A look back at 100 Days Campiagning Nr. 1

Starting in about 2001 I had taken an interest in the Waterloo Campaign.

a proposed cover for my own variant of the DBA rules

It is the one 'Campaign' to feature first class units, well detailed accounts of the units and battles and a memorable set of commanders.

At the time I did not have a large game space, nor budget to commit to growing my collection at all.

I had also invested a bit of energy (about 7 years at that point) into 15mm game boards that were portable and designed to be flexible in putting on De Bellis Antiquitatis games in 15mm.  I had at least six full armies of the Rise of Rome era.  Indeed those troops still exist and have been added to since then.

I also had a copy of Avalon Hill's Napoleon, a board-game about the 100 days Campaign, designed by Dalgleish and would be the basis for the many amazing 'block games' designs of Columbia Games.

I used the map and some new 'pieces' that I designed to lay out the campaign situation, then had three players who were all relatively far apart from each other (indeed two of them were at least 2 time zones away) and could not otherwise game with each other.  We used email to send orders and the pictures of the battlefield.

a composite map of the region of Belgium and France of the Waterloo Campaign

I shall start here with a bit of an overview of the troops and some of the tools I used in the games, then delve into a fast summary of the game 'play'.

The troops on Parade:

Prussia:

Prussian Command and line foot

Prussian Horse and irregulars

The pictures are composite images built in a 'surround' image processor that would take 3-6 images and stitch them together.  There are also moving 'postcards' of self extracting images that use the fisheye effect to make the image more stable and less 'curved' then it appears in the still photos.

Anglo Dutch:

British Command and line

British Horse, artillery and Highland

The Dutch contingent

All the troops are standing on the terrain boards that I had made for the 15mm troops, I used the forts and towers that I had made for the fantasy and Ancient troops.  I also 'splurged' an bought a special manor house in 15mm and painted it up for use as a specific 'base' or built up area in the Napoleonic games.

France:

French Command & Artillery

French Horse

French Infantry of the Line

French Reserve Infantry

While I did up the primary forces for the 100 Days Campaign, I also grabbed a few troops and traded some other minis of equal value, so as to keep my metal buying costs down, for the other major nations of the Napoleonic era.

Austria:

Russia:

Spain:

These troops would then form the 'battlefield' when the commands met in combat.

What play-by-post or play-by-email games have you taken part in?

Let me know your thoughts of these parts and your experiences in long-distance games by way of comment.

Next up, the map layout of the first game from 2002.