Putting Physics into your Gaming, Part 2

Recapping from Part 1:

We defined our Wavre scenario by its Initial and its Boundary conditions.

Our Initial Conditions are

Time	French Army	Prussian Army
3pm	Grouchy's Wing	Thielmann's III Korps
	On Table	Behind the Dyle

The Boundary Conditions are

Time	Early afternoon 18th June to mid-morning 19th June
Game Map	the Dyle and the terrain Northwest of it
Victory	French decisively beating the Prussians

As discussed in Pt.1, this did not promise the game we wanted for our 200th anniversary refight. The players' mindset would not reflect that of the actual commanders, the action would have suspense but would be somewhat static, and we'd have the pause in the game that represents the night of the 18th-19th. So the idea was to explore what tweaking the Initial and Boundary conditions would change in the scenario.

The first thing to start playing with was the Inital Condition in time. The "literature review" had included some rather detailed accounts of the campaign, both recent (like Hofschroer's Wavre, Plancenoit and the Race to Paris, or Pierre de Wit's waterloo-campaign.nl ) and older ones like 19th century German studies on military history which have been digitized and are available online, so a rough timeline of where everyone was on the 18th and 19th June was easy to work out. Looking at the Prussian units' positions earlier and earlier in the day showed a more vulnerable deployment, with II Korps still Southeast of the Dyle and moving  through the III Korps, a move that had been completed by the time the Napoleon Returns scenario starts. That looked like a more interesting situation, the Prussian player would have to choose between fighting south of the river or withdrawing across it, and when. This is much closer to the dilemma Thielmann, the commander of III Korps, faced on the actual day when he saw the French appearing on his heels as he was preparing to march to Waterloo with the rest of the Prussian army. The only problem with the idea of using an earlier deployment was that the French would be off map!

Therefore it was time to tweak the Boundary Conditions as well. The question was simple, where would we have to move the borders of the game map for the French to arrive on it while the Prussians still had a significant part of their forces deployed on both sides of the river? The first French unit to make contact with the Prussians was Excelmans' II Cavalry Corps, acting as scouts and vanguard for Grouchy, so their position was going to be the guide. Working with Volley&Bayonet's one hour turn interval on a larger map, what emerged was a new setup, with a starting time of 12:00 and a board containing roughly equal stretches of both banks of the Dyle.
Here's the new map:

It still contains the most important geography of the battle, Wavre and Limalle and their bridges across the river, the high ground behind the town and the woods opposite and on the other bank. We've exchanged the wide stretch of ground beyond the town in the Prussian rear from the Napoleon Returns map for a large area to the southeast of the Dyle. The length of the river to be fought over is roughly the same, but now it's placed centrally on the table.
What changes significantly is the forces deployed on the map:

The Prussians have some additional troops (7th and 8th Brigades, the rearguard of the II Korps), but they're on the far bank with the river to their backs. The III Korps is not yet deployed to defend all the river crossings, and one of its brigades is actually marching away from the battlefield- on the actual day, a confusion in orders saw them marching with the II Korps to Waterloo. And the French are....nowhere to be seen! Excelmans' cavalry is on table, but the rest of Grouchy's troops will be arriving in the next few rounds in the enlarged area southeast of the Dyle. The early arrival of the French and the more mobile nature that the new setup leads to mean that there's plenty of action before nightfall, so we can limit the duration to the 18th June.

The only change to the Victory Conditions (the final Boundary Condition) was to define it more sharply. Since V&B includes a measure of "division exhaustion" to show units no longer being able to function offensively, the side that would exhaust more enemy units would be the winner.

Our game has been redefined!

The new Initial Conditions are

Time	French Army	Prussian Army
12am	Excelmans' Corps	Thielmann's III Korps
	On Table	Northwest of the Dyle
	Grouchy's Wing	II Korps Rearguard
	arriving as reinforcements after 1pm	Southeast of the Dyle

The new Boundary Conditions are

Time	12am to 8pm of the 18th June
Game Map	the terain Northwest and Southeast of Wavre
Victory	Exhaust more of the enemy divisions

And the changes seem to have worked. The game (actually played on the 20th June 2015!) saw the Prussian II Korps rearguard quickly legging it across the river, their compatriots in the III Korps rushing to properly set up to defend it, and the French racing forward to benefit from the confusion and trying to choose where to throw their main effort while still on the march. It was a fluid, intense game, and great fun.

So....yeah for Physics, I guess. Or, given that it was a close French victory, Vive la Physique!