February 8, 2025

The Life & Times of I, Napoleon – Part 5

Michael Eckenfels, 2 February 2025

The new year dawns with the Year Setup Phase. The Year marker is advanced to said year, while the Card Draw marker is reset back to 1.

TURN 5 – 1797

Next is Resource Income; we get +2 A and +1 P, which are recorded on the track. I’ve been eyeing that ungrateful Nelson in Britain; he will cause a -2 G per year once we get to First Consul status. If, I mean, of course. Heh-heh. For now, he’s but storm clouds on the horizon.

This is the latest episode in a running playthrough of Ted Racier’s I, Napoleon from GMT Games; you can find the links to all published episodes at the end of article, with new ones each Sunday

I’m wondering now though if I should exchange some Glory points for Admin points. I certainly might be able to use them, especially for activating Commanders. However, it’s just too much – 3 Glory for 1 Admin is a steep price to pay. I’m sitting at 21 Glory and really don’t want to reduce it unless I was desperate. The 1-for-1 exchange of Political points for Admin points is a consideration, though; I have 10 Political Points right now and Josephine gives me that +1 A every turn/year. I’m going to go ahead and spend -1 P to gain +1 G. That’s 9 Political and 3 Admin, now. I hope that’s not a wasted exchange.

Now we get into the Card Deck Phase, where I’ll set up the Draw Deck for this year/turn. The interesting thing to note here is that there will be no cards added until (or if!) we become First Consul, which is still 5-some years (turns) away.

Okay…let’s just agree at this point that the terms year and turn are interchangeable so I’m not having to type those twice.

Anyway, there’s no cards to add right now nor will there be for the next several turns, which is interesting because most cards I’ve played thus far – the vast majority, actually – are removed from play when they are used. For now, I just double-checked the discards/removed cards to be sure; I did find one that should be re-added to the deck, so it’s shuffled and we’re ready to move on to the Card Action Phase. Let’s look at the first draw of this turn.

most images can click to enlarge

During the Syrian Campaign Napoleon ordered the massacre of Muslim prisoners, many of whom had already broken parole. However justified on pure military grounds, it was a war crime and one it seems certain Napoleon would never have practiced on European prisoners.

So this one is not the greatest way to start a turn, but in a nutshell, it’s not going to affect us for now. It is discarded without effect as we will not be resolving the Egyptian nor Syrian Campaigns this turn; we DO have the Syrian Campaign card in our Potential Campaigns spot, but that doesn’t get resolved, I don’t think, until I move on from this General level to more lofty leadership. Again…I think. I believe I’m playing this right. Nappy can’t exactly command French troops to invade Syria at the moment – not at his rank. So we’re going to discard this card with no effect, but it will get reshuffled back in, in the next year, as it cannot be removed unless the Syrian Campaign card is played as a Campaign, which can’t happen until we hit the First Consul area.

I hope I’m correct in this interpretation but I just can’t find anything to the contrary, so if this is incorrect, please forgive me. For now we’ll stick to the spirit of the game. We’re ready for the next card draw, now.

 

Augereau was one of the older of Napoleon’s Marshals. A thorough Jacobin who disapproved of his master’s Imperial course.

Another Commander card; this guy costs 1 P to gain a +1 DRM in any Combat Round. It’s good to have options though his use costs Napoleon some political clout, probably because this Commander is not a fan of world conquest. Boy, did you ever choose the wrong star to hitch your wagon to, sir.

 

Massena was a thoroughly corrupt but brilliant commander, whose abilities sometimes threatened to outshine Napoleon’s. But Massena recognized the younger man as his superior when they met, confessing, “The little – – – – scares me.”

Yet another Commander card to add to our growing stable of leaders. This guy costs 2 G to tap but gives a +2 DRM in any Combat Round up to and including the year 1808, and then +1 DRM in 1809 to 1812. An interesting distinction; did he just become a worse leader later in life? Too old? Who knows. While it’s kind of dull to get yet another Commander card, I imagine this is part of the build-up and Napoleon’s own inroads to meeting and working with other Generals in the French Army.

 

With the Jacobins out of power, the incompetent and corrupt Spanish monarchy threw in its lot with the Revolution, with disastrous future consequences for both France and Spain.

This fourth card draw can only occur if either card 29 (Robespierre’s Fall) or our First Consul era is in effect. Card 29 indeed was played, so this gets placed in our Treaties box and Spain is set to Allied.

 

Spain will remain Allied with France until either one of two cards is drawn, which I think will be later in the game; probably much later. For now we move on to our fifth card draw.

 

Napoleon was capable of great endurance on horseback, but he was a clumsy rider and more than once took a serious fall.

This one is a little odd. I need to immediately advance to the next Card Draw phase, which is number 6. I roll a 9 on my d10 so it will happen (the DRM for the sixth draw is just 1). However, I have to discard that new draw immediately.

 

This is unfortunate as this card could have triggered FCD, or the First Consul era, if there was a success with it. It is discarded though as it does not matter; Napoleon’s little riding accident just cost us the chance to move up the ladder rather quickly. In any case, this card will get shuffled back in for the next turn, so it very well may come up again in the next turn.

My next DR roll is a 1, which is in the 1-2 range for the seventh draw – so no more card draws.

We have no Campaigns to prosecute, so we’ll skip that Phase, as well of course as the Diplomatic and Domestic Politics Phases, and go right to the Clean Up Phase. Everything is moving quickly!

And the Admin and Diplomacy markers are reset to zero. So yeah, I utterly wasted one P point for that one A point at the start of the turn. Oh well. Preparedness is not a bad thing but hindsight sure can be, at least in our hobby. Or in Napoleon’s life as I’m sure he’s regretting getting on that horse this year.

End of 1797

That’s it for 1797. Join The Napoleon Channel next time as we move on to the year 1798 and see what lovely things are in store for us then! Caked on make up? Powdered wigs? STDs? The sky is the limit but goodness knows if any of these are in the game, honestly! I have my doubts, which is just as well.

 


I, Napoleon AAR
PART 1 ~ PART 2 ~ PART 3 ~ PART 4 ~ PART 5 ~ PART 6 ~ PART 7 ~ PART 8
PART 9 ~ PART 10 ~ PART 11 ~ PART 12 ~ PART 13 ~ PART 14


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