I'll have had a space of my own dedicated to my hedonistic pastimes of wargaming, model making and painting pictures. Because it will have multiple uses my plan is not to have a large permanent wargames table but rather a series of semi permanent work tables and then lots of sturdy collapsible tables that can make up the desired table size. With any luck, allowing for the more rotund members of my group to get round it, we'll have enough space to do our Waterloo games next Summer on a minimum of 12 feet by 6 feet with sundry add-on bits depending on the scenario.

Of course it also has to house cabinets of models soldiers, cupboards of scenery and terrain boards  (stored in the roof space by the windows). The cold look of the tiles should be offset by the underfloor heating (so you'll be warm enough in stockinged feet, Pete!) but some rugs might help it feel softer. There is plenty of lighting provided by three flourescent lights, a bank of movable spotlights for the cabinets, and some LED down lights.

If the game gets boring the view from the windows is not bad - looking over one of Stroud's five beautiful valleys.
This is a photo looking down on the small area outside the back door, which on nice days is a sun-trap, facing South-west . We've had it landscaped and seeded to make a space I can work in the fresh air, but it will also make a nice breakout area during games for the players to discuss tactics etc.

There is never enough storage space so luckily I will have half the double garage to keep the less precious stuff.

There's always a down side isn't there? For us it's that the house is far from finished and when we move in there is an awful lot to do to make it habitable and before we can unpack and find homes for everything. Also, being way off the beaten track, getting decent internet is near impossible yet and I'm having to use a limited data package. I've no idea how severely I'll find my on-line presence curtailed and will be feeling my feet for a few weeks. Hence the title of this blog as I'm unlikely to have much time to post any news  or have anything worth showing for a while.

Also my email address, which I've had for about 12 years, will change (apparently it will still work for a few weeks) and I'll be notifying regular contacts, but if you want to know it just try the old one or post a request on here.

Thursday 25 September 2014

Waterloo Project: 188 in one go!

It was the other side of Summer when I first showed the blog followers my eclectic mob of 28mm figures making up the Luneburg Battalion.  I promised myself then that I would complete the paint job by the end of August, but real life has intervened too often for me to achieve that and I did it by 19th September instead.
Foreground figures by Victrix, painting, photo and digital effects by CG
Rather than detail my methods of painting etc, which is pretty standard, I thought readers might prefer a bit of concentration on my philosophy on painting a truly massive battalion.  My mantra was always "do it in one go", and thus I felt like the fraudulent hero of The Brothers Grimm tale of The_Valiant_Little_Tailor, who inscribed "Seven in one Blow" on his belt after killing 7 flies!  What I meant by "all in one go" was not getting distracted by trying to finish a small part of the whole "just to see what they would look like".   Some painters of big battalions advocate splitting the large unit into maybe dozens or scores of figures to paint with one colour at a time and then sequence them so one finishes a batch while the later ones are at different stages. But I knew if I did that I might be absolutely ages before finishing and my 3 month target would be totally out of reach.
This sequence shows the battalion in column of companies. The
typical formation for Allied battalions waiting behind the Mont St Jean crest

In this view from above you can see that I have spaced them by eye and
not by measuring the length of companies to leave space for the next
In my rules any wargamer who makes that same mistake will get in a mess!
As the Rifle company (A) breaks out to skirmish to the front ,the rest of
the companies right wheel on their centres to form line.
Whoops! C and D companies are going to collide with the one in front.
The only solution is for B and D Companies to sidestep to fit everyone in.
My approach was not just the same colour across all 188 but break that down into the same component with the same sized brush. So, for example,  188 black shakos and hats with a wide brush, 188 back packs (less a few not wearing them) with  the same brush, all the black cartridge boxes with a slightly smaller brush, then 376 cuffs and later 376 coat turnbacks. All the black straps supporting the back packs and rolled greatcoats with a thin brush, followed by the bayonet scabbards with the same one.....and so on
These three photos show the final line formation with one company as skirmishers

In this formation the line is about 38 inches long


After the first blog about the Luneburg battalion I was going with Kevin to Waterloo and knew I'd come back fired with enthusiasm, so fully expected to get stuck in during June. But when I came back I got drawn into banter on the AMG Forum about Windmill models and got commissioned to build some. So with the fine weather making good drying conditions I deferred my Luneburg duty. But I made real progress during July and August and tried to set myself at least an hour a day, often that first hour after breakfast when I was fresh and not  tempted to divert to other things. Some days I had the time to do a couple of hours at a stretch.
Just for fun here is the whole battalion in two deep line
(foreground figures by Essex Miniatures)

It is about 54 inches long!
My one concession to the batch concept was to tackle them by company. I explained the battalion make up in the original blog, and the companies were different sizes and with slightly different character  due to the pose and manufacturer, so I got to know them intimately. But I never deviated from the "one go" philosophy. For example A Company got all its musket stocks painted, then B Company, then C and finally D, so the whole 188 marched in step throughout the long drawn out process.
Here is the battalion in line 4 figures deep. The standard formation for British line units at Waterloo

When you go through this exercise you can realise why 4 ranks was favoured
by Wellington on the restricted battlefield frontage at Mont St Jean

This is about 27 inches long, which at our 1:3 game scale is approximately 80 metres.
The frontage is about 45 or so figures (approx 135 men) and by my reckoning
135 men shoulder to shoulder is 270 feet or about 80 metres.

But then I hit "the wall".

There must be something about the paint that keeps you going for I didn't seriously falter until I was applying the transfers. I have explained about making your own transfers in previous posts, and I suppose I'm mad but I have designed some very tiny components. In this case it was the Hanoverian white horse symbol for their back packs and shako plates.  The shako plates are only a couple of millimetres square and it was tedious in the extreme to cut them out with a sharp craft knife, put them in the water dish 10 at a time and then place each one carefully with a wet paint brush. I did A, B and C, .....got to stick at it ....see that light at the end of the tunnel....keep going Gregg....you can make it!
I thought Waterloo fans might like to see the 188 in two rank square.

Posssibly a bit difficult to reconcile with the scale ground area that should be
taken up but it looks good and is practical for a four company battalion



But I didn't.......    
      I  had got a batch of insulating polystrene out of the skip (dumpster) at our renovated house, and the Duchess and I were at B&Q DIY store so I bought wooden battens for my 600 mm MDF terrain tiles....and the weather was glorious....and I was reading one of my Stalingrad books...and the Duchess said I MUST use the polystyrene before we move house. So, four 1:144 scale Stalingrad terrain tiles later and D company shako plates finally got applied ....phew!!  After that the slightly larger back pack badges were easier.
A three rank square is rather more satisfying to the eye but takes a bit more organising to get balanced

Finally it was just basing and final varnishing  and adapting the rather nice Victrix flags and my big battalion was actually finished - and "all in one go".




Saturday 20 September 2014

Another Real Hussarette

One of the more enjoyable aspects of taking part in our West Country Waterloo Project is the excuse it has given me to re-read Waterloo books already in my collection and also seek out others which are either newer, or fascinatingly, very old.  Among the latter I received earlier this year helpful notifications from Amazon that I could cheaply download the eye witness accounts penned by Captain Mercer of the RHA and "A Voice from Waterloo" by Sergeant Major Edward Cotton. Since  my boyhood introduction to Napoleonic warfare these have been names to conjure with but never read except in extract from secondary sources.

For this blog I'm focusing on a telling sentence that once again shows we who are fascinated by a beautiful woman in fabulous military costume are not just pandering to flights of testosterone driven fantasy!

Edward Cotton, apart from being a participant during the battle in a British hussar regiment, spent much of his later life as a "tour guide" to the battlefield and his "Voice from Waterloo", although often a rather jingoistic and colourful account, is laced with an air of authenticity due to his anecdotes from veterans whom he met there. It is a recommended read by me for its terrific atmosphere and detail if not necessarily for its coherency of narrative.

Here is the relevant paragraph at 22% of the way through the book (who needs page numbers when you can change the font size? :-) )  The action bit is above La Haye Sainte probably about 2pm.

Readers may recall my previous account of a-real-hussarette and like that one this too poses questions which can't be answered. Was it her own uniform, or borrowed? What did it look like? Why was she in the army at all in 1815 and particularly taking part in a charge so near the English line that she got shot.  For those not familiar here are some pictures relating to the Hanoverian monument taken on my trip in June.
The Hanoverian monument itself

The view looking due West from the monument towards the Lion Mound -
effectively along the British crest line just in front of  the "elm tree crossroads"

From the monument it is a very short distance to La Haye Sainte
These photos show that our lady hussar was shot dead in the heart of the British/KGL position and proves her bravery, along with the thousands of other French persons who died striving to wrest Mont St Jean from the Allied grasp. So warlike Hussarettes is no longer just a fantasy.

All my studies aimed at recreating the 300 metres round LHS on the tabletop next year do not show any French Hussar Regiments in this vicinity. So I conclude she was either an aide/mistress of a senior French officer (see for example my original post about Madame Leberton lady-hussars-anyone), or merely a field wife who borrowed any uniform to join the ranks because she could not bear the thought of her (possibly cuirassier) husband dying and leaving her alone. There is a risk of letting it get to you as it sort of sums up the Napoleonic cause on that fateful day - immense bravery in the face of incredibly difficult odds. Despite all the busy traffic a visit to Waterloo can be very emotive. 

Any comments very welcome.

Friday 1 August 2014

Waterloo Project: 1:3 Second Test Game - "A Cloudburst of Cavalry"


Thanks to every one on this blog, and the AMG forum, who commented on the first-test-game. I hope you will enjoy seeing this one even more. Just to get started here is a sample.
British - Victrix painted by James Fergusson. Lancers - Perry painted by Kevin East. Photo by Kevin with digital effects by CG
For our 1:3 scale refight next year of the fighting round La Haye Sainte a big part of the fun and excitement will be how to represent the cavalry which were so critical at that part of the battlefield at various times from about 2 pm to 6pm. On the French side the 1st and 4th Cuirassiers and 2nd Dragoons were operating around the farm and up and down the slopes to the Elm tree crossroads; for the Allies we have mainly the British Lifeguards and KGL Light Dragoons. But of course we have to handle potential encounters with infantry too. In poor formations and taken by surprise there were the Luneburg battalion and the 5th and maybe 8th KGL Line, all destroyed by cavalry, as well as some of d'Erlon's French infantry being swept away by a tide of British dragoons. Then of course the stalwart squares have to be represented in the game without being either boring or too predictable.

Based on experience from the first game I decided to start this one off with various units already in very close proximity and having suffered either 10% or 20% casualties from fire on the approach to combat. This would help us test the morale rules and effects of attrition and disorder. It proved a good idea which got us into tense situations straight away and lots of varied action even though we only managed three game moves! More on that at the end.
Once more we cobbled together a makeshift basic battlefield approximately 6 feet square plus a little outlying table (on the right here) to accommodate a French Horse Artillery Battery and another out of shot, further back for French Foot Artillery.
Positions at the start Allies on the left, French on the right.
From behind the Allied ridge line. Foot Artillery battery in the foreground, then Line infantry in square. A Guards light company on the road and a Wing of 95th Rifles from farm out to the flank, with Royal Horse Artillery battery behind

From behind the French cavalry squadrons. We used what we had so from top left - Line Lancers, Chasseurs, then Guard Lancers behind  with Hussars behind them. A small squadron of Carabineers connects across to two squadrons of Dragoons ahead of a large one of Cuirassiers
I admit the above looks rather contrived but it was to test rules and formations and also simulate the smoke and mist haze which produced some situations on 18th June 1815 that wargamers would never willingly let happen, but we have to make them a possibility in our game.
Some closer views by Kevin of (mostly his) French cavalry,
today commanded by Richard Newcombe

First action was joined by testing the Chasseurs against a British square. 
 Both sides had 20% casualties already on the assumption of  cannon fire on the infantry and musketry on the cavalry. We know cavalry had very little chance of charging home on a good square but the "melee" dice are intended to reflect this and the cavalry lost enough to make their morale very poor, yet the infantry lost some too.
We should have some bodies really to represent all the cavalry casualties!
The outcome was that the cavalry rolled bad morale dice and fled the field ( they could rally off table) and the face of the square was left clear for French foot artillery to re-commence round shot fire from their off-field position. There were 3 model guns and a howitzer playing on this square and, after the first effect,  we had a 4,5,6 chance of a "second graze" bounce for ball in the muddy conditions and when this occurred the side companies and the colour party took casualties too.  Note this size square is only a "wing" or half battalion and made up of heterogenous units from larger scale games; in our refight most battalions will be about 75% larger.
At the same time the French Line Lancers braved some close range canister and ploughed into the Royal Foot Artillery battery. It was a foregone conclusion  and the surviving gunners were driven back onto their supporting teams with great loss.
 We deemed that the lancers would have their formation disrupted by going through the gun line but not suffer any morale detriment as they carried on to engage the fairly helpless teamsters.
The resulting losses destroyed the battery and what remained fled the field, leaving the elated lancers very disrupted and vulnerable if the initiative tokens fell right for the Allies.
Meanwhile losses had mounted on the British square who had been watching without any musketry targets as 95th Riflemen in the nearby wood used their longer range to pot at the Guard Lancers. A Morale check for the square forced a retreat and luckily they had the breathing space to form column, otherwise it could have been disaster. The Coldstream Guard Light Company is helping cover their retreat.
Why had the powerful Dutch and Polish lancers of the Guard not attacked earlier? The answer was that a lucky roundshot in the first move's salvo from the RFA battery had taken off the head of their commander. My WMaB1815 rules deliberately put great store on leaders so although their morale was sound they could not move forward until the Brigade commander got back to appoint a new leader.

Back up on the ridge top the initiative fell right for Kevin who had his Light Cavalry squadrons just off table at that point. They charged forward and the consequent morale check by the weakened Line Lancers was enough to see them scurrying back down hill without waiting to be sliced up.
British Light Dragoons and King's German Legion Hussars
Line Lancers scurrying back through a gap between the supporting squadrons
The road up the middle of the table, and the need to deploy cavalry away from the central farm effectively made two separate battles only connected by the wing of the 95th Rifles. Its three companies I'd  formed as one administrative unit of about 80 figures but with their own leaders so each company could perform independently if required. It took a bit of head scratching , and clarification of the "Disorder" status rules to make the best of this but I see it as an essential part of the transition from skirmish scale to "big game". The sizes of units combined with the terrain they try to occupy becomes much more taxing at this scale since very little is representational. This side of the battle opened with one Rifle company in skirmish line and the order of initiative was vital. It turned out that the French Dragoons moved first and the skirmishers were caught.
Perry plastic Dragoons by Richard Newcombe
Mixed manufacturer's 95th Rifles by CG
The Rifles fired first and the Dragoons took casualties but not enough to stop them so we fought through a melee in which, not surprisingly, the thin line of engaged Riflemen lost about half their figures. It wasn't a huge impact on the Wing as a whole and this company was able to withdraw at the double (being skirmishers - 120 paces per minute) to one side out of direct line of the cavalry advance. Kevin was able to bring them together with the reserve company and all formed a square near the walls of the farm. The IGO/UGO nature of the game may seem to give a rather staccato appearance to what should be a fluid movement, but what matters is the result and the "fog of war" we can't enjoy from our God-like wargamer stance. Put simply, heavy cavalry had suffered some losses but swept aside a skirmish line, the survivors of which ran away to reform with their mates. I think it worked OK so I'm going to celebrate with this brilliant photo by Kevin which I had fun digitally enhancing.
That mounted Major model is on loan from the Hanoverians till I convert something appropriate
Here's a photo of the RHA battery behind the Rifles which had already been taking out some of the cavalry as it approached.
RHA and photo by Kevin. We should really have twice as many gunners  at 1:3 so had to just
count them notionally. For the real game crews will be augmented by other project members. 
At this point Kevin was desperate to bring on his three squadrons of British Dragoons on his left flank but we had a good example of how the Initiative/Command system can catch you out if not careful. As Umpire I'd only given him one overall cavalry leader which he chose to use on the right flank. Each squadron had its own leader but poor Kev had stacked his up in squadron column and the Initiative number tokens fell in the wrong order. The consequence was that the French Dragoons lurched up the slope unopposed and could cross the hedge and were only then met by a single British squadron.

While this was going on Richard had eschewed the higher ground I had placed for his Horse Artillery in favour of limbering them up and bringing them onto the main table, clear of the cavalry squadrons where they could hammer the RHA battery with canister. The 95th Rifles square had conveniently got out of the way by retreating behind the farm when they saw the horse guns approaching.
A clear field of fire
Kevin has augmented his normal French HA crews models with extras  for this scale 
At that range the canister angle from all the French guns bracketed most of the British battery and quite a lot of casualties resulted including a team horse and rider just visible over the crest. Although the Artillery morale check was good Kevin still wanted to pull them back in view of the proximity of the cavalry, and that farm was becoming a useful safety barrier blocking line of sight.

Here's is one more photo to show that we had planned a lot more possibilities in that the French have two more infantry battalions to follow up the cavalry assault; here is one of them.

The British also had a Guards infantry battalion ready to come on via the road but we just ran out of time.
So we had planned to have about 1100 figures potentially in play but in fact about a third of them didn't make it onto the table in the time we had available - like the first game, about 4 hours play mixed with 3 more hours talking about rule mechanisms.  Only three complete turns were made so about 10-12 minutes "real time" and about 30-40 minutes in my "historical schedule". 

Kevin explains one of his movements to Richard
(A 1:100 model of the impending new Gregg dwelling on the mantelpiece) 
Nevertheless these three moves proved a lot to us. Getting stuck into the action straight away meant an awful lot happened and I was very pleased with the command/initiative system and movement. Morale testing is done "as it happens" and retreating/fleeing is a free move even though there is no such thing as free "space" - everything in the terrain is actual. This meant players had to really think like on the spot leaders about how to marshal their squadrons, companies, guns to have some effect, and in the right order, confounded by that accursed "fog of war" - random initiative tokens and morale checks.  We had beefed up small arms casualty infliction by introducing a "Very Close" range under 6 inches, and easier "to hit" dice, and improved the killing power of canister to penetrate three ranks of figures. Melee casualties were bloody without being too overwhelming. The Morale system also worked well with good or fresh units being unlikely to be checked, and weary or poorer ones having to worry if dice rolls were extreme. We will be trying one major morale change next time though in order to simplify record keeping and casualty number crunching. The latter can get difficult with such large units. We will need to get a bit more sophisticated  with status markers etc and I'm experimenting with the new ones from Wargamer Aide de Camp, but more on that in a future blog. 

As you can see from some photos the systems produced some sudden changes of fortune and on this scale large open spaces resulted. This felt right to me and I quote from Captain Kincaid's eye witness account of Waterloo from the sandpit near LHS when his Riflemen began to take a toll on Cuirassiers engaged with Allied Light Dragoons ".....when they instantly opened a terrific fire on the whole concern, sending both sides to flight; so that, on the small space of ground, within a hundred yards of us, where five thousand men had been fighting the instant before, there was now not a living soul to be seen".  

In the previous blog one reader very reasonably asked how we will cope with the timing to get the whole game done. My hope is based on the following:
- We will schedule two days over a weekend to play about 4 to 5 hours of historical time.
- so that means about 20 Moves
- there will be about 3000 figures in play but not all at once, over a table at least 12 feet x 6 feet plus extensions giving even more usable space.
- the command system means not every unit can be active every turn but at least one command from each side can play concurrently with two umpires adjudicating
- there will hopefully be about 5 wargamers per side so each will probably command only  2-3 major units at a time not the 7 to 10 in this test game.

I'll leave you with just one small part of the most amazing Waterloo Panorama painting, a memento from Kevin and my trip to the battlefield this June......I think we are getting it right.