Bert: Wow, that game was fun to play! I feel a bit guilty about having won the game. Despite various mistakes that both of us committed, I think both players had made good enough moves to earn a win in this match. In the end, that last die roll, luckily fell my way.
Obviously, I think this game became quite a different match when Ed made a mistake in the east on the 1500 turn of June 17th. His inadvertent blunder allowed two 3-1 attacks unnecessarily and the dice fell my way with two DE results. That move and the results almost ended our game as Ed’s position was precarious. He made the correct response with some potentially last-ditch attempt to save the position with a couple of 1-2 attacks and the dice fell his way to prolong our game. From there, it seemed to become a free-for-all with both of us throwing major blows at one and another and both of us made mistakes as well as more last-ditch rolls that could have ended our game on multiple occasions.
Neither player gave up and the play was exciting, at least from my perspective. Throughout that end game, I kept my initial strategy in mind – play for attrition of the PAA forces. I feel that one of the best ways for the French to win in Waterloo is the high attrition strategy. It can almost be narrowed down as a math problem. There are 28 turns in the WBC version of the game and the PAA player starts out with 78 pieces before the bid. If the PAA side loses 2.79 pieces per turn, they will end up with none left and the French win the game. While it is not easy to make that happen, it can often work if it is employed early and throughout the game. This strategy involves taking a few high-risk attacks along with pushing positions that can force the PAA player to counter-attack- especially forcing losses via soak-offs and exchanges on their attacks.
Looking back, I did miss taking a couple of attacks that were available, especially that early 3-1 attack versus one of Ed’s 7-factor pieces in the Nivelles sector when I first broke through to the Y row. Overall, starting with the risky 3-1 attack on turn one, I pushed this envelope throughout the game. Early on, Ed showed restraint on counterattacking me which protected him from losing pieces on his own attacks. After the pivotal turn mentioned above, he pushed the counterattacks hard for the rest of the game. The problem for me is that the dice seemed to reward him with a bit unbalanced set of outcomes as he got an inordinate number of D Elim results and very few Exchange results when he did start counterattacking. I think that with a bit more balance on those attacks, and we would have seen the French finish off this game more easily as the additional PAA attrition would not have been easy to overcome.
We reached a point where the game was looking quite sad for my side, but you play the hand you are dealt and play on. Fortunately, the dice gave me lifelines on low odds attacks to keep my pulse beating. In my opinion, there was a point where the PAA could have gone conservative on the counterattacking and just focused on defending his position for the remainder of the game. My belief is that would have allowed him to win but almost just in time for my boys, the dice started evening up on his attacks and they yielded some needed DB2 and exchanges on his big attacks and AEs on his rolled soak-offs.
An important aspect of the attrition strategy is to drive the French advance to Mont St. Jean in order to split the PAA army. The vast number of wooded hexes to the north of that city make it quite difficult for them to defend both sectors. The French can sometimes focus most of their efforts, after achieving the split, to one side or the other if there are enough turns left to eliminate those forces and then exit units to take out the remaining army on the other side. This can be accomplished even if the French army is at a numerical disadvantage on the overall battlefield!
Ed brilliantly defended that Mont St. Jean section to where I was unable to ever get the split and hold it... until the final set of attacks. Ideally, the goal of the French is to gain that split as early as possible, typically before the IV Corps arrives in that area. I almost did this, but I think that mid-game set of D Elims on my forces on Ed’s attacks weakened my army sufficiently to prevent that goal from happening.
Finally, I was able to read Joe’s comments when the first day was sent out by Ed via email. After that, I decided to not read the rest of his feedback until after our game was over because I felt like the comments might influence my play. As a result, I am writing this last set of comments having read some of his feedback after our game ended. I think it was awesome to have him share his expertise throughout the game and I truly appreciate his candid feedback. I didn’t agree with everything just like I have no expectation that anyone should have agreed with my comments throughout this match. I did want to address a few of the points to offer my perspective on them:
· The early commitment of my large cavalry force was intentional and something that I would easily do again and repeatedly. In my opinion, the mobility of those units is precisely why they should be deployed to the west in the early game. Their mobility allows them to relatively easily be brought back to the center and east as needed after the early turns. For the most part, the PAA is able to clog up the Tilly Pass and the Quatre Bras heights for most of the first day and so having a bunch of cav units sitting behind the big infantry units adding little to the fight is a waste of the benefits they provide.
· My “delay” in getting infantry to the western sector was mostly due to that those pieces move slower. I intentionally diverted some force to the wooded hexes southeast of Nivelles, because this works in threatening a 3-1 attack when the PAA tries to defend against that path at Z35 or Y35. Also, I did have a slight delay because I wanted to make sure that I could effectively counterattack had Ed pursued an attack versus my cavalry that took the 3-1 attack on my first move.
· I made it clear from the beginning that my strategy was to cause the PAA as much attrition as possible as early as possible. It would have hurt had I rolled an exchange on that first attack, but I think it was worth it. My only real fear was an all-out counterattack to kill more of my cav units. I assessed that Ed was unlikely to do that while there are some others that I’ve played, who would have done that for sure. A battle at that point could have gone either way.
· The units that I sacrificed on day 3 to cause the IV Corps to be delayed in getting to the main front were pivotal in preventing the PAA from getting into ideal defensive positions earlier and I think were a key piece in allowing me to hang on and finally win the game. I think those units being alive and adding to my main front firepower would not have made up for the extra turn and likely two that their sacrifice gave me. Of course, it would have been even better if one of them had gotten a lucky DB2 result on one of Ed’s attacks. I guess I just need to let you decide how you’d play it out if you find yourself in that same situation.
In closing, thanks again for reading along. I sure hope that this labor of love helps you improve your own play and understand and appreciate how much fun this Waterloo game can be even though it is an “old” game. While I have been gaming at a pretty high level in a number of games for over 40 years now, Waterloo was not one of “my games” for those first 30+ years! I only started playing this game seriously once Ed started running these on-line tournaments. I studied the game replays that were published on this site between Joe and Marty and then Joe and Richard (all three brilliant gamers). I played more opponents that beat me pretty handily at some of the face-to-face tournaments. Each time I played, I learned more and utilized some of my own ideas that helped me to now be competitive against the best in this game. I still feel like I’m looking uphill at some of their skill, but even playing this game and reading the comments of the other guys will improve my play even more. I sure hope it does the same for you if you want to play this game at a high level. The game allows both sides to attack and defend and there are plenty of different strategies and tactics in this game to make it a joy to play. Good luck and enjoy your own gaming efforts!
Ed: I have never played a game that ended as this one did with both sides down to three units on the last turn. As I look back, I thought Bert played an excellent French game keeping the pressure on me across the board. I had a few missteps along the way, but none turned out to be a game changer in the end.
The real game changer in my opinion was the combination of a French 1-2 attack at Nivelles and the 2-1 attack across the Thiel River on the 16-1900 turn. I had counted on Bert being dissuaded from attacking at worse than 3-1 odds against my doubled defenses. I was very badly prepared for a French success in either one. The 1-2 attack resulted in an AE. But the success on Bert’s 2-1 attack (DB = DE) totally disrupted my Quatre Bras and Genappe River defenses. The probability of French success on one or both attacks was too high to leave for an aggressive French player. I should have been better prepared for a French success.
That fundamentally altered the course of the game. My Genappe River defense crumbled a few turns early which forced an early withdrawal toward Mt. St. Jean. My eastern defense was crumbling. But a couple of missteps by Bert and a nice streak of lucky attack results allowed me to get back in the game and become a favorite. But then just as I was feeling guilty about my luck, Bert had some nice luck with 1-2 exchanges against my heavies and a couple of 1-1 DE attacks against PAA stacks that evened up the game. It was a roller coaster of a game that came down to a few die rolls at the very end.
Joe: This final commentary is not going to be what any of our readers would reasonably expect to see at this stage in this project; nonetheless, it is in keeping with a personal habit of mine that I cultivated during the many years that I was actively competing. For want of a better term, I will refer to this as my "Butterfly Effect" approach to post-game analysis: which is to say, instead of revisiting the outcomes of major battles (always dubious, because the dice are innately capricious and unreliable), or the success or failure of large-scale maneuvers (also questionable, because "big" moves inevitably provoke "big" responses from one's opponents), I long ago found it more useful to look closely at my (and my opponent's) early game, often quasi-automatic, decisions. These are the type of player choices that, although considered fairly inconsequential at the time, somehow – when later scrutinized closely – seem to contribute, all too often, to completely unexpected, and even game-changing outcomes. That said, what follows are my admittedly subjective thoughts on what I consider to be the key inflection point in this game: and one that I don't think any of us, me included, recognized at the time.
"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end." Helmuth von Moltke
Prior to the start of this championship match, I'm pretty sure that both Bert Schoose and Ed Menzel were expecting a challenging contest that, nonetheless, would probably still hew fairly closely to the familiar flow and rhythm of a conventional WATERLOO game. I know that I was. After all, both tournament finalists were seasoned Avalon Hill classics experts with decades of experience, and both had already won numerous war gaming championships (both face-to-face and PBeM) in the course of many past tournaments. This competitive match-up was also interesting – at least to me – because of what I considered to be the subtle differences that separated these two adversaries' individual playing styles. In the case of Bert (the French), my own experiences from competing against him had convinced me that his play, while generally solid, could be unpredictable, and even unorthodox; and that he was also capable of mounting speculative, low-odds attacks when they were least expected. When it came to Ed (the PAA), his style – my having competed against him for many years – was very familiar to me. Ed was the more conservative of the two players, but he was still opportunistic and, I knew from personal experience, that, if he detected any exploitable weakness in his opponent's dispositions, he could reliably be counted on to attack immediately and relentlessly.
In view of all this, it is probably not surprising that the opening and early middle game moves of the two adversaries pretty much developed along familiar (and traditional) lines of play: the PAA player used sacrifice units to delay the advancing foe, and studiously avoided combat; the French commander, for his part, pushed north – as rapidly as prudence and the Allied player would allow – towards virtually all of the most promising avenues of advance (Braine le Comte, Nivelles, the Quatre Bras Gap, and the Tilly Corridor), but generally eschewed low-odds attacks against Allied blockers, and contented himself, instead, with picking-off the PAA sacrifice/delay units that were arranged, like "speed bumps," in his army's path.
Of course, a PAA strategy that relies exclusively on "delay and retreat," can only slow, not stop L'Armee du Nord's advance. Thus, it was not really surprising that – through a combination of speed, audacious maneuver, and multiple credible threats – the French player was able to "steal a march" on the PAA commander in the west and, by so doing, was able to push through the Nivelles forest gaps a couple of game turns ahead of schedule. However, while events in the western sector were rapidly becoming a cause for concern to the Allied player, it was actually a missed opportunity for a PAA attack in the Tilly Corridor – barely remarked on at the time – that, I sincerely believe, would ultimately turn out to be the critical inflection point in this contest: one that would – through the subsequent cascade of player actions, and reactions – completely alter the trajectory of this match, and transform it from a conventional, and relatively predictable, WATERLOO game, into an extraordinary and protracted slug fest (think the last act of ROCKY, the movie), that neither the two players, nor yours' truly, ever would have expected; and one that would not end until the afternoon of the 19th, by which time both armies had been reduced to three units apiece, and in which the side with fewer combat factors would actually win.
"Sometimes a single battle decides everything and sometimes, too, the slightest circumstance decides the issue of a battle. There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow." Napoleon Bonaparte
The specific decision – at least in my view – that would, bit by bit, gradually bend the narrative arc of this championship match in a completely unexpected direction was actually made by the PAA player during his portion of 16 Jun 1500 game turn. Since I commented, in some detail, on the advisability of this Allied Tilly attack during the course of my original turn-by-turn commentary, I will not revisit that discussion here. Instead, I will describe what, I think, would have likely been the initial repercussions of such a PAA attack, had it actually been made. First, even putting aside the 70% chance of eliminating Habert with the 5-1, the French Tilly detachment – even if reinforced by the units at Y19 – would still have been stalled on the "T" row for at least one more game turn, and that delay would have allowed both Stulpnagel and the Prussian III Hrs. Arty to move to straddle the Thil River, in their own turn, which would put them in a position to reinforce the Tilly Prussians, if needed. And while I can readily envision another one or two rounds of combat on this particular line, a precipitate PAA retreat – with a sacrifice/delay unit left behind as a rearguard – on the 1700 move, would pretty much have guaranteed that the French commander would not be able to launch a low-odds attack (2-1 or otherwise) against the Thil defenses until his 17 Jun 0700 move; nor would a French attack against the eastern Genappe, before the 17 Jun 0900 turn (at the earliest), have been very likely. Moreover, the benefits to the PAA player of a one or two turn delay in French operations in the east would have also directly impacted Allied offensive options in the west; to whit: such a delay would have made it possible for the Allies to launch at least one turn of coordinated Anglo-Allied/Prussian spoiling attacks at Nivelles, both to halt the advance of, and to inflict losses on, the French Left Wing, and all before the Prussian contingent would likely have been obliged to counter-march back towards Quatre Bras. In addition, the PAA decision not to fight in the Tilly Corridor, by allowing an early French bridgehead across the Thil River, guaranteed not only that the Genappe line would be rolled up two turns earlier than usual, but also that the Allied defense of the Dyle River would crumble ahead of schedule. And that's where I'll leave it: in all honesty, beyond these obvious initial outcomes, the subsequent effects that this decision might have had on the course of this particular game, is anybody's guess.
Finally, and on a completely different topic: I promised in my previous comments to share my views on the pros and cons of the French player sacrificing units (of any type) in order to slow the advance of the infantry component of the Prussian IVth Corps in its march towards Mont. Ste.-Jean. This is an intriguing question, and while there are doubtless situations in which this might actually be a reasonable option, I have personally never felt the need to resort to this gambit. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, there is my general disinclination to allow PAA reinforcements – whether Anglo-Allied or Prussian – to attack French units any earlier than absolutely necessary; and by offering up delay units, the French player is not only doing just that, but he is doing so without any hope of material compensation. Second, when it comes to the IVth Corps, itself, I remind myself that – short of blocking (with units and ZOCs) the actual board edge entry hexes – there really is no economical way to prevent the incoming Corps' cavalry units from detouring through Rosieres, and then on to Mont. Ste.-Jean. Of course, if the French player is willing to commit a substantial force of his own in order to block the Prussians, then an effective delay, of sorts, might be possible; however, its cost in numbers of units required, will usually be prohibitive. The other reason that I dislike the idea of sacrificing French units in order to slow the arrival of the incoming Prussian infantry, is that there are only five Prussian units at issue in the first place, and if two or three French units (preferably including the 4-6 and one or two 3-6s) hover just within range of the La Lasne River, then that French threat will usually be sufficient to pin at least two (and maybe three) of the incoming Prussian infantry units to the west bank of the river and away from the Mont. Ste.-Jean battlefield.