Game of the Week, March 30-April 5

From March 30 through April 5, this week’s Game of the Week is Napoleonic Battles: Campaign Waterloo, featured at 25% off. It immerses players in Napoleon Bonaparte’s final campaign, from the French advance into Belgium to battles at Quatre Bras, Ligny, Wavre, and Waterloo. Few campaigns have matched its compressed time, high stakes, and historical significance.

The campaign was marked by urgency. Napoleon returned from Elba knowing time was limited, and his enemies knew it too. In days, armies marched, clashed, and sought to seize the initiative. It was a race against time, with missed chances, delayed orders, resistance, and rapid decisions shaping Europe’s fate. Campaign Waterloo captures this dramatic sequence, from the first French strike to the collapse of the Imperial cause.

The Waterloo Campaign: Napoleon’s Last Gamble

The Waterloo campaign belongs to the Hundred Days, the brief and dramatic period that began when Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to Paris on 20 March 1815. His reappearance overturned the post-1814 settlement almost overnight. On 25 March, Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia renewed their alliance and pledged major armies to bring him down once and for all. The wider coalition possessed overwhelming long-term strength, but not all of it was immediately ready. Russian and Austrian forces were still far away, giving Napoleon a short window in which speed and concentration might still produce a political and military miracle.

« Soldats ! c’est aujourd’hui l’anniversaire de Marengo et de Friedland, qui décida deux fois du destin de l’Europe. […] Marchons donc à leur rencontre ! Eux et nous, ne sommes-nous plus les mêmes hommes ? »

“Soldiers: This day is the anniversary of Marengo and Friedland, which twice decided the destiny of Europe. […] Let us, then, march to meet them. Are they and we no longer the same men?”

— Napoleon’s proclamation to the Armée du Nord on 14 June 1815

Napoleon understood that France could not win a long war of attrition against the combined powers of Europe. His best hope was to strike first in Belgium, where the nearest allied armies under the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher were deployed on a broad front. If he could drive between them, beat each in turn, and perhaps force a political shock before the rest of the coalition came forward, he might yet survive. It was a classic Napoleonic design: central position, rapid movement, and destruction in detail before the enemy could fully unite.

There was, however, urgency on both sides. Wellington and Blücher had agreed to support one another if either were attacked, but their armies were not ideal instruments. Wellington’s command was a multinational force of British, Dutch, Belgian, Hanoverian, Brunswick, and German troops, many of whom were inexperienced or of uncertain reliability. Blücher’s Prussians were numerous and aggressive, but they too included many new soldiers. Napoleon’s opponents were therefore vulnerable, but only if he moved quickly enough to keep them apart.

The campaign opened on 15 June, when Napoleon crossed into the southern Netherlands and drove his army into the gap between the Anglo-Allied and Prussian forces. The next day produced two linked battles whose relationship shaped everything that followed. At Ligny, Napoleon personally attacked Blücher and won his last victory, breaking the Prussian line late in the day after hard fighting. Yet the result was incomplete. Miscommunication and conflicting orders involving Drouet’s corps meant that French strength was not brought to bear as intended, and the Prussians escaped destruction. That mattered enormously, because a beaten enemy remained an army still capable of returning.

At Quatre Bras, meanwhile, Ney failed to seize the crossroads early and decisively enough. That allowed Wellington to feed troops into the fight and deny the French control of one of the campaign’s key points. Taken together, Ligny and Quatre Bras created an ambiguous outcome. Napoleon had defeated Blücher, but not ruined him. Ney had fought Wellington, but not driven him off. The campaign had advanced, but not yet reached the decisive separation on which Napoleon’s whole design depended.

The following day, 17 June, the two allied commanders made the decisions that would doom French hopes. Wellington withdrew north to the ridge near Mont-Saint-Jean, south of Waterloo, where he intended to make a stand. More importantly, the Prussians did not retreat eastward out of the campaign. Instead, they remained in communication with Wellington and moved in a way that preserved the possibility of mutual support. That choice, and the determination behind it, was one of the decisive strategic facts of the campaign. Napoleon now had to defeat Wellington before Blücher could reappear.

On 18 June, Waterloo became the climax not only of a battle, but of the entire Napoleonic era. Napoleon attacked Wellington’s line with roughly 72,000 men. Wellington’s army numbered about 68,000, with Blücher bringing roughly 45,000 Prussians into the wider struggle as the day developed. The French launched repeated attacks, but failed to break the Allied center. A crucial opportunity slipped away when a French force captured the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, yet support was not pushed forward strongly enough to turn that local success into a decisive rupture. At the same time, Napoleon had to divert strength to meet the growing Prussian pressure on his flank, and the campaign’s unresolved problems of the previous two days now returned in full force.

“I shall not do justice to my feelings or to Marshal Blücher and the Prussian army, if I do not attribute the successful result of this arduous day, to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them.”

— Wellington, official dispatch of 19 June 1815:

Once the final French assaults failed, the balance collapsed rapidly. Wellington advanced; the Prussians pressed harder; the French army retreated. Four days after the battle, Napoleon abdicated for the second and final time. Waterloo ended not just a campaign, but twenty-three years of recurrent war between France and the other great powers of Europe. That is what gives the 1815 campaign its enduring fascination. It is not merely a story of one famous battlefield. It is a study in timing, coordination, command friction, and the narrow margin between operational brilliance and strategic failure. Campaign Waterloo captures that larger story: not only the last battle, but the whole chain of movements and decisions that made it inevitable.

„Mein Freund,

die schönste Schlacht ist geschlagen. Der herrlichste Sieg ist erfochten; das Detaillierte wird folgen. Ich denke, die bonapartistische Geschichte ist nun wohl ziemlich zu Ende.
La Belle Alliance, den 19. früh. Ich kann nicht mehr schreiben, denn ich zittere an allen Gliedern; die Anstrengung war zu groß.“

“My friend,

The finest battle has been fought. The most glorious victory has been won; the detailed account will follow. I think the Bonapartist story is now pretty well at an end.
La Belle Alliance, early on the 19th. I cannot write any more, for I am trembling in every limb; the exertion was too great.”

— Marshal Blücher in a letter to Wellington

What's in the Game

• Campaign Waterloo includes 159 stand-alone scenarios covering all sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario plus specialized versions for both head-to-head play and vs. the computer AI.
• Several hypothetical actions based on alternative approach marches. Several of these scenarios pit the entire French Army against both the Anglo-Allies and the Prussians in a single grand battle of annihilation.
• Many company-scale scenarios to dig into the details of the various major battles.
• The campaign features an additional 145 scenarios, spanning both historical and hypothetical paths, to be played in the campaign setting. A total of 6 campaign options are offered in this title.
• The master map (224,000 hexes) includes all the significant locations fought over in the Waterloo campaign.
• The order of battle files cover the French and Coalition forces that participated in the campaign, with additional formations included for hypothetical scenarios.
• Campaign and Scenario Editors, which allow players to customize the game.
• Design notes about the production of the game, campaign notes, and a bibliography that includes the sources used by the design team to produce this game.
• Campaign Waterloo provides multiple play options, including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play, and two-player hot seat.

Book and Video Recommendations 

Here are some book recommendations to give you a deeper historical background, as well as some video documentaries and gameplay videos. Clicking the book cover brings you to Amazon.

Chandler, David G. Waterloo: The Hundred Days. Osprey, 1997.

Roberts, Andrew. Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble. HarperCollins, 2011

Adkin, Mark. The Waterloo Companion: The Complete Guide to History’s Most Famous Land Battle. Stackpole Books, 2001

Hussey, John. Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815. Volume I: From Elba to Ligny and Quatre Bras. Greenhill Books, 2019

Hussey, John. Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815. Volume II: From Waterloo to the Restoration of Peace in Europe. Greenhill Books, 2017

For those who prefer to watch, here's an Epic History video on the campaign:

Screenshots

Now for some screenshots from the game. As with the entire Napoleonic War series, this title has three 2D views and two 3D views to choose from. The game also features  3 different 2D icon sets.

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Napoleonic Battles: Campaign Waterloo  Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich historical gameplay at a very attractive price.