State of Play: Napoléon 1807 (The War Room Ten Wargame 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.

 

 

By the Numbers: The War Room Ten Game Challenge

  

 

The War Room's 2024 Challenge wrap-up is on Saturday, January 18
(about 7:30am Sunday, Adelaide time) on Roughie's channel.

As I’ve stated here recently, I thought I was done with setting myself challenges or goals with A Fast Game or regarding gaming generally. Two years in a row I stated a couple of seemingly achievable tasks or milestones only to fall short of my own expectations. To hell with it, I said to myself, I’ll just play games, review the ones I like, and have some fun with it.

Then I watched the War Room on Sunday (for the uninitiated, you can find some details about the War Room in this post). Each January, idjester sets a challenge for the show’s regular viewers (roughly half of which seem to also be YouTube content creators). Jester’s been doing this for at least four or five years (I’m not sure if he did it in their first year, but the guys will be hitting the show’s sixth anniversary in a just couple of weeks). It was one of these 10 Game Challenges that inspired me to attempt my own 6x6 Challenge in my first year of writing A Fast Game.

As I said in a previous post, despite my misgivings about goal-setting, I decided to participate in the War Room’s 10 Game Challenge this year. I ran through the rules for the 10 Game Challenge in the aforementioned post, but essentially you have to pick ten games you intend to play in 2025 (plus two substitute games, in case you’re for some reason not able to fulfil one or two plays, or you’re just not feeling it for an early choice – it happens), and post the list on the Tac UP group on Facebook (or alternatively, you can email the list to Jester – I think his contact details are on his YouTube channel).

Having decided to take on the Challenge, I wanted to nail down my list before I slipped into an endless cycle of swap-outs. The two guidelines I set myself were that I should pick games that can be played in a couple of hours, and that at least half of them should be games I can play solo (two-handed) if necessary. I wanted to stick to a shorter length because most of my face-to-face gaming happens on weeknights these days. The solo-able games are for when the weeknight games don’t come off.

Five of the games I’ve played before, the other five in the main list are relatively new (to me, at least). The two reserve games are 2025 releases that I don’t have yet, but that are due to be released in the first half of the year.

So, without further ado, may I present my maiden (annotated) 10 Game Challenge selection for 2025:

 

1.  Men of Iron Tri-pack (GMT Games, 2020)

I’m embarrassed to say, I haven’t yet completely punched my copy of the Men of Iron Tri-Pack, which contains (as the name would suggest) the first three volumes in the Men of Iron series; Men of Iron (GMT Games, 2005), Infidel (GMT Games, 2011), and Blood and Roses (GMT Games, 2014). The set also includes Agincourt (RBM Studio, 2009), which first appeared in C3i magazine. This is probably what we’ll play first. It’s on a half-sized map, with slightly larger counters (9/16” I think, as opposed to the half-inch counters throughout the rest of the game), and it’s a good excuse to recite the St Crispin’s Day speech.

2. Napoléon 1807 (Shakos,2020) (Battle of Eylau AAR)

Napoleon 1807 is the follow-on game from Denis Sauvage’s Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017 – link to review). It’s more of the same in a number of ways, with a bigger map and numerous scenarios. We’ve played this a couple of times, but only the battle scenarios, usually three or four turns. There are several campaign scenarios, including Eylau and Friedland, that run over ten or more turns, so I’m keen to try one of these.

3. Dawn's Early Light: The War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020) (AAR)

I have a soft spot for the War of 1812, and own several games covering various situations in the conflict, but this is the only one covering the whole war. It’s a Card-Driven Game with some novel aspects, and an interesting area movement/control mechanic. I’ve only played this double handed (always difficult with a CDG), so I’m looking forward to trying it out against a human opponent.

4. Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022) (unboxing)

This is my first Eagles of France game. I’m a big fan of Hexasim, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about the series, so I’m looking forward to diving into this one. The Mont-Saint-Jean scenario is a two-map affair, so probably impractical for our purposes, but the Fallen Eagles II also includes three smaller scenarios that should fit the bill.

5. Brothers at War, 1862 (Compass Games, 2022) (unboxing; AAR)

This is such a great game; really four games in one. Each covers as small engagement (like Valverde), or a portion of a larger action (Miller’s cornfield at Antietam), and features card-assisted play and a novel chit-draw system. The action is swift and tense. Brothers at War was the first game I picked for this list.

6. A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022)

This game and I have a history. I was going to back the original Kickstarter (I’ had form with Flying Pig Games by then) but backed off a couple of days before the campaign closed. When the Second Edition went to crowdfunding, Flying Pig was no longer supporting overseas pledges, and copies sold out pretty quickly from the usual purveyors of fine gaming merchandise. When the Second Edition went to Kickstarter, with access for overseas supporters, I practically put myself in hoc to secure a copy.

I’ve been circling around this game for months now. I’ve been meaning to write an unboxing article – I’ve got most of the photos, but a couple need re-taking – and start pushing some counters around to get a feel for it, but there’s always been something more pressing. Putting it on the list should give me the impetus to unbox and play it before Rock of Chickamauga (Flying Pig Games, 2025) arrives.

7. Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War (GMT Games. 2024) (unboxing)

This was hands-down my favourite game for 2024. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pull it out again and write something about it.

8. Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards – Sedan 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020)

Imperial Bayonets is a reimplementation of the Library of Napoleonic Battles system applied to the conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century, in the case of We Were Not Cowards, the Franco-Prussian War. I bought this along with some other CSL games before they stopped doing overseas shipping. This war represents a turning point in the way European countries would engage in battle. This might just get nudged closer to the front of the list.

9. Panzer Battles, 11^th Panzer on the Chir River (MMP/The Gamers, 2016) (unboxing)

The only WWII entry in the mix. I wanted to have one at least. Also, this will be my introduction to the Standard Combat Series (SCS). I’ve lived a sheltered life.

10. We Are Coming, Nineveh (Nuts! Publishing, 2023)

Another game I bought last year and had grand ambitions of getting it to the table, only to see it shunted to the back of the queue. Modern conflicts can be a tough sell to the folks I tend to game with. We Are Coming, Nineveh does have a solo option, but I’m going to try to hold out for a face-to-face game.

Substitute games

11. By Swords and Bayonets (GMT Games, 2025)

The latest instalment of the Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) series, I understand By Swords and Bayonets is now at the printer, so it will probably ship in the first half of this year. The game has respectable numbers, too, hitting just over 1,500 preorders on GMT’s P500 list.

12. Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing, 2025)

The story of this game feels like one of those stories about a dog that’s separated from his its family while visiting the Grand Canyon, but manages to finally find its way home years later, Drop Zone: Southern France began its existence on GMT’s P500 list in June 2020, but it languished in the low 300s from memory before it was pulled in December of that year. In 2021, Worthington Publishing listed Drop Zone in their intended print list for the year (on the back of designer Dan Fournie’s 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing 2020), but the game didn’t make the queue until its successful Kickstarter campaign last year. The most recent news is that the printed games are crossing the Pacific Ocean as I write, and fulfillment should begin in the next month or two.

-----

When I set out to do this list, I thought it would be easy. I’ve been working on reviews for a couple of the final picks and wanted to get an extra play or two in before finishing them. A couple of others I’ve played but didn’t feel like I’d spent enough time with them to write anything worthwhile about them. The rest are fairly new, but I’ve been keen to get them to the table. In short, I’m looking forward to all of them.

The other half of the tale is all the games that didn’t make the cut. But that will be a story for another post.

State of Play: A 2025 Wargaming Goal (in spite of myself)

 

  

Harlan Ellison Wrote a book called The Glass Teat, which was essentially a condemnation of everything that television stood for. A few years later, an interviewer asked Ellison why, if he hated TV so much, did he persist in writing for television programs. His response, “What can I say? I’m a f**king hypocrite.”

I started with this story because Mr Ellison was one of my favourite authors growing up, and the story seemed germane to what I’m going to go into here. I was watching the War Room on replay this afternoon. I caught about fifteen minutes of it this (Sunday) morning, but we went for a walk in the neighbourhood before it got too hot outside, and I ended up missing most of it. For the uninitiated, the War Room is a weekly show on YouTube presented by idjester, Rough Swordsman Wargamer, and Nate Landrum (half of the Board Game Bunker – three YouTube commentators – where the three discuss wargames and wargame-adjacent topics for two hours. It’s a lot of fun, and somewhat educational.

The gentlemen of The War Room.

Anyway, each year Jester proposes a challenge to the regular viewers, usually around playing ten different games – all declared at the beginning of the year – within a time frame, usually by the end of that year. It was a misunderstanding on my part of the parameters of this challenge that set me on a Quixotic errand to play six games in my first year of writing A Fast Game, which has, in turn, inspired others to pursue similar goals.

At the end of 2024 however, I was done with trying to meet targets for games player or reviewed. The last year was particularly hard on my wife and me, and its only in the last couple of weeks that we’ve been realising just how much of our everyday lives we’d put on hold. I’m a little more forgiving on myself for what I didn’t get done now, and so I think I’m ready to set myself one more doable challenge.

In today’s episode of the War Room, Jester laid out the parameters for this year’s ten-game challenge. The rules are a little laxer than in previous years. People complained it was too hard to make their lists. Jester is a harsh but fair tyrant. But any challenge must have some rules, or it isn’t really challenging.

One of the changes is the number of games. To participate in the challenge you have to post your list of games to the Tac UP Facebook group (or email it to Jester and he will upload it on your behalf). This list will be comprised of twelve games instead of ten. This gives the participant a little wriggle room. If you have a game you intended to play but for some reason you couldn’t do it, you have a back-up (two, actually). In the past, some folks had put games on their list that were supposed to be published that year but were delayed for some reason. This takes care of that.

The rules for the 10 Wargame Challenge for 2025.

Another change is the newness of the game. In the past there has been a requirement that only new-to-you games were allowed (this was of course on the honour system). This year, it can be a game you have played before, but not one you’ve already played this year. Also, to qualify, they have to be played after the January 19 cut-off date.

And to make it even easier for those inclined to bite off more than they can chew (averts gaze, shuffles feet), participants are required only to make a real effort at playing each game. If one of them is just too hard or too long to finish, so long as you have made an honest go of it, that effort will count as a play.

The proviso is that evidence of play must be uploaded to the Facebook group with each play completed. Jester the Benevolent is going to keep a spreadsheet (a man after my own heart) of all participants’ lists and mark off their progress. I’m not sure what will be considered adequate evidence; a lot of folks who participate are bloggers or YouTube content creators themselves, so they usually post something on their channel and link it on the FB group. If you’re interested in participating, contact the administrators of the Tac UP group on FB. You have until the 19^th of January to submit your list to the group.

I’m still settling on my list. It’s going to be a mix of games I’ve played in the past but not lately and ones I’ve been meaning to get to the table, and probably a mix of solo plays and face-to-face games. I’ll write up a session report for each play and post it on A Fast Game.

I really had no intention of putting myself through the process of setting goals and see them unmet again and had resigned myself to just plugging away at the blog for twelve months. But this seems like an achievable target, as it’s what I would be doing in the regular run of things anyway. And it will be nice to feel like I’m taking part in something bigger than myself. So, yes, I do feel a little bit like a hypocrite, but it also feels like the right thing to do.

There are a couple of games I know I want to put on the list, but I don’t want to rush into anything. I should have a list firmed up in a couple of days. As I play the games and write them up, I’ll sub-head all the posts that contribute to my challenge target, so anyone can follow along at home.