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Here's my quick rambling review of the new Waterloo Black Powder starter set from Warlord Games.

Contents include:
Soft back A5 version of the Black Powder rulebook
Quick start guide
12 Chasseurs a Cheval
48 French infantry
48 British infantry
24 Hanoverian Infantry
1x Metal Royal artillery cannon
1x metal French foot commander
1x metal British foot commander
Bases for all above models
Six d6
Card playsheet and casualty markers

DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind I am relatively new to the period. Honestly, the announcement of the starter set got me interested because I do like a good starter set that can help guide me into having a nice collection of figures to play games with. I have a familiarity with Black Powder, having played a half dozen games or so with AWI and others. This is written from the perspective of someone who was totally new to the period. After it was announced and I became interested, I did a little research, asked lots of questions, and ordered the Waterloo set plus a bunch of other units to have some good sized games in my 4x8 table. Yesterday I received the Waterloo set and have been looking over it since.

The quick overview: tons of minis, fantastic production quality, great fluff & starter book, softcover Black Powder rulebook is excellent and now my hardcover can live on the shelf. Quick reference sheet is great. Cardboard casualty markers are a nice touch - only way it could be better is plastic casualty markers instead of card ones, and a plastic cannon instead of a metal one.

I'm really happy with the amount of minis in the box! It's a fairly deep box and is literally packed to the brim with miniatures. Something like 135 of 'em! (always a good selling point for me!)

The units are generic enough that multiple copies would be a good investment. It contains 48 British, 24 Hanoverians, 1 gun, 1 commander vs 48 French line, 12 Chasseurs, and 1 commander.

Plus, new plastic bases and basing guide. The new bases have bumps on the underside for grip on tabletop, which is a nice touch. I hope I can buy sprues of these separately.

The quick play rules pretty great, they nicely distill the Black Powder rules into a few pages of relevant rules - relevant to the forces present. For someone totally new to Black Powder they'd be able to play pretty quickly and it would not be a hard transition to the full rules.

The quick start rules also list half-ranges for smaller table sizes. Interestingly, omitted in the quick start rules are fail-an-order-and-the-turn-is-over from the full Black Powder rules; the forces contained in starter set are smaller scale so you issue orders, one at a time, per unit, from your commander model. This will make smaller games from one or two starter sets more "fair", so if one player fails on his first unit out of four his turn isn't over immediately. Of course, once you expand and read the full rules, you'd "graduate" to multiple brigades per side. The quick-start rules also have you split the Chasseurs into two units, and they fight at normal Black Powder full strength, making it fairly balanced per side, giving you 2 British line, 1 Hanoverian line, and 1 artillery, versus 2 French line and 2 French Chasseur units. It definitely gives a little bit of the feel of Waterloo with defensive British lines versus attacking French units.

Honestly the only thing I'd improve would be increasing the (beautiful) full color 16 page book to 20 or 24 pages and have more scenarios (as there's really only one presented, all of two paragraphs before the sequence of play, and is rather generic, "set up armies on opposite sides of the tabletop"). It could have really benefited from like a couple scenarios. For brand new people to Black Powder it'll be a little difficult than if there was like three scenarios to play in a row to learn the rules. But, it's one of those box sets that if you're interested in gaming in the period, the moment you open it up you are just blown away by the quality and quantity of the contents. I'd be even happier with this if Black Powder was totally brand new to me.

I found myself comparing it to the Perry ACW Battle in a Box; this is a much better starter set than that, though I feel that was less "introduction to the period" and more just "discount on a ton of models"

Overall very excellent and the best historical starter set I have seen and a really good sign of things to come from Warlord. And, it obviously worked on me, as I've now gotten quite a bit of models and a healthy interest for the period now!

Is it a good value for a veteran Black Powder player? Well, maybe: the softcover book is really nice and if you need lots more core troops, certainly. For someone who has everything they need, then, no, probably not. But for someone like me... I would immediately be thinking about buying a second box if this was my first purchase and I was brand new to Black Powder and hadn't already ordered a bunch of other units. As it stands I am super super happy I ordered this, plus one each of Warlord's British and French Starter Armies, and a few various specialty boxes (95th Rifles, Old Guard, Hussars, Lancers, and a few packs like casualties and commanders, etc).

I am interested now.

 Easy E wrote:
I am interested now.

As I mentioned, if you've never played Black Powder and have a passing interest in Napoleonics this set is fantastic. Plus if you can get it from an online discounter like Miniature Market - let me put it this way, at full retail price it is a good value, and at a discount, it's a fantastic steal!

Awesome quick review. Funny enough, I'm a sucker for a good starter and ordered this about 2 hours ago on a whim. Sounds like I won't be disappointed.

Good review!

Usually with Historicals, once you've got an army ready it can nearly always be played with any set of rules for the period. The rulebook is a bonus in that respect.

My Waterloo starter arrived in the mail today. That is quite a bit of plastic that they crammed in there. Definitely would be well worth picking up a second box when it comes time to expand forces.

Well after gleefully looking over all of my delightful purchases and being swept up in a frenzy of wanting hundreds of figures on the table, I started to math out how my armies will look. I have decided to do 24-man units for my Napoleonics so that I can fit medium sizes games on my 8x4 table.

It seems like everyone makes 6-man metal command packs, so that means 18 plastic models and 6 metal command per unit. I decided to mix Warlord, Perry, and Front Rank so that I can have a variety of different officers, NCOs, drummers, flag bearers, etc.

Since I purchased Waterloo Starter Set, plus the Waterloo French starter army box and the Waterloo British starter army box, that gave me a TON of plastic infantry, and a few command sets.

The math I worked out such that...

My primary goal being 24-man units w/ 18 plastic and 6 metal command

I have:

French - 168 plastic line, plus metal command group (6) x 4 from the French Starter Army Set
= so a goal of 9 units total, needing 5 additional command packs

British - 140 plastic, plus metal command group primary pose (6) x 3 from the British Starter Army Set
= so a goal of 7 units total, needing 4 additional command packs
but with 7 units at 18 plastic per unit, this leaves 14 plastic figures left over, so I plan on buying one sprue of infantry from Warlord, therefore giving me 8 units total, and needing 5 command packs

Hanoverian - 55 plastic, plus metal command group (6) x 1 from the British Starter Army Set
= so a goal of 3 units total, needing 2 additional command packs

To that effect, I ordered:
2x Front Rank FNRPK25 Mixed French Command POST 1812
Perry FN5 Infantry Regimental command (Eagle bearer, 2 Eagle guards,officer, drummer and sapper). (10005)
Perry FN99 Line Regimental Infantry command in greatcoats (10099)
Perry FN6 Infantry Battalion command (2 officers, 2 Fanion bearers,2 drummers). (10006)

2x Warlord Games British command group Alternate Poses (6)
Front Rank BNRPK11 Mixed British Command in covered belgic shako, advancing.
Front Rank BNRPK18 Mixed British Command in covered belgic shako, standing.
Perry B20 British Napoleonic command sprue 1808-1815 - single sprue (31020)

Front Rank HNRPK2 Hanoverian Command post 1812 in cap, advancing.
Perry BH13 Hanoverian Field Battalion command in peaked forage caps ,red coatees, advancing (4013)

I hope that helps out any other people who may be daunted by figuring out their forces!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Triple9 wrote:
My Waterloo starter arrived in the mail today. That is quite a bit of plastic that they crammed in there. Definitely would be well worth picking up a second box when it comes time to expand forces.

I definitely took the bigger plunge and got the British and French starter army sets to add on - wellllll worth it, huge huge savings. Insta-armies. Only bad point is no bases in the starter army sets, but I think I'm going to be basing 4-men-per-base on 40mm x 40mm steel bases anyway

For those that missed it, the starter set is on a special deal thru Warlord right now https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/new-releases/products/waterloo-starter-bundle

I've always been tempted by the Warlord Games Black-Powder, Hail Caesar and Bolt Action books. I've yet to take the plunge (partly due to financial situation, partly due to the fact I have an awful lot of 40K unpainted and finally because I am playing SAGA and Frostgrave).

Anyway, enough about my life's story. I have some questions if you'll oblige me?


1) What made you choose the Napoleonics over say, the English Civil War or the American Indy Wars etc? I'm personally undecided between Napoleonics, Civil War, Bolt Action and Ancients (Greeks).

2) With so many glorious models, how are you planning on painting them - air brushing / speed dry-brushing etc?

3) How have you found building the models? Ease compared to building something like a Space Marine or Gripping Beast plastic Thegn?

Thanks in advance!

I'm not judgedoug but I can at least give my opinion. I don't own any Napoleonics myself but there is no need to when club members have enough models to share for everyone in the club to have an army.

1) What local players are interested in/play is often what give a period a edge over the rest.

2) I've seen models that are drybrushed, dipped, traditional highlighting or just left plain block painted. No-one used an airbrush and they all got them painted in the end so don't let the lack of one put you off.

3) The Warlord Napoleonics plastics I've seen have all been very easy to put together. They have less parts than a space marine as they're designed to let a player assemble lots of models quickly.

Heya! Here's my responses

1. I do have an ECW Parliamentarian New Model Army for Pike & Shotte, and an unassemble Early Imperial Roman army for Hail Caesar. I also recently got the American Civil War battle in a box from Perry and assembled that up. My buddy does Hundred Years War and American War for Indpendence (both sides for each). But specifically for Napoleonics I have always been fascinated by the sheer scope of the battles. The new starter set was kind of the extra droplet that broke the tension of the meniscus, so to speak.

2. I'm an Army Painter man. Spray prime the majority color, choose up to six main colors present on the uniform, and block paint a few hundred models very quickly, then quickshade (probably soft tone for Naps, but undecided).

3. I have not started building them yet! However I specifically chose as much Warlord plastic as possible, as they are body - head - backpack. I only bought Perry plastics for units that were not available from Warlord (British Hussars, Dragoons, etc). This was after building the Perry American Civil War stuff so I had quite had my fill of hundreds of guys needing arms, hats, etc. As few pieces as possible, please

I can tell you right now that the $100 deal on the starter set with extra freebie packs of officers is an astounding deal for all the awesome stuff you get in the box. I am actually quite tempted to buy another set, but I can't quite figure out a reason right now (I may soon!)