Waterloo Boardgame

I have always wanted to refight the Battle of Waterloo but have finally accepted that in 28mm it is a pipe dream.

I have a very good boardgame from Columbia Games but I am always on the look out for another. Taff recently mentioned that he had a game called Waterloo Quelle Affaire.

Well, how is it?

The box cover is great, I read the intro on the back and panic set in. It mentions the French army deployed in front of the Allied Army near a small town of Waterloo on the 16th of June 1815. The 16th June !!!!!

I even checked if France were still using the Republic Calendar, nope that finished in 1806. How can a game producer get this simple fact so wrong and how good can the game be if this, the simplest of facts is wrong.

The rules are good but very poorly explained and laid out. This maybe due to English I guess, not being the designers first language. There are a number of videos on you tube from the designer, they are awful as well but there is another fantastic video with a full playthrough https://youtu.be/qZ1ZYu8fUJY which explains much of the confusion caused by the poorly written rules.

So the board and counters are great. There are actually 2 games included, one is the historical set up which sees your troops deployed historically, you have an activation deck which gets topped up, so you never know when you will get to use Ney to command troops or just as you are about to commit Napoleon your enemy plays a tactical card that may cause Napoleon to fall ill for the turn and only command a small part of his available troops. Counters represent divisions, one side has them at full strength the other when they have taken a hit.

All the time the French are having to balance taking the fight to the Allies before the Prussians turn up but the forces are spread out and could benefit from coordinating the attackers but that does take time to achieve.

The other game is about the night before and how you can deploy the troops!

Please persevere with the game, check out the errata and faqs on the Riverhorse website https://riverhorse.eu/downloads-errata-and-faqs/ as it clarifies some of the ambiguous wording and typo errors. Please get past these issues and you have a fantastic and superb value for money game. Crying out to be transferred to the table top with figures. I bought mine for £14.95 but it was originally on sale in The Works for a tenner when I first saw it.

I love the format and this game calls out for more famous battles. I would sign up now for them. I just hope they proof read better and have a better rules layout.