State of Play: Napoléon 1807 (The War Room Ten Game Challenge #1)

 

 

After missing a game last week due to my brother-in law and regular Monday night gaming partner T visiting overseas for work, we got together this week and tabled Denis Sauvage’s Napoléon 1807: La Campagne de Pologne (Shakos, 2020). We’ve been playing a lot of the Crusades expansion (GMT Games, 2024) for Commands and Colors: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019), because I wanted to review it, but that and a few missed weeks due to other commitments on both sides got me to the third week of February without having begun my Ten Game Challenge games list. So, this week I have the first domino a push.

Napoléon 1807 is familiar as a game and a system. It’s the second game in Shakos’ Conquerors series. I posted a review for the first in the series, Napoléon1806: la Campagne de Prusse

(Shakos, 2017) last year, and I’ve been keen to follow up with a review of 1807. We played it several times in 2024, but it’s been a while, so the Ten Game Challenge list seemed like a good excuse to pull it out and refresh my thinking about the game.

Napoléon 1807, like all the Conquerors series games, is an operational-level block game of Napoleon’s Polish campaign of 1807, played out on a point-point map covering Poland and eastern Prussia. The action of the game follows on from Napoléon 1806, and there are instructions for combining the two into a relatively seamless grand campaign. I’m unlikely to ever try this, but it’s nice to know I could.

French corps dispositions at the start of battle. The blue blocks represent infantry
regiments, the yellow, cavalry squadrons.

Dispositions of the Russian corps at start of game. The green and pink blocks
represent infantry and cavalry strength respectively.

So, last night we played the Battle of Eylau scenario, with a forgiving four turns. The game still took us the best part of an our and a half to reach the conclusion, but the play was extremely satisfying, even if the result was less so.

T took the French - I, the Allies (Russians). Like its sister games, Napoléon 1807 is a game of manoeuvre. It’s a block game, and each block represents a corps of troops made up of infantry, cavalry, or a mix of the two. Each block represents a corps and bears the name of the corps’ commander. The blocks are single sided, with a crest on the side facing the opposing player, but the strength of each corps is tracked on a separate board listing the corps commanders in a column with two tracks running off each. The top row marks out the corps strength (one colour for infantry, another for cavalry), while the lower row – empty at the start – tracks the corps’ the accrued fatigue. A corps can be removed from the game in two ways, either having their strength reduced to zero or by letting their fatigue run to the maximum. There are ways to reduce a unit’s fatigue, which I’ll come back to, but it’s not always possible.

Napoléon 1807's Tun Track (top) and Victory Point track, both
incorporated into the board.

Napoléon 1807 is also a card-driven game, but not in the conventional sense. All actions are, to a degree, propelled by each side’s card deck. The cards serve several function, and depending on the phase of the turn, you’ll only consider one element of the information presented on the card. The decks are each comprised of46 cards, so in a longer game you’ll likely cycle through the deck two or three times.

The cards. The title banner exemplifies what kind of card it is (Red title must be played
 for their event in the Draw phase at the beginning of the turn, a single Green banner
card may be played out of the player's hand to gain some concession for the turn in
the Initiative phase, and the blue banners may be used during the Activation phase
(before or during battle of while moving, depending on the nature of the card,
but only one per activation).
During combat, each player will draw a specified number of cards and consult the
symbols in the bottom left hand space for damage inflicted on the enemy. In this
instance, the French player drew poorly. 

Turns run through four steps; Draw, Initiative, Activation, and Recovery. In the Draw phase, players each draw three cards from their deck to their hand (there’s no hand limit, so these can get unwieldy in longer games). These are checked for Red (Event) or Blue (Initiative) title headers, Events are played immediately, and will probably have some kind of detrimental effect on the game for at least the coming turn. In the first turn, I drew Rain, which means for that turn every unit that moves, or even tries to move, in that turn will accrue an extra fatigue point (there’s a Rain box on the board to remind players that it’s, well, raining that turn). Plus, I also drew Cold; when Rain or Snow is already in play, the Cold card adds yet another fatigue point penalty for each activated corps.

Adding injury to injury: complementary Rain and Cold event cards drawn on
the very first turn (which also left your correspondent with a single card in
his had to his antagonist's three)..

In the Initiative phase, both players draw the next card off the top of their deck. Each card has a number in the top right-hand corner which does double duty as the Initiative number and as Movement Points (MP) in the Activation phase. The player with higher number drawn wins the initiative for that turn, and ties are given to the French player. You can also play an Intuition card from your hand at this time (it’s the only time you can pay these). Depending on the card, this may allow you to size the initiative back, or to add a single infantry block to an under-strength corps, usually some small advantage going into the Activation phase.

A rather crowded centre at turn 1. The flags represent Citadels each worth
a set amount of points.

In the Activation phase, the players take turns trying to activate one or more corps at a time. The phasing player declares which corps are being ordered, then draws a card off the top of their deck and checks the number at the top. This dictates how far the ordered unit can move. If you draw a 1, a single unit can only move one location. If you ordered two corps to move in unison, you lose the first point in coordinating the movement between the two corps, so you’d need a 2 to move one location. Also, if you move more than three locations in a turn, you accrue one point of exhaustion for each movement point spent over the three.

In our first round, with Rain and Cold in effect, nobody was going anywhere with one point of movement, but nonetheless the attempt at activation was made, so the unit is considered to have acted for that turn and takes the fatigue points from the conditions at play. Poland in winter shouldn’t be easy for anyone.

The battle of Ebling: L'Estocq is bloodied but triumphant, while Ney is vanquished.

The movement we did manage in the first round didn’t amount to much, but it gave any unit that tried to move at least a couple of fatigue points. These can accrue very quickly and must be managed (or not, at your peril).

In turn two, the rain stopped, but under the scenario rules, a turn after Rain or Snow gets the Mud condition. This adds an extra fatigue on activation and reduces movement by two. Turn two did see some action; Savary attacked Essen I near Pultusk, making the Russians withdraw a space, and L’Estocq managed to out-manoeuvre Ney and claim the one-VP citadel of Elbing. Ney struck at the now entrenched L’Estocq but was soundly routed. Ney’s corps became the first casualty of the game.

Essen I cuts the bridge across the Vistula and retakes Warsaw. Sacken's corps
will have take the long way around.

Turns in the game are a little abstracted and represent around two to three days of campaign time. The third turn saw Marat make a dash, seizing Königsberg (three VP), pursued by Sacken. The two fought to a stalemate. In a lucky draw, Essen I managed to take Warsaw (and her two VP), demolishing the Vistula bridge behind him to prevent the still battleworthy Savary from crossing to engage. Savary would have to march to the next bridge further south; doable but unlikely to be completed in two turns, even if the fatigue effects could be ignored.

The end-state. Three corps routed, but too many strategic locations lost.

Rain visited the fields of battle again in the final turn. While Elbing and Warsaw remained in Russian possession, in an audacious move, T split his forces, sending Davout and Brassieres against my stymied attack force of Olsufiev and Galitzine – this ended in tragedy for the French, losing two corps, while Napoleon accompanied Soult and Augereau in an attack on Heilsberg, putting rout to the defenders and gaining another VP.

The final dispositions of the Russian (top) and French forces.

Scoring in Napoleon 1807 is on a pendulum, and in the Battle for Eylau scenario the marker starts at 8, The white tokens in the photo on spaces 5-7 equate to a tie (no clear winner). Through the game we traded blows pretty evenly (slightly in my favour) while the clear winner by territory was T, losing only Ebling and Warsaw, while taking Königsberg and Hielsberg (five VP collectively) while maintaining Ostande and Allenstein, and the fortified towns of Danzig and Thörn while maintain the siege of Graudenz. The towns held were already factored into the overall score (their points are there to wither hold on to or lose to the other side). When everything shook out, the point marker had nudged two spaces in favour of the French, placing it smack in the middle of the tie region. This was a hard-fought and well managed battle on both sides, stymied by inclement weather (that cost T at least one corps to fatigue, and would have taken Marat in one more turn). It was, in the worlds of Wellington, a near run thing.

The result after the final tally. On reflection, I think I may have short-changed myself
one point, but this would not have changed the Tied result. All in all, a good game,.

I can’t say enough good things about the Conquerors series. Napoleon 1806 is a fun and challenging game and an excellent place to learn the system, but with eleven scenarios and another two related to Napoléon 1806, this is the clear winner for value for money.