I am playing Jeff Bardon at the Battle of Wavre variant #2 from Campaign Waterloo. I had read up on the battle years ago so in order to better acquaint myself with the action I turned to Peter Hofschroer's excellent account in his second volume on the campaign, "1815 - The Waterloo Campaign - The German Victory" and read the account.
Turning to the game again I made up a Turn Track which I attach for anyone wanting to use it. I also made a note of the lighting as found in the Parameter Data Table. What surprised me was that night was only two turns long. So I did a bit of research using online assets and came up with this:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_pap.plSun and Moon Data for One Day
The following information is provided for Brussels (longitude E4.3, latitude N50.9):
Tuesday
18 July 1815 Universal Time + 1h
SUN
Begin civil twilight 04:05
Sunrise 04:48
Sun transit 12:48
Sunset 20:48
End civil twilight 21:31
MOON
Moonrise 17:43 on preceding day
Moonset 02:14 (this would be the early morning of the 18th)
Moonrise 18:48
Moon transit 22:52
Moonset 02:52 on following day (this would be the period covered by the scenario)
Phase of the Moon on 18 July: waxing gibbous with 92% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.
Full Moon on 21 July 1815 at 09:38 (Universal Time + 1h).
----end of data----
Dierk Walter and I have used this website's data before for determining hours of light and darkness for other of my games. He noted that they used the height of the day to determine the midpoint for the actual daylight hours or somewhere near 1230-1300 hours. So sometimes you have to adjust the above hours a tad. Given that there are 16 hours of light for this date in history that means that these hours above are right on the money.
Note also that the full moon was on the 21st. This is only a couple of days off so we must assume that there was illumination from the lunar lighting.
Now a look at the hours as listed in the PDT file:
Scenario begins at 1600 (turn 1)
Dusk starts at: Turn 23 - 2130 - is 2 hours long (8 turns)
Night starts at: Turn 31 - 2330 and the last turn is 0130 (each turn is one hour)
Dawn starts at: Turn 33 - 0230 is 2 hours long (8 turns)
Day starts at: Turn 41 - 0430 ... scenario ends at 0745
Now a look at the lighting:
This is the text from the PDT file:
13:00 06/18/1815) Visibility: 40
16:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 30
17:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 24
18:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 16
19:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 12
20:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 20
21:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 30
22:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 3
23:00 06/18/1815 Visibility: 2
23:30 06/18/1815 Visibility: 40
And this is where the PDT file ends.
I believe that Rich and I discussed the PDT file visibility topic before. His dropping and lowering of the visibility in the afternoon was due to the fact that we could not get a smoke rule added to the game so he factored this into his PDT file visibility. That made sense to me for Waterloo, big battle, lots of smoke from artillery and infantry fire.
However, for Wavre, which did not begin until 1600 (and the serious action much later) the above times and LOS limits need adjustment. Also note that for some reason visibility at 2330 spikes up to 40 hexes.
Here is what I plan on sending to Rich as a recommended change in a future update (or I will just put out my own set of files):
1600 - 1800: visibility 60 (this being summer and with no reason to cut down the visibility to 40 unless you want to factor in some command-control feature)
1815 - 2115: visibility drops to 20 gradually due to the smoke
2130 - 2215: Dusk hour - visibility drops to 4 gradually due to sunset - however, leaving it at 4 due to moonlight
(note on this: I am pushing the dusk hours back and hour due to the northern hemisphere having light later at this time. I suspect that the times from the website may need to be pushed forward an hour - here in Boise, ID it stays light until 10pm during this time - Brussels is more to the north than us and I suspect that their dusk is later than ours)
2230 - 2330: Night and Moonlit turns - visibility at 2
0030 - 0430: Night - 1 hex visibility - Moonlight not affecting the lighting (see my comments below on this)
0445 - 0530: Dawn - one hour - visibility rises to 40 gradually
0545: day - visibility back at 60 pending a check on the weather.
Question on weather: did it rain the night of the 18th? I am not sure why I am thinking this but for some reason rain comes to mind. I do not think so based on the text.
Comments:
1. Page 164 of Hof. has an account by 2nd Lt Mannkopff, commander of the skirmish platoon of the 4th Co. of the 31st Regt. He states that:
"About midnight, where possible, our skirmishers pulled back to the column and a bayonet attack was made at the charge. However, because of the darkness and high corn, it was impossible to see and keep order."
That does not sound like they could see more than 1 hex. Some fighting does continue into the night but Thielmann called off his counterattack due to the fact that his troops were in total darkness.
I found that rather odd to consider until I came up with the answer: there was no rain but it does not mean that there was no overcast! So it is possible that clouds had formed, rain may even have fallen elsewhere but the (almost) full moon was obscured by cloud cover.
2. Missing lighting data for the rest of the scenario means that visibility will be 40 from 2330 onward. I am thinking that Rich just missed the date issue of the Wavre battle when he used the PDT file.
Any information that members can supply will be of great benefit to this discussion. Rain info, cloud cover, any other accounts of lighting would be most appreciated.
And thanks to Rich for putting together a fine scenario. He had a ton of things on his plate when he did this one - picking up the project from Charlie and so on ... no harsh criticism here. Playing this scenario with Jeff has caused me to go back and re-read my history on this battle and know it that much better.
_________________
Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz
3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps
Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie
NWC Founding Member
For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options
OFF:
MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)
NWC
Login
FAQ
