by Jim Owczarski, 23 August 2024
What, you thought I was done? No, just delayed. Many months and reasons have passed between the last iteration of this project and now, but they are all of little consequence. Rather, I thought we could turn our attention to an offering from a company that I will never tire of praising for its commitment to digital gaming and to supporting its customer base. Full disclosure, while I have never taken a check from Wargame Design Studio (WDS) or its predecessors, I have play tested a number of their offerings and have worked for games.
The Ruleset: Not a ruleset but a whole game; Campaign Waterloo from WDS which claims descent from Battleground 3: Waterloo , released nearly 30 years ago. It was released in a time when there must have been far fewer computer games because, per Wikipedia, in 1996, Computer Gaming World named it the 115th best game ever. Hard to imagine and I was already married by then.
Can I Still Buy a Copy?: Yes via digital download from its very own product page. Good citizenship demands I point out the company has regular annual sales and, if you check its website each week, it regularly offers a discount on a different game.
How Long Did It Take?: A bit more than six hours spread over three evenings. This even though the commanders on each side were able to move simultaneously. Quatre Bras at the battalion level is no small matter.
How’d It Play?:
Several observations are in order. First, as I have said and written on many occasions, while I am no coder, I will likely die not understanding why Dr. John Tiller was able to create a functional, robust multi-player structure for his games in a manner that seems to have eluded so many others. Not only PBEM, but live LAN games featuring multiple commanders per side, each of whom is assigned to a particular organization are possible.
I have it on good authority that the WDS ninjas are taking a look at that multi-player code to bring it up to date. Some of that is necessary as remote, live multi-player is only possible, at least as far as I have been able to determine, over a LAN spoofing software like the one we used, Hamachi. It is not a terrible struggle to use, but did require some trial and error to get matters working the way we wanted. You will see some of that in the video.
If you manage to watch all the videos, you will also see a bug that crept into the game that seemed to spawn a ludicrous number of supply wagons. Far from game-breaking, I gather all this is part of the review WDS is undertaking.
Second, WDS’ Napoleonic games, like many of their others, now come with a dizzying toolbox of optional rules. I am a veteran of a whole lot of gentlemanly discussions (never ‘fights’), about defensive fire phases, movement penalties, melee eliminations, &c. Very few of the more contentious — victory points for wagons are stupid; there, I said it — are hard coded into the game. Instead, whenever you and your opponent have a mind to play one of these, you had best first talk about which of the many optional rules you will use.
Third, this is a big scenario. OJ, one of our regulars, has said a number of times that this map is a striking contrast to the miniatures games we have played if only because it encompasses so much more of the battle space and involves so many units. Watching this scenario play out, I realized that we had arrived at or near the ragged edge of what a sane person is willing to do to replay a famous battle live and on-line. This from a group that has played through the Battle of Leipzig at brigade scale; twice. I fully intend to take a run at the combined Ligny and Quatre Bras scenarios, but that promises to be an endeavor. A good time, of course, but an endeavor nonetheless.
I fully intend to take a run at the combined Ligny and Quatre Bras scenarios, but that promises to be an endeavor. A good time, of course, but an endeavor nonetheless.
More broadly, this is a Napoleonic Campaigns game from WDS. This comes with a great many wonderful things and other things that have always been issues. The effort put towards developing this system over the past three decades will always impress me. Its graphics and interface continue to improve, if I will never understand the desire for 3D graphics. The underlying engine and data files (OOBs, weapon effectiveness table, &c.) are being regularly reviewed and, as written above, improvements could well be coming for multi-player. Efforts are also underway to make the many different titles in the system uniform, filing down the spikey bits created by different teams being involved in their creation.
There is still no morale above the battalion level which means units rout and rally too many times over and cause casualty results more suited to Verdun than Gemioncourt. I will not spoil the precise moment in the video, but there was a French unit that took such a punch it elicited gasps from those playing. I have gone into the data files and re-watched that moment a couple times and still cannot quite decide if I “buy” the outcome. And, while work continues on the computer opponent, it is not close to a match for even the slowest of humans.
In the end, this is, in an admittedly small field, easily the best Napoleonic game available on the PC. For all the hiccups and challenges we faced getting it up and running, live multi-player of this sort is a great pleasure and an experience more gamers should have. I am a miniatures gamer. If you want to dabble in hexes and counters on the PC, though, there is not a better choice.
And the battle? The French outperformed their historical counterparts, particularly in the center, but were shattered and worn, forcing that side of the field to concede defeat.
Current score: Allies: 5.5, French 1.5, and one Draw.
The first of the three videos is here
Some images from the game in progress:
click images to enlarge
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