Monday, May 01, 2017

Hundred Days

I had the opportunity to present the whole of the Hundred Days at my son's school, working with a Grade 12 Military History class.

 With only four hours to run the whole game it was a non-stop run of actions and count-actions on the part of the three main commanders.

start map

the French only have a 'hint' of where the allies are ...

no matter to the French who devised a 1-2 punch process, where Grouchy was on the right flank going up the center towards Brussels and drawing as much early fire as possible, while Ney and Bonaparte delayed for the morning of the 15th of June, then hit hard on the road to Ghent.

Grouchy did his job well and ended up surrounded at Waterloo

Utterly crushed by both Anglo-Dutch and Prussian forces

There were no survivors

The victors then had the difficult job of re-organizing and re-deploying their armies to the flank in time to intercept Bonaparte

Ultimately, Uxbridge was unable to delay the advance of Bonaparte

Massive forces trapped Uxbridge at Ghent, then delivered a 35% loss to those forces in a forced river crossing

Wellington and Blucher were unable to reach the French main body as flank guard forces were dispatched to delay their columns
All the players were impressed with the system and the visual impact drew in many observers during the lunch break period
No word yet from the Military History teacher, I am hoping for an opportunity at a repeat performance next year?

4 comments:

Chasseur said...

Wow that's awesome, well done!

Chris Gregg said...

That all looks very good indeed - wish they'd taught me history like that - well done!

Archduke Piccolo said...

Now, that's what I'm talkin' about! I've been thinking about just that kind of wargame in recent times. Seeing it actually displayed realises an idea I've had for a ling time. Did this presentation use the Snappy Nappy game system or something a bit different?

MurdocK said...

Thank you gentlemen.

I used my own software to handle the specific positions of the troops, just like I do for the online Hundred Days Campaign I then used the GURPS Mass Combat system, which I did the workup for in the Campaign of Nations that I ran in 2012-2015 to handle the 'combats' in SCRUD for the combats which would permit the players to be more discerning regarding the combats.

Also, I think I could do this now without the computer support at all and have the paper maps show 'which troops' were marching 'where' and then have the "Eagles & Lions" blind markers put on the map to denote 'unknown' forces and allow for more deception via the use of 'blinds'.