Vive L’Empereur!

About this board game

Vive L’Empereur! is a 2023 hex-and-counter wargame for 1–2 players, designed to recreate the Battle of Waterloo in a 180-minute solitaire campaign. You take the role of Napoleon and command the French army against the Anglo-Allied forces led by the Duke of Wellington.

The campaign begins after Napoleon’s successes at Ligny and Quatre Bras. Field Marshal Blucher’s Prussians have been defeated, while Wellington and his Dutch allies have withdrawn to a ridge near Waterloo. Your 72,000-strong French army must break the 68,000-strong Anglo-Allied Army before the Prussians can regroup, evade Marshal Grouchy, and reach the battlefield.

Randomized force activations drive the action. A chit-pull system determines when forces become active, creating an uncertain battlefield in which timing is crucial. Both sides move and conduct combat through changing activation results, while the Anglo-Allied and Prussian forces follow random instructions from the game’s Activation Table.

• Setting: The Battle of Waterloo, fought on June 18, 1815.
• Role: Command the French side as Emperor Napoleon.
• Core system: Hex-and-counter play with chit-pull activations.
• Challenge: Defeat Wellington before the Prussians can arrive.

Vive L’Empereur! turns Napoleon’s final campaign into a focused test of battlefield command and pressure management. Can you finish the campaign before the separated Allied armies reunite at Waterloo?