Winning

BOB Cordery's big-battle Napoleonic rules somewhat bizarrely have no rule for determining the winner of a battle.

Each army starts with a strength-point value, as explained here.

In our Waterloo refight Napoleon's French army will have an SP of 103, while Wellington's Allied will have an SP of 84.

The rules state that when an army has lost a third of its strength points, it is exhausted and can no longer take aggressive action, "ie it will continue to fight to defend its existing position, including firing at the enemy, but will not continue any movement towards the enemy."

When both sides have reached their exhaustion point, Cordery goes on, "the battle ends," but the reader is not told how to determine the victor.

I have decided that if an army loses half its SP, it will have lost the battle.

In addition, a special rule is needed for Waterloo to reflect the arrival late in the day of Blücher's Prussians.

This could be done on the tabletop, but I do not have any Prussian figures.

I could easily remedy that, but I am only really interested in the Franco-Allied fight, and so the following special rule will apply.

If the Allied army has not lost within 15 moves, ie its strength points have not fallen below 43 by that time, Prussian intervention will mean victory goes to the tabletop Wellington. However, if after 15 moves Wellington's army has reached exhaustion level, ie it has lost a third of its strength points (28SP), the French have three more turns to reduce the Allied army to below 43SP.

The Duke