Warhammer Historicals: Waterloo

When I started considering getting into Napoleonics thanks to Mart, he recommended that I try to get a copy of the Napoleonic rules that Games Workshop's Historicals division did. That turned out to be a pretty difficult task despite the book being released in 2011 and Warhammer Historicals getting the plug pulled in 2012. The only copy I could find was on eBay, still in the plastic wrap, for $200. No thank you! So for a while, I would occasionally browse the internet trying to find another copy. Difficult.




It turns out if you are looking for an out of print book, look for websites/stores that sell out Out of Print books! It only took me a month and change to figure out. Long story short, I wound up buying the only copy in a small antique book shop in ye olde Englande. It only cost me about $62, which isn't bad given the retail price was $50. So now I've got the book, and I've given it a read through and lots of skimming (it's pretty gorgeous), here are my preliminary thoughts.

This is a hefty book. Hardback, full glossy color, and at least twice as big as the army books and codices that cost the same these days from GW.

The book is littered with double page spreads of period paintings or gallery worthy battlefields and miniatures. You can really chew on this book, like it's a coffee table book.

 Theeeee rules, there you go. That many! Pretty simple system, and it's based on War of the Ring. Each player takes turns doing each phase, so one player does Artillery, then the other, then the first player does Movement, then the other player, so on and so forth.

More sweet history stuff.

The Hobby section is pretty sparse. The best part of it is the Gallery where there are miniatures from all the available nations. Rather extensive options for the army lists. I'd like to do a unit from each "subnation" that is in this book.

I'm really impressed with the Waterloo campaign in the back of the book. There is the option to use any army you want for the scenarios, but there are the suggested Orders of Battle. I wish I could post images of the army lists earlier in the book, but, y'know, GW Legal. Regardless, the points based system is straightforward. There's enough variety where you can field different sized units, upgrade some companies to Light Infantry or Grenadiers to confer special rules to the unit as a whole, buy different skill level of troops with one entry. Very clever. 

As a whole, I am very glad I took the effort to track down this book. I'm going to build my Napoleonics on it, and the rules seem easy enough for any wargamer to get that it'll be easy to introduce others to the game.