A New History of Waterloo

I’m about half way through Alessandro Barbero’s book “The Battle: A New History of Waterloo.” It is a very readable book that is hard to put down. I can’t wait to play Waterloo again, the Pub Battles coverage is very accurate, and it will be fun playing it again with Napoleon’s plan. His plan was, as always, let’s attack and be prepared to strike wherever opportunity presents itself. He had no idea of Wellington’s defenses because they were all on reverse slopes. He did have the Grand Battery deploy in the center and shelled there, expecting a breakthrough, which d’Erlon’s Corps could exploit. Although Reille had the bigger Corps at the start of the campaign, after Ligny it was smaller than d’Erlon’s fresh I corps. If one was going to be a purist, a block would be switched from II Corps to I Corps, but that’s a small matter.

The cool thing about Pub Battles is that you can read the history of a battle and try out the General’s plans and such. With most detailed combat focused games you get too buried in the minutia to really try out the big picture plans. Plus, with most games it takes many hours of play to get through a battle. Typically, a quicker playing game sacrifices authenticity; Pub Battles focuses on real command concerns, and delivers the goods.

-Mike Strand

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