Napoleon's Triumph

Anybody interested in playing Napoleon's Triumph?  It's a masterpiece block wargame with zero luck, lots of uncertainty due to the fog of war, and a beautiful aesthetic that looks like an 19th-century battle map.  Unfortunately, I have no one to play it with (and a long 2-player game probably won't get played at a regular Tuesday meeting without a prearrangement).

Happy to give this a try at some point. My biggest objection to wargames (and any other games that employ the same mechanism) is in the lobbing of . Too often strategy is trumped by lady luck, and while that may be realistic, I prefer to save pseudo-random unknowable deterministic fate to real life - and maintain actual control over events where possible, even if it is only in realms of collective imagination. But I'm pretty sure you knew that already.

Weekends are hotly contested in the run up to the festive season. I may be available one day of the 10th/11th Dec but don't yet know. A little concerned at trying to squeeze into a 7pm start, but perhaps we could do it midweek at some point with an earlier (straight from work?) sort of timing

systemsam wrote:My biggest objection to wargames (and any other games that employ the same mechanism) is in the lobbing of .

Yeah, I think we have very similar feelings on that point. Rachel Simmons designed a few others with low luck if you're interested in her style (and one of them (Triomphe à Marengo) is even in print!). Napoleon's Triumph did show up on the GeekList of "Games that you hate because they claim to have Strategy, but they're basically Pure Luck" but... well, go read that list. It's amusing.

I'm happy to show up early on a Tuesday or invite you over sometime. Box time is 2-3 hours, probably a bit longer for someone's first game.

(There are team-based multiplayer rules if anyone wants to try them, but I don't think they're a good idea for anyone's first game. They include strict limits on communication between team members, so everyone should probably know the rules first.)

Either sounds good.

That list is brilliant. An incredibly broad definition of 'random' is being used when Go is on the list (random because too complicated to analyse - it's a fair point, but not randomness). 1830 too. Although I get the issue if you use a draft, the newer auction system essentially removes randomness (though I think the draft in 1846 works quite well due to a broad set of viable options). Plenty of the other criticisms are 'I can't predict other player actions so it's random'. Presumably they prefer solo games.
Despite the mix of genuine criticism amd intentional jest, there is a lot of interesting game theory being touched on - accidentally I think!