Battle of Napoleon: the beginning of a new game series

The first set, The Eagle and The Lion, will introduce the French and the British troops, with hundreds of miniatures and an innovative game system

Nexus is working on a new game series, dedicated to the Napoleonic age. The first title, due to be released in Summer 2008, is Battles of Napoleon: The Eagle and The Lion, a massive board game with hundreds of detailed plastic 1/72 scale figures (Infantry, Light and Heavy Cavalry, Artillery and Commanders), modular terrain boards, cards and dice. All these components will match with an innovative game system, efficient and easy-to-learn mechanics and historical accuracy. The Eagle and the Lion includes French and British troops. Future sets in the series will introduce new armies, units, scenarios and additional game boards.

Source: Nexus Games

Created by Sergio Guerri and Ugo Di Meglio, Battles of Napoleon is a game system that merges principles and mechanics from board and miniature games and allows constant player’s interaction. The original and realistic command system makes it possible to simulate that not always the subordinates do exactly what their commanders want from them. An innovative basing system makes it possible to simulate quickly the basic combat formations, easily replacing the losses and allowing fast movement over the game board – the game will include special bases where the miniatures will be inserted to create units and formations and removed to keep track of the losses.

Like Wings of War, the award-winning Nexus’ game series dedicated to the aerial combats in the XX century, Battles of Napoleon will publish additional game sets - each of them will be a complete game for 2 players, that can be also combined with other game sets to play larger battles.

The first set, The Eagle and The Lion, will feature the French and British troops, with miniatures featuring famous units like the Scots Grey and the Green Jackets (the British Rifles).

Mike Doyle is in charge of the game’s art and graphic layout. Doyle is a graphic designer, artist and player who has already worked in games like Caylus, El Capitàn, Leonardo da Vinci, Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage, Big City, Demetra e Yspahan, and others. To see some images of his work for Battles of Napoleon, visit his blog at http://mdoyle2.blogspot.com/.

Here is some additional information about the game, directly from one of its authors, Sergio Guerri.

In the beginning…

“Ugo and I are eager readers and collectors of everything related to the Napoleonic age. About four years ago, we read the book “La Sombra del Águila”, written by Arturo Perez-Reverte and we were very impressed. In the beginning of the story, during a nameless battle in an unknown place in Russia, when the defeat seems inevitable to the French army, n Spanish regiment unexpectedly decides to advance towards the Russian lines – they intend to defect, but the motion was interpreted as a bravery act by their commanders and even by Napoleon. Besides recommending this book to everyone (the initial battle is obviously not historical), was funny to think about how many times the big warlords were dragged, and often swept away, by decisions of their subordinates, by disobedience or even by the twists of fate, and also about how many times these things have not been mentioned by the “official history”. Thus when we started thinking about this game, we decided that we wanted a game where it wouldn’t be possible to have total and absolute control of your own troops and of the events, neither to always do the right thing in the right moment”.

Historical Accuracy

“Due to our strong interest and endless passion for history, and particularly for the Napoleonic age, in the years we built up a very large collection of reference books. We also visited many battlefields: Personally, I have been many times to Waterloo, and Ugo presently lives right next door to that battlefield! Furthermore, thanks to the wonderful project “Google Book Search” (http://books.google.com), we could consult further texts very rare until some time ago, like “Trait des grandes operations militair”, by H.Jomini, 1811’s edition, or some manuals about troops’ training, where the tactics used in the Napoleonic period are described in details, for example.”

The game system

“We are both “old grognards” and we have played both with complex rulebooks that require a considerable effort to learn and with extremely simple games - the thing that almost always missed, at least for us, was the right compromise between realism and easiness to play. This was what we tried to achieve, and we also tried to put together two worlds, that of miniature wargames and of board games, which have been always close to each other, but at the same time distant”.

The next releases

“We can’t talk about Napoleonic wars without thinking about the others big protagonists, like Austria, Prussia and Russia. After “The Eagle and the Lion”, we are going to dedicate our attention to these armies! We also want to offer additional scenarios, maps, and units, so that battles even larger than those allowed by the basic game can be played.”

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