The Hal Garrison: These additional units allow you to add the Hal garrison forces to Wellington’s army at Waterloo. Wellington never intended they should be used in the battle, as these forces guarded his route of communications back to England via the port of Ostende. However, Wellington agreed to stand at Mont St. Jean, on condition, that the Prussians commit at least one full corps (Blucher actually arrived with the bulk of his army). But one Prussian corps is roughly the same number of troops as the Hal garrison. So, what if Wellington had these 25,000 or so men on hand on the dawn of June 18. Would the “near run” battle have been so near run? Would he have had to risk defeat at all? Obviously including these troops is going affect play balance. You can play the Mont St. Jean and the combined Mont St. Jean-Wavre scenarios with the addition of the Hal garrison to see what chance Napoleon has of winning, and perhaps get an answer to critics of Wellington’s strategy who point out that leaving a fifth of his available manpower effectively out of the battle at Hal was a major blunder. Looking at it from Wellington’s point of view (ready to fight to the last drop of Prussian or Dutch or Belgian or German blood!), leaving his route of retreat to the coast unprotected would be a major gamble, risking not only a defeat, but the complete annihilation of Britain’s only field army. A major French push into the Allied right flank, say the loss of Braine l’Alleud, may have led to a precipitate British withdrawal to the coast. The capture of all five hexes of Braine l’Alleud, therefore, shifts the level of victory by one in the favour of the French. For example, the Allies meet their Marginal Victory conditions, but the French manage to capture Braine l’Alleud. That would now shift the victory level to a draw. A draw would be shifted to a French Marginal Victory (and so on). The Hal garrison is termed Frederick’s Corps for game purposes with a new LIM (added to the pool at the beginning of the scenario). All units belonging to the Hal garrison are marked with F and belong to this formation. The two cavalry units (2KG and Estorff) may be activated by this LIM or by the Cavalry Corps LIM. The Dutch-Belgian units may also be activated by the Duth-Belgian Brigades LIM. All these forces enter as reinforcements on the 1130 Turn on the 2900 road hex on the Mount St. Jean Map. The du Bois 12 pounder artillery battery is not part of the garrison forces, but was part of the reserve in Brussels. Most Allied heavy artillery was considered siege artillery, but since this unit had the only 12 pounders in the Allied park, you can also try it out as field artillery. It is part of the Army Reserve and begins the game set up in any hex within five hexes of Wellington.