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The Napoleonic Wars --This Is How The Little Corporal Rolls

John Goode
Falkland Islands
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Board Game: The Napoleonic Wars (Second Edition)


We affectionately call it ‘Nappy,’ because its official, legal-type name, The Napoleonic Wars, just seems too buttoned-up for this casual dice-fest with Napoleonic overtones.

Not to say that it has no simulation value, but when you marry the card-driven movement/action scheme to the Yahtzee combat mechanic—roll a 6, zap a battalion—it’s a bit of a climb to realism. Season with free-for-all diplomacy rules and at times you enter that place between light and shadow, The Twilight Zone. Once I had the Danes kicking the Russians out of Moscow, a smoking Rod Serling visible in a Kremlin window.

But Nappy passes the minimum test for being a simulation: it’s possible, and in fact not unlikely, for the game to play out roughly along historical lines.

Grand strategic games, especially those involving free-for-all diplomacy rules, seem to be impossible to get right the first time and TNW is no exception. There are just too many alliance iterations to cover in a short rulebook, resulting in many questions and much confusion among first edition players. Minor nations and alliances weren’t the only thing that perplexed early adopters but they were the main thing. I have a list of FAQs longer than the original rulebook.

But Nappy was, and is, playable right out of the box in its first or second editions. Unfortunately, the second edition isn’t just an update, it’s a little bit of a different game. GMT opted to change some aspects instead of just fixing what was broken. A bad call.

The most controversial aspect of Nappy is the Peace Die Roll. The game can end at the end of any turn, even turn 1. The end of turn 1 almost always has the French ahead. Each player can draw one less card on the next turn in order to affect this die roll. But players are greedy and in the vast majority of the games I’ve played the Coalition players prefer to take their chances. Then a 5 or 6 is rolled and the French win after 1 turn. No one is happy. Not even the French really, unless the game was for money.

I really like this uncertain game-end mechanic but players should probably be forced to act more like the governments they represent. The Napoleonic era was all about biding your time for the right moment to jump back into the fray. Game players, however, are not so keen to sit out a year or two of game time biding.

And this affects how a typical game develops. With a roughly even number of cards between the Imperials and Coalition, Russia rushes to Austria’s aid. Making for a standoff in front of Vienna. Unless the French drew a killer hand, Napoleon often can’t quite take on the combined Austro-Russians. But since the French are ahead in key cities, le petit caporal is content to sit in front of Vienna and wait them out. Events then often diverge wildly from history with the French trying to recruit the Prussians or Turks, or even go after Britain if Trafalgar turned out more favorably. The invasion of Russia doesn’t often happen under this scenario. However, if you can pull off an Austerlitz and thrash the Austro-Russian army things tend to curve back to historical.

The other thing that can widely skew history is the combat system. Sometimes you roll 20 dice without a single 6. Sometimes you roll 5 dice and they are all 5s or 6s. In the world of Nappy, sometimes Napoleon gets bare-ass spanked. This tends to change history. But, no single defeat is usually the end of the world for you, with the possible exception of the times the French sink the entire British navy. Very hard for the Brits to come back from that, but it is a rare thing.

Nappy is ideally a four-player game, though three works fine too. I’ve avoided two-player. And five-player means someone has to be the Prussians. They sit out the entire first turn, and after that neutrality is often the preferred option for the second turn as well. It’s basically a good side for the player least interested in the game.

So why is second edition inferior? I think the designer took the wrong lesson away from the success of the first edition. We didn’t love the game because of its whammy cards. We loved it in spite of the whammy cards. We didn’t love it because one side could go on a tear and annihilate everything in its path. We loved it because of the rare possibility that you could work your nation to that point.

The three main reasons I like second edition less:

1. Though it adds 20 additional cards, these come at the expense of the ‘Reserves’ cards. Reserves were fixed cards each nation received at the start of each turn. The mechanic still exists in second edition but now you don’t have cards, you have to keep track of Reserves separately on your headquarters display. They don’t count as cards in your hand, making card play and preemption opportunities less interesting.

2. The new cards skew high on number of command points and whammy potential (more than half are fives and sixes and nine are red dot, so are triggered by minors). Several can be real hosers: Kingdom Of Naples, Capitulation, even Mud in the early going.

3. But the winner in the worst new mechanic retrofit into a good existing game category is ... getting a chance to draw a resource whenever you route an army. Getting routed is usually enough of a disaster without adding serious insult to the injury. A resource is sort of a card on steroids, also being a victory point and turn extender. A couple good rolls late in a turn and this can wildly swing a game. Not usually what you want.

In le grande scheme of things though, Nappy is among my favorite, light, low brain-drain, wargames. You can even play it with non-gamers if they have an interest in the period. And you can join a multi-player game most any time on ACTS.

TNW has a large following and been going strong for nearly 15 years. It has spawned two sort-of sequels. Wellington, an outright disaster so full of whammy cards that nothing you do matters so much as your opponent drawing the card that effectively reads: “Ha, ha … You lose _______”(Fill in the blank):
A. The Battle
B. The Game
C: Your Sanity

And Kutuzov, which I haven’t played, but was in the GMT bargain bin for many years. Never a good sign.

Nappy is a game I’d play most any time with most anybody. High praise given the number of options in the light wargame category. It’s currently rather pricey (May 2015) as it’s between printings and its P500 numbers aren’t making the cut.



From gallery of FinalWord

The Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (Second Edition)
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