Quickstart and basic concept of

Napoleon's Triumph



The gameboard

First a look at the gameboard is useful for understanding the game mechanics.
This will be combined with a short summary of the historical battle of Austerlitz.
Legend. The legend shows the terrain key for the game board (villages, elevation of terrain, roads, etc.). The ground scale is about 1:15000.
Time track. The game is played as a series of rounds, each representing one hour of time in the actual battle. Time is marked by putting a marker on the Time Track and advancing it one square each round.
Morale track. Both armies have a numeric morale level in the game, which is recorded by markers on this track. Each time an army loses an attack, the morale level is reduced by one for each loss it suffers. An army wins the battle by reducing the morale of the enemy army to zero, demoralizing it.
The Allied Army. The Austro-Russian army was over 70,000 strong. It was under the personal command of Czar Alexander who was confident of defeating the French army. He planned to attack at dawn on the morning of 2 December.
The French Army. While the Allied army confidently advanced, the French army laid in wait, feigning weakness. With his army's full strength hidden, Napoleon tried to lure the Allies into an attack on his deliberately weakened right, at which point he planned a devestating counter-attack with his center and left.
Sokolnitz. After some initial success, the Allies received their first nasty surprise when Napoleon revealed the first part of his trap: Davout's corps, which reached the battlefield just in time to bring the Allied attack to a dead stop at the small village of Sokolnitz.
Pratzeberg. Then the main French counter-attack began. The French center rapidly seized the Pratzen Heights. At a stroke, the French army was astride the communications between the Allied left and the rest of the Allied army, leaving the Allied army cut in two.
Brünn-Olmütz Highway. At the same, there was a wild fight of both armies' cavalry reserves on the French left. Charge and counter-charge. Finally the Allies were forced to retreat in some confusion.
Stare Vinohradi. Unaware of events on the rest of the battlefield, the Russian Imperial Guard advanced according to Alexander's plan – only to discover the Allied corps to their left and right in full retreat. The Guard commander resolved to retreat, but first counter-attacked to buy time. This counter-attack was stopped by a charge of the French Guard cavalry.
Satschan Pond. Last, the French wheeled southwards and attacked the Allied left from behind. Thousands of Allied soldiers surrendered or were killed, and some fell through the ice of the frozen Satschan Pond trying to flee across it. As freezing rain began to fall and the early winter darkness set in, the battle of Austerlitz was over.


Studying the map

Napoleon's Triumph uses irregular polygons of varying shapes and sizes
to regulate the positioning and movement of the pieces.
These polygons are called locales. Each locale has its own characteristics:


Die light grey bars are called "approaches". Pieces enter and leave a locale by the approaches. The example to the left shows a locale with 3 approaches.

The number in the center of each locale indicates the number of units that can occupy the locale at any one time.

These symbols are attack penalties for infantry, cavalry, and artillery respectively.

These symbols indicate obstructed or impassable terrain.

There are also roads. Pieces can normally only move one locale a single turn, but they can move up to three locales in a turn when following roads.

The rivers, woods, villages, etc., are decoration. They have no effect on play. (Their effect is factored into the sizes and shapes of the locales and their approach penalties.)



Learning to play...

Now we can take a look at the game mechanics.


(1) Units can be either organized together under a commander as a corps, or they can operate individually as detached. Units organized as corps move and attack together, while units that are detached move and attack individually. Corps are initially organized during set-up, but units can join and leave corps during play.

(2) To move or attack with a corps or detached unit requires expending a number of commands. Each side has a limited number of commands available in each turn. Commands are also needed for units to join corps, but are not needed for units to leave them; this makes corps easy to tear down but hard to build up.

(3) The map is divided into polygons called locales. The faces of the polygons are called approaches. Pieces can be either in the center of a locale (in reserve) or on one of the approaches (blocking). Pieces defend better when blocking an approach, but have more mobility when in reserve.

(4) During its turn, a piece may move within a locale (from blocking to reserve or vice-versa) or to reserve in an adjacent locale. Pieces moving by road can move two or three locales in a turn (local roads allow pieces to move two locales, main roads three).

(5) Attacks are part of movement. An attack begins with an announcement by the moving player of an attack threat against an enemy-occupied locale. In response to an attack threat, the defender can either attempt to defend against the attack or retreat before combat (retreats can cause losses: see step 8). If the choice is to defend, the attacker gets a chance to call off the attack and feint (at no loss to either side) or go ahead and attack.

(6) If the defender does not retreat and the attacker does not feint, the result is combat. To resolve an attack, both sides reveal leading units (one if the attack is across a narrow approach, two if across a wide approach). If eligible, the defender can also declare a counter-attack and reveal up to two more units, although these immediately lose a strength point each. The winner is the side that revealed the most strength points.

(7) Each side inflicts a one strength point loss for each enemy leading unit (exception: if the leading attacking units are artillery, the attacking side does not take losses). The stronger (winning) side also inflicts one additional strength point on the enemy for each point of strength advantage it has in the attack. Losses are inflicted either by replacing units with lower strength units or by eliminating them.

(8) When the attacker feints or loses, the defender retains control of the attacked locale and the attacker's move fails. If the defender retreats (either before or after combat), then all his pieces in the locale must retreat. Unless they already took losses in combat, retreating units take losses for doing so (exception: cavalry retreating from reserve does not take losses). Corps on the losing side have all but one unit detached.