On Sunday I was honoured to be amongst the first group of players to play Valkyrx’s Real-Time Waterloo, played on 8 of their Intelligent Wargames Tables (IWT)
You can read my description of their IWT system in a previous blog post. Essentially each ~2m hex tables is composed of 150+ 15cm hexes, and each hex has an NFC reader and a multi-colour light. Units (typically representing Brigades for Napoleonics) are a goodly number of 10mm miniatures on a 10cm square base.
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| The table in "add unit" mode, clearly showing the hex arrangement |
To play a wargame you just move the bases on the table, the hexes light to show illegal moves of when you’ve gone too far, and then once moves are complete the computer automatically works out all the firing and melee and then flashes lights to tell you who’s been involved and what their strength is at the end of the round. Each table also has a small touch-screen which allows you to interrogate units in more detail and to change formation and to limber/unlimbers guns.
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| One of the touch-screen controllers showing unit data |
I’ve played with both the fantasy system (GW style skirmishes) and the Napoleonic system before, but this was the first time that Valkyrx had tried to run such a large scale set-up and to run a whole historic battle in real-time. The real-time bit is something that Jon and Valkyrx has always been after, and in play each turn represents only 5 minutes of real battle, and players have 2 minutes per side to make their moves (IGOUGO) and then 1 minute for the computer to workout and display the results - so 5 minutes of real play should equal 5 minutes of historic “battle” time.
For this game we had about 4-5 players a side (essentially one per table/Corps), plus about half-a-dozen Valkyrx staff to help out and keep the tech running. There had been a test game about a month ago, that I’d missed, but Saturday was an “open house” session for everyone to practice with the tables and rules and to get a handle on how best to spend their 2 minutes effectively, and how to move the units so as to ensure that the NFC readers didn’t miss things or get confused. The scenario used a standard Waterloo Orbat, but we had free deployment as long as we didn’t go over our front line. The terrain was a reasonable representation of the battlefield, with all the main ridges marked by low hills (getting the NFC reader to work through them had been a real challenge), and all the main building complexes featured. No sign of streams or hedges and pretty billiard table like between the hills, but a good enough representation to have a sense of it being Waterloo. The table had though been laid out so that the Allied ridge was within about 3 hexes of the back of the table - so there was very little space for British manoeuvre, and no real option for a flanking attack by the French. The Prussians were assumed to be lurking the other side of the Bois de Paris at the far end of the table, and there were even rumours (that proved unfounded) that Grouchy might be around somewhere.
Come the day Juan (who I know from our Rose Hill games and Francis’ games) was Napoleon, I was Reille and given the left flank with orders to pin the British right, Martin was Lobau, keeping an eye out for the Prussians whilst also trying to sneak round the British left, whilst Theo had d’Erlon and Kellerman with the intention of smashing though the Allied line just at the E (ie French right) end of the ridge.
We just about started at the historic 11am, but a few glitches on the computer meant that it was probably half an hour or so before we really got into our stride. I sent a division or two under Ney to skirt around Hougoumont to threaten the Allied right, but although the whole of the end table was devoid of troops there were no VPs in the game so nothing to be gained by exiting off towards Brussels, so the Brits basically just sat on the end of the ridge, and the two of us faced off against each other for most of the game. Meanwhile the main fireworks were between Theo/d'Erlon and the left of the Allied line, with Martin/Lobau's cavalry sweeping round to join the fray. It took a lot of turns but eventually they managed to get a unit or two on the Allied table-edge - but the lack of depth meant that there was no real space to exploit and wrap the flank up.
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| The fighting on the Allied left |
In the centre Juan led the Imperial Guard cavalry and the Old Guard into an assault straight up the Brussel's road and into the Allied centre. With ENDEX looming the Allied right finally pushed forward and my Corps with only 2 cavalry units to support it was at the mercy of 7+ Allied cavalry units - guns don't seem to do a lot to charging infantry or cavalry in the these rules! The Prussians did finally arrive, so Lobau's troops mounted a hasty defence and the Chasseurs of the Guard were dispatched to rescue from a precarious position in La Belle Alliance!
A late computer glitch brought a slightly premature end to the game, but it's early days and this was a real test for the software (not least the somewhat chaotic movement of bases in the middle of the table) and we'd had many cracking hours gaming.
Being able to play a big Napoleonic wargame so quickly and without recourse to any rule set was quite something. Several people commented on how easy the grid system made things - no arguments or gaming over distances - but I'm used to that anyway with my rules. Not having to look up rules or do calculations was the real time-saver. Whether I felt more like a Corps commander is perhaps debatable, playing with more players so as to get a proper 3-tier model would be wonderful, and I know that Jon wanted to enforce message passing etc to get more of that role-play element in - something for the future perhaps. It also made me wonder if I could do an SLS-FastPlay set of my rules to try and get somewhere close to a similar result. I think Jon said we did 35 turns in a day - and we could perhaps have managed 50-60+ if we (and the computer) all knew what we were doing! (60 turns = 300 minutes = 5 hrs elapsed and game time). That compares to c.10-12 turns a day both for SLS and Francis' games!!
We were all up for a rematch to give the ever improving software another test in a few weeks if Jon lays a game on, and I can't wait to see where Jon and his team take this over the coming months and years.
Here are a couple of videos showing what happens during the 1 minute "results" phase, initially the lights flash red/green to show who is in combat/firing, then hold steady green then red to show who has one or lost that round, and then steady orange for weakened, flashing orange for badly damaged, and red for removed. Although the tablets show per man level casualties you never really look at that but just learn to read the colours on the table.
The fighting on the Allied left flank
The fighting in the Centre by La Haie Sainte
