The Battle of Balaclava (1975)

While the rules call this a wargame, it is highly abstract and more of a family game.

The system is an interesting attempt at representing the general flow of a given battle with very simple rules. The board consists of a (very sketchy) schematic of the battle area overlaid with arrows indicating the troop movements, much as one might see on a diagram of a battle.

The arrows are divided into spaces - on a turn, a player rolls a die and moves a piece (infantry or cavalry - the artillery does not move) along the appropriate arrow (which arrow or arrows it can use depends on where it starts). Landing on certain spaces may let you advance further, or may destroy the piece (there are a number of the latter spaces on the Light Brigade's paths). Getting to the end of an arrow destroys an enemy piece, generally, but sometimes has other effects on the opponent.

There are special rules for each group indicating what its orders are or what it actually did in the battle, more or less (some can traverse the arrows more than once, etc.).

While the box says that either 2 or 4 people can play, there is no provision in the rules for more than 2, and no obvious way to accommodate this.

Greensmith design a similar game for Palitoy on the battle of Waterloo.