‘I, Napoleon’ — The New Solo Game From the Makers of ‘Twilight Struggle’
The year is 1793. Louis XVI has just lost his head and France is turmoil. Now I, Napoleon, have some very ambitious plans for the future.
Naught but a few weeks ago, we took a look at a few great solo board games. It might already be time to modify that list with the latest game from GMT Games. They also produced Twilight Struggle, which was the #1 ranked game on Board Game Geek for years. This latest game is a solo-only game simply titled I, Napoleon.
I, Napoleon Overview
I, Napoleon is a single player strategy board game. It uses random card draw and dice rolls to run the player through the major events of Napoleon’s life. Over the course of the game, the player will gain authority, wage in diplomatic and militaristic conquests, and hopefully reach the levels of glory the true Napoleon gained, before either dying or being permanently exiled.
The core gameplay is incredibly simple. Each turn, the player will 1 card at a time from the deck, and resolve it. In a single turn, the player will draw anywhere from 5 to 12 cards, depending on dice rolls. Most cards will affect the player’s resources: Admin, Diplomacy, Glory, and Politics. Each of these will have various uses and thresholds. For example, many Commanders will require spending a resource to use their ability.
Some cards will be single use effects. But many cards will be placed somewhere on the board. These can be conditions like the enemy having advanced cannons, or people like Robespierre. All of these cards will affect the game in some way, usually adding or subtracting to die rolls.
After each turn, the game moves into the next year. When this happens, cards will be added and removed to the deck. This is to best reflect the possible random events which might pop up, and offer new options for campaigns and allies.
As the game progresses into the later years of Napoleon’s life, he becomes First Consul, and eventually Emperor. During these phases, the player will also have to navigate diplomacy between the different countries. Between waging war and building treaties, how the player chooses to engage with different countries will affect a lot of different aspects of play.
Final Thoughts
At this point, you might be thinking, “I still have no clue how I, Napoleon is even really played.”, which is fair. It’s a difficult game to explain because so much of the game comes from the cards. This is a game which kind of has the deck-driven story of a game like 7th Citadel, with the exploration aspect replaced with even more decisions to make and resources to manage.
I, Napoleon is a highly thematic game which does a great job of showing the difficulties of being a mostly reviled emperor. There are many cards in the game that will simply kill you if the conditions are right and you roll poorly. Plus, with literally hundreds of cards and with the variance of die rolls, it’s a game that will never play the same way twice.
