Strategy in ‘Soldier Emperor’
Spring 1804
By Doug McNair
September 2006

As we rejoin our intrepid heroes in the spring of 1804, Napoleon has brought Prussia under his sway, has conquered several German principalities plus Austrian Venezia, and is poised to push into the Austrian heartland on a broad front. Charles of Austria has sent westward all available forces to meet the threat, but the Turks continue to draw off some of his armies to the east.

Turkey has scored a major victory by crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea and conquering the rich Papal States, but Spain has taken revenge for Christendom by sailing the length of the Mediterranean and conquering Constantinople. A new Spanish Armada was repelled by the Royal Navy, but Britain has made no dent in Fortress France’s westward defenses.

However, Admiral Jervis and a British amphibious invasion force scored a stunning victory over Marshall Davout in Naples, destroying his armies and capturing him after the Turkish conquest of the Papal States cut off his retreat. Spain is marching armies eastward through France to protect against Turkish or British invasions of Spanish Etruria. Russia has conquered parts of Scandinavia, Turkey and Prussia, forcing Prussia to surrender East Prussia to her in exchange for peace.

The Russian general Bagration has a powerful force in Posen, and hopes to hit Napoleon’s north flank in concert with the Austrians and throw the Corsican back westward before he can gain a foothold in the Austrian heartland. Finally, Prussia has withdrawn to her northern provinces to lick her wounds, having surrendered to both France and Russia to avoid annihilation.

Winter Preparations

Players can’t freely make alliances with each other until 1805, but France, Spain and Prussia all drew Minor Country Alliance cards in the Event Card Phase of the winter 1803 turn. In the subsequent Diplomacy Phase, France plays her Minor Country Alliance card and proposes an alliance with Turkey, offering the Sultan money and manpower if he’ll agree not to march north from the Papal States into Spanish Etruria and focus instead on fighting the British in Italy and crushing Austria from the south. Turkey accepts and plays her Agent Provocateur card, which lets her draw two more event cards. She draws two New Leader cards and plays them immediately, receiving General Ebubekir and Admiral Seyit Ali.

Turkey places Ebubekir in Wallachia, where he will be tasked with ejecting the Spanish from Constantinople, and Seyit Ali starts with the Turkish Black Sea Fleet to assist the same effort. France then donates 2 Manpower and 5 Money to her new Turkish ally. Spain, while grateful to her French ally for securing the safety of Spanish Etruria, is not so thrilled that France has just given Turkey the money for an all-out invasion of Spanish-held Constantinople.

Spain counters by playing a Minor Country Alliance card on Egypt, spending 7 Money on bribery to increase the alliance roll by +5. Nobody but Turkey lives anywhere near Egypt, so only Turkey cares about the alliance. Turkey spends 3 Money to counterbribe Egypt not to ally with Spain. The net roll modifier is +2, and Spain rolls a 5 + 2 = 7, which is less than the 10 needed to ally with Egypt. The counter-bribe worked, and the alliance attempt fails.

Purchase Phase

Britain and Austria bring in the two new armies they purchased in summer 1803. Britain puts her new 3/2 army in London, while Austria puts her new 3/2 army in Wien. Then, Sweden’s army and fleet in and near Britain both recover to full-strength, and two new Swedish armies appear in Goteborg to oppose the Russian invaders to the south at Scania. Naples does not receive reinforcements because Britain is in control of her only home territory.

Everybody repairs all the armies that took losses due to lack of winter maintenance. This leaves Prussia with 0 Money, effectively putting her out of the war for the year. Finally, France, Russia, and Turkey purchase more armies, while Spain purchases more fleets.

France needs to act first so that Charles of Austria can’t hit the weakened French position in Venetia and recapture that province. So Napoleon opts to add +2 to his initiative roll, and the initiative order ends up:

France, Britain, Austria, Turkey, Prussia, Russia, Spain.

Napoleon starts by playing a New Leader card, bringing in Murat at Piedmonte. He then plays False Orders and Bad Intelligence, causing the one Austrian army protecting Tirol to withdraw east to Hungary, opening Tirol to French siege while Murat storms through and attacks Wien. Napoleon sends an army south from Bayern to help him, and the two Prussian Auxiliaries on loan to Napoleon move south from Mecklenburg to Magdeburg to protect Napoleon’s northern flank. French forces fill-in behind the advance to protect the south French coast, and one Spanish army from Provence moves to protect Etruria from the powerful British forces in the Mediterranean.

Then Murat attacks the Austrians at Wien. France spends 5 Money for an all-out Invasion, but Austria plays a Surprise Attack card, bringing back the army France sent to Hungary. The attack goes off at 13 dice to 16, with the surprise-attacking army rolling four dice that hit on a 5 or 6. Murat scores two hits on the first round, but the Austrians score four. One Austrian army takes a step loss and retreats, and Murat’s relatively weak armies take three step losses and retreat north to join Napoleon at Bayern.

There is no way Murat can continue the attack, and he takes the rest of his forces north to join Napoleon and await Bagration’s advance. France then spends 3 Money to give the Old Guard unlimited siege rounds in Tirol, but the Tirolian gunners do three hits on five dice in the second siege round, damaging the Old Guard and sending it back to Piedmonte. Napoleon’s spring offensive against Austria comes to naught.

Now that Napoleon has played his hand, Britain decides it’s time to take a bite out of Europe’s soft underbelly. There is the matter of the remnants of the Spanish Armada, plus the Russians in Sweden. Britain can’t afford to lose her powerful Swedish ally to Russian conquest, so lets the Swedes go fight the Russians off before bringing them back into the fight against France. The Swedish fleet in the North Atlantic sails into port at Wales to pick up the Swedish army there, and then sails for the Baltic while the two new Swedish armies in Goteborg move south to relieve the Russian siege of Scania.

The Spanish Fleet in the North Atlantic tries to intercept them but fails, and then the British player plays Naval Mutiny on that same Spanish fleet, rolling a 5 on one die and causing the entire fleet (and the army it’s carrying) to dissolve and go a-pirating. This frees up the Royal Navy from home defense, so the North Sea Fleet heads south and blockades Spanish Galicia to neutralize the Spanish invasion threat, and the Scottish home fleet picks up a British army and heads for the Mediterranean to assist Admiral Jervis. Jervis’ invasions go forward, with two fleets and an army invading Spanish Etruria, two more armies marching up the boot from Naples to the Turkish-held Papal States, and Jervis himself sailing out to engage the Turkish fleet in the Tyrrhenian.

The Swedish attack on the Russians goes first, with the Swedes mounting a two-round Assault at four dice to six. The Swedes do no damage on the first round while the Russians damage one Swedish army and force it to retreat. The remaining Swedish army decides to retreat with it, opting to wait till next turn for the arrival of the Swedish fleet and army in the Baltic.

Then Jervis successfully intercepts the Turkish fleet in the Tyrrhenian and attacks, getting the wind gauge of them. But France plays a Gale card, causing exceptionally bad weather in the placid Tyrrhenian and halving both sides’ combat strengths in all rounds. This lets the Turkish fleet survive the first combat round undamaged, and head into Dubrovnik to join the Turkish armies there.

The invasion of Spanish Etruria goes off, with the British spending 3 Money for an Assault at seven dice to four. The British score two hits on the first round, wiping out the 2/1 Spanish army there. The Spanish score one hit in return, sending a British fleet out to the Mediterranean but leaving a British fleet and army in Etruria to besiege it.

The two British armies in the Papal States spend 5 Money for an all-out Invasion against the trapped Turkish army there. The attack goes-off at seven dice to six , and once again scores two hits on the first round, destroying the Turkish army since it has nowhere to retreat. Then the British spend 3 Money for unlimited siege rounds in the Papal States and 1 Money for two siege rounds in Etruria. It takes a while, and one of the British armies takes damage and retreats to Naples, but the Papal States fall to the British. The Etrurian garrison ejects the weak British invasion force, but Britain now has all-but undisputed control in the Mediterranean.

Charles of Austria in Croatia has a temptingly weak French force in his front, but he’s also got two Turkish armies and a fleet in his rear at Dubrovnik. Neither enemy force is all that powerful, but now that France and Turkey are allied, the two forces could converge on Croatia during Turkey’s upcoming turn. He’s got to take out one of them or he’ll just be pinned down, and with Napoleon ready to have another go at Austria in the Summer he can’t wait around. So, he leaves two armies to guard his rear in Croatia and attacks the French and Italian armies in Venezia. He spends 3 Money for an Assault at nine dice to eight. Charles does no damage the first round, but the combined French/Italian force scores four hits and damages both of Charles’ armies, sending them back to Croatia.

Then the Austrians in Wien split, with half moving west to occupy Tirol while the other half move northwest to hit Napoleon from the south as the Russian General Bagration’s forces march through Saxony and hit Napoleon from the north. The Austrians and Russians both spend 3 Money for an Assault, and the Austrian player plays the La Gloire card, letting all Austrian and Russian armies hit on a 5 or 6 on the first combat round. This is the crux of the Austro-Russian strategy, since Napoleon has a superior force and the armies under his command also hit on a 5 or 6 the first round. Only by scoring massive damage in the first round do the allies have a chance of sending Napoleon back westward.

The allied attack goes off at 17 dice to 27, with all 17 Allied dice hitting on a 5 or 6 and 16 French dice hitting on a 5 or 6. Each side scores five hits on the first round. Three French armies take damage and retreat while an Italian army does its duty and dies for the cause. Two Austrian and one Russian army take damage and retreat, and the second round goes off at 10 dice to 19, with only Russian armies remaining. The Russians score only one hit, eliminating a half-strength French army, but the French score five hits and damage all remaining Russian armies, sending them back to Saxony. So in the end, the Allied counterattack got blunted even more sharply than Napoleon’s spring offensive.

Turkey starts her turn by playing Troop Revolt on the Austrian army manning the eastern frontier in Bosnia. The two Turkish armies in Serbia cross the mountains into Bosnia, and the Austrian army there retreats north to Hungary without fighting and takes a step loss per the card. With Bosnia surrendered, a Turkish 3/2 army in Dubrovnik moves north across the mountains to join the gathering force there, ready to hit at Austria’s weakened midsection. Finally, the two new Turkish leaders and their forces move to retake Constantinople from the Spanish.

The Turks spend 3 Money to hit Constantinople at nine dice to nine. They score only one hit on the first round (doing no damage), while the Spanish score three hits and eject the Turkish attackers. Then the Turks spend 3 Money to besiege Bosnia, taking it back for Turkey as a jumping-off point to invade Austria over flat ground.

Hohenlohe of Prussia withdraws from East Prussia per the terms of his surrender to Russia. With no money to his name, that’s all he can do for now.

Bagration of Russia tells his reserves to bring up the rear double-time, and he pulls back to Posen to meet them, forming a huge stack of Russian troops. This leaves Saxony open to a French advance, but there was no way Bagration could have stopped it with his battered forces. Then the two Russian 3/2 armies in Russian-controlled Moldavia attack southward, hitting the Turkish armies that Spain ejected back to Wallachia.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet joins the attack, which goes in at eight dice to 11 for two rounds. There are no hits on the first round, and both sides score two hits on the second round. The Black Sea Fleet takes damage and retreats out to sea, while one Turkish army takes damage and retreats west to Serbia. The two attacking Russian armies stay in Wallachia to pin down the Turks. Then the Russians take a free siege round up in Swedish Scania, conquering it for the Tsar.

Finally, Spain faces reality and admits she can’t beat Britain, and decides to shift her focus eastward. Spain pulls her forces back out of France and readies them to be transported to Turkey, assuming Admiral Jervis lets them through. Since the Turks are France’s ally, Spain thinks Jervis will find more important things to do than interfere with Spanish missions to the Holy Land.

Then, with Russia attacking Turkey from the north, there is nothing to prevent rogue provinces from gobbling her up from the south. So, Spain plays another Minor Country Alliance card and spends 9 Money for a +6 bribery modifier in an alliance attempt with Egypt. Turkey spends 3 Money to counterbribe, and the dieroll ends-up 8 + 3 = 11, and Spain successfully allies with Egypt. The Egyptian army that Spain draws is a relatively weak 2/1, but the Spanish fleet in Constantinople sails out anyway and picks it up from Cairo, taking it back north where it marches with the Spaniards to hit the Turks from the south in Wallachia.

The Spanish spend 3 Money and Assault at seven dice to nine, doing two hits on the first round to one for the Turks. The Egyptians dutifully take damage and retreat to Constantinople, while a Turkish army does the same and retreats to Serbia. The second round Spanish attack is five dice to seven, and once again the Spanish do two hits while the Turks do only one. The tough Spanish forces take no damage, while a 3/2 Turkish army takes damage and retreats to Serbia, leaving only a reduced-strength 2/1 Turkish army in Wallachia to stand between the Russians and the Spaniards.

Delighting in Turkey’s bisection, and eager to prevent a Turkish attack on her own soil, Austria foments a Turkish coup and plays the Sultan Overthrown card, which removes the Turkish leaders Ebubekhir and Seyit Ali from play and replaces them with the more competent leaders Pechlivan, Kuschanz and Ahmed.

Most importantly, Turkey must roll two dice to see how much money she loses in the economic chaos caused by the coup. She rolls an 11, and Turkey’s money total shrinks from 18 to 7! So, with all the damage her armies took from the Spanish and Russian attacks, she’ll be lucky to have enough to keep her armies alive through the winter, let alone attack Austria. And with Austria having played Debase Currency on her last turn, Turkey’s economy is heading into a major depression, and Napoleon’s new eastern ally will likely be of little use.

At the end of the spring campaign season, only Britain has made a significant conquest, and most other powers have taken massive losses without making any gains. After damaged armies are repaired in the next Purchase Phase, the players with money remaining will be able to take the war to their impoverished enemies with little fear of retaliation. Who will those lucky few be? Can Turkey recover at all? Will Alexis survive her surgery? Tune in next time and find out!

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