Renaud Verlaque for Phalanx I have seldom worked so long as a play tester on a game and yet been as profoundly unimpressed by the final product as I have been with Age of Napoléon. But it has won plaudits from many gamers for being quick, exciting and eye-catching. At times I wonder if we are playing the same game. Age of Napoléon is a card driven game but not in the Mark Herman tradition. The game is a two player contest between France and the Coalition. The Coalition has one permanent member – the uninvadable Great Britain. Phalanx is noted for its splendid production yet low prices and for less than £30 Age of Napoléon is a handsome product. The map (which is an area map) has an unfortunate error in that the Austrian provinces have slipped into Romania and Bulgaria due to an artist error and the designer failing to proof it. This should have no effect on play. While it is irritating for the French player looking northwards it is nowhere as annoying as being the Coalition and having all the names upside down (the idea of 90 degree names not having sunk into the hobby). Look very carefully at the map because the lettering will tell you whether an area is barren or not. I must admit this missed my gaze for some time, but a quick look at Spain will help – only Catalonia is non-barren down Spain way. For some reason Hungary is barren but the Banat is not – pure twaddle in my view. The counters are big thick chunky squares with a picture of a representative soldier, the name of a Marshal (or nearest facsimile) and three factors the order of which escapes me but which are speed, strength and stacking limit cum Seniority(though maybe not in that order). The background colour of the counter is in national colours (black for les Prusses). The many smaller nations are conveniently handled by giving them their patrons. So the Neapolitans and Portuguese appear as British and much of the French Army is comprised of Germans, Italians or Poles thus painlessly subsuming the need to have Confederation of the Rhine rules. If you control the home area then you can recruit these units. Most French counters are faster and bigger than the Allied equivalent. The speed is very important in forcing battle so that until Bluecher appears the Prussians need not waste their time in trying to force combat. The cards are extremely smart and linked to the phase in which they can be played. They have an interesting twist that they are usually needed to do something (move or intercept) and thus are not just used for events, and if not used in a turn they are discarded. There is no hanging on to the Napoléon’s Trousers Explode card waiting for a better chance. You use it or you lose it. There are the usual suspects here. The Battle cards change values or numbers in certain circumstances with names like Grand Battery or Reverse Slope. Some are limited to certain nations others to certain circumstances and others freely usable in Battle. The Reinforcement cards (so easily confused in code colour with Attrition) cover diplomatic and organisational matters. Wars with the Turks (Austria and Russia), Britain’s war with the Americans, the reforms of Stein and a (prematurely aged) Radetzky (these boost the number and quality of corps in these nations) are good examples. There are also some cards that can be played in Reinforcement or Campaign phases like Britannia (the Fleet’s in) or Out Of Favour that removes one corps with another – hopefully less strong – one. The Campaign cards are for operational matters: Mud, Forced Marches, Pursuits, Major Campaigns. There are two Attrition Phase cards, a Depot improves supply, the other Scorched Earth does the opposite. The Surrender Cards include a Coup d’Etat, Territorial Concessions (allowing for Dalmatia, Tirol and Poland to be freed from Babylonish servitude), and, my favourite, No Surrender that overrides the surrender rules. There are two Insurrection cards used by the Coalition against any French dominion to cause a strong allergic reaction to things French. The Strategy Phase just has one card Continental System that simply summons the second Insurrection and the English Gold cards into the deck. Diplomacy is an important feature in a game in which the French knock their opponents over like skittles. The Diplomacy cards provide the skittles with something of the Mr Wobbly Man. The seven cards can make or break the game (plus the eighth a joint Diplomacy Surrender card). They are by no means biased (as one might expect) in favour of the Coalition. There are two cards that changes French allies to neutral and neutrals to Coalition members (Pitt and English Gold). One that reverse the procedure (Napoléon Ier). One that does it for either party (that shit filled silk stocking Talleyrand). One that works for the player allied to Russia (Alexander I) and Austria (Metternich). One that converts a French ally into a dominion (Joseph) and one that can turn lots of minors or a major into a dominion (Napoléonic Dynasty). Finally three Anytime Cards – two Napoleonica cards allow the recovery of cards from the discard pile (these can be devastating) and Savary allows you to peek at your opponent’s hand. The rules are pretty poor in their drafting. The designer belonging to the school of designers who do not like to change the rules if you do not understand them (instead they tell you the answer which is not much use to anyone else). However there are diplomacy summaries and FAQs that will help repair this shortcoming, in for example card phasing areas. I do not recommend playing this game at all without these. The rules are not as wobbly as in The Napoleonic Wars but the same treatment is necessary. Much of the game turns on the diplomatic statuses of French Dominion-French Ally – Neutral-Insurgent and Coalition Member. The failure to provide a sensible summary of the many different features of these is most unfortunate, but once again it has been dealt with by gamers. Once read I think you will find they are no problem whatsoever. The sequence runs Diplomacy (cards) Insurrection (cards and suppression) Strategy Phase (new cards) Reinforcement Phase (new units and rallying) Campaign Phases (moving and fighting) Surrender Phase (benefiting from moving and fighting) Winter Attrition Phase (losses from overstacking or going into horrid areas) Victory Check. Combat is a rather opaque but swift system that punishes those in combat by spending them (invert the counters) although allowing the attackers to re-invert by spending a card (why I cannot guess). The important thing about combat and attrition is that it can cause two types of losses – permanent and temporary. The game seems trapped in a concept of warfare as attrition. One’s thought (as a Coalition player) are usually trying to get a few permanent kills while waiting for better generals or an invasion of Russia. Why is the game so interested in attrition? Did generals of that period report back to their Emperors “We lost the war, we surrendered Poland but there a five French corps you’ll never see again?” No of course they did not. So why are we saddled with it here? There are two reasons I think. Firstly, combat for the Coalition is tedious in the extreme. Unless your speed is faster than that of the Frenchies (each stack uses one corps as its army leader) they can simply avoid combat at the expenditure of a card. Taking a card might be worthwhile of course but the Coalition must be very careful about having troops leave their own countries. Within one’s own country (for reasons that one cannot entirely see but is probably militias) your corps are increased in value. This is a very important bonus in combat against the French. Forming a large supra-national army means some of your units are weakened, operating out-of-country, and is in any case difficult without really good leaders (there are few of these and some need a card to arrive). Such a stack cannot catch anyone usually and attracts Napoléon’s attention. He’ll kill it as soon as he can (and get those permanent losses on you). So Coalition strategy often is passive: biggest stack under best general in capital and wait. Because of this foreknowledge the Coalition are entirely without hope save from the cards or an invasion of Russia. Without permanent losses the French would just revolve round leaving turns of inanity. The second reason for attrition is (I think) that it covers one of the most atypical but striking events of the wars – the retreat from Russia. This undoubtedly took out of circulation an entire generation of trained soldiers and left an army depending on the Marie-Louises. Russia is barren and can call on large numbers of corps if it is invaded. One can see how units trapped deep in Russia in Winter might not escape. But as Napoléon reminded us at Eylau the losses of that battle would be replaced by one night’s sexual activity in Paris. The undoubted attritional effect of Russia (mismanaged as it was by Napoléon) has made the rest of the game a mini-World War One. Even fairly desultory combat can kill every Russian corps available before the invasion units are mobilised. This game actually posits that the Russian army could run out of men! Historically ridiculous as the attrition is it does give some purpose to a combat system foredooming the Allies to a series of defeats. However, balancing this is the foreknowledge of the gamers as to what it will take to make peace and win the game. In 1805 not many would have even vaguely suspected there was a further ten years of this ahead, but Age of Napoléon convinces you that you are in for a long game – and then makes sure of it. So unless the French play badly (losing Paris to the horrid Brits storming ashore in Normandy for example – yes that old chestnut) they will usually beat the Prussians and the Austrians a number of times. Do not be too blasé though, this game is popular with many because at the vital moment the cards can bite and bite savagely. The German powers will therefore usually surrender and Spain will usually go into insurrection and one then waits to see if France can get a victory without the long march into Russia. What keeps the game going are the Diplomacy cards. A neutral major country can return to the fray, if the French make it a dominion (King Lucien of Austria) then it can go into insurrection. There is no way out in Age of Napoléon only constant war (interesting card runs aside) until one side wins or 1815 is reached and France takes the Bronze. Victory comes in two varieties decisive and marginal. For the Frenchies the terms that get the Brits to the table are cleverly time-related. Up to 1810 Napoléon is assumed to be so arrogant he will only accept total surrender. He must have all countries adjacent to France under control (so Spain needs watching). He must also have Russia, Prussia and Austria under French control or occupied, and (as if that were not enough) all other countries, except the rosbifs, neutral or under French control. The French Wet Dream Scenario as it is known. From 1811 he’ll settle for a mere marginal once more all countries adjacent to France under French control. This time though no need to worry about the Prussians (for some reason) but one of Austria or Russia must be neutral (or under control or occupied) and the other under French control. This is very doable and it removes the need to invade Russia. It does however depend on the Coalition not getting the vital cards to turn over a key neutral. The Coalition win a marginal victory if they force France back to just controlling France and a decisive victory if France surrenders and Napoléon is permanently removed by combat or attrition. Conclusion So we have a game based on complete hindsight, that fails to deliver an experience of the period with rigid and (bar 1811) unchanging Victory Conditions, a combat system that keeps one side relatively supine and asks the other to put its dick in the mangle, which uses an attrition model based on an exceptional event, and in which card luck can make or break good play. It is certainly not history but it remains popular, why? The first reason is that (of course) history does not matter much in this hobby. The silliest events are explained away as ‘plausible’ by folks whose knowledge is not great but are enjoying what they are doing. What matters is that the events are exciting and here The Napoleonic Wars is much worse with its silly drought events. Players are more irritated by the opaque rule book and grudging explanations of mechanisms. Once through this barrier though there is a game where many interesting things can happen (especially if you do not over-analyse the game). Even though they are unlikely to win wars the Allies can work things their way in the early years. Faced by a plunging Frenchie they may also find the key cards to get that victory – and this can wrong-foot the French, over comes British Airborne on Paris and the game is afoot. You can never feel secure as France – the little devils seethe beneath your iron grip. At the vital moment diplomatic cards can bring things round again as the British break windows with guineas. The game is also streamlined and quick indeed the problems with its rules are to a degree based on a desire not to burden players with too much reading. This is an aim that one must applaud. With excellent components it allows the gamer a real struggle with some good strategy ideas to learn. You will finish this game in an evening. After a fashion it is really no more historical and just as exciting as Wallenstein (if less inventive) but I played the earlier versions and I know how much better they were. For those of you who do not I think you will find Age of Napoléon of interest. Back to Perfidious Albion #104 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com