Vive l'Empereur de Mars!

1812: Napoleon on Mars is a wargames project I've been tinkering with behind the scenes at Wessex Games for a couple of years, doing odd bits of world building and rules writing as and when.

The basic concept is simple enough, instead of invading Russia in 1812, the Emperor decides to invade Mars...

How does he get there?

Simple, an aerograv powered by a Newtonian anti-gravity device (which obviously you get by combining Newton's law of universal gravitation with his laws of motion).

What is there when he gets there?

Aside from a dying civilisation of Martian city-states on an arid water starved world? Well the British of course. Perfidious Albion is developing trading links with the Martians thwarting Napoleon's Continental System economic blockade.

Basically the idea is to take inspiration from the battles between the British and French in India and Egypt and transfer them to a Barsoom-like Mars and have fun doing so. The battles will be normally be standard Napoleonic level brigade-level type games, but have something of a colonial (even VSF - or should that be GSF?) vibe.

The basic rules will just feature the French and the British, along with their Martian sepoys. I have ideas to extend the game beyond this by introducing other nations such as Austria, Prussia, Russia and even the United States as they join in the war on Mars but wanted to start simple and build up from there. A resurrected Society of United Irishmen may also feature...

Over the next few posts I'll talk more about the background, miniatures and rules so please join the Grognards below by following the blog and hopefully we'll all have some fun taking the Corsican Tyrant and Iron Duke to the Red Planet...