Here’s the first of my two battle reports from the TFL Games Day, Operation Market Lardon: a game of Sharp Practice set not only in the Hundred Days campaign but actually at Waterloo itself. As you’ll see below, Joe McGinn put on a great-looking game

John and I played the French, commanding a force ordered to stop an ammunition cart getting to the British Guards in Hougement. The Allies were played by Ally and Phil

The table looking down towards Hougement.

The British ammunition cart and guards.

The French were quite lucky in that our Voltigeur skirmishers got onto the table quite quickly and managed to almost immediately drive the British guards away from the cart. One set of skirmishers was then able to take possession of the cart and get ready to move it towards our baseline.

The Allies then brought on a large force of German infantry in column that headed straight for the cart and managed to recapture it, forcing our skirmishers to withdraw, but they withdrew just far enough to put the Germans under fire again, with concentrated.fire from the two Voltigeur units then driving the column back.

This meant that the French had time to bring on both their main infantry force (conscripts) and a decent sized support unit (line infantry). The former headed towards the cart and were able to finish the German column off, the latter formed a blocking force that quickly got into a fire fight with some Nassau infantry coming up from the direction of Hougemont itself.

The blocking force and Nassau were fairly evenly matched until one unit of French Voltigeurs was able to break away from harassing the German infantry (who had been broken by the arrival and volley fire of the French conscripts) and lend its fire to the battle. The Nassau infantry started taking heavy casualties and were forced to withdraw.

As the battle ended, the French had the ammo cart in their possession and well on the way to their baseline; the German column and British guards were on the run; and the Nassau skirmishers were starting to backpedal fast.

It was a glorious victory for the French: we did not lose a single point of Force Morale and had reduced the Allied force to just one Force Morale point. We had also lost just two Voltigeurs whereas dead Allied infantry lay strewn over the field.

Here’s the game in photos: