Vedette Wargames · Scenario generators for the tabletop

Vedette

The great battles, cut to your table. Or a new one every evening.

Scenario generators for wargamers. Exploring Officer, for the Napoleonic Wars; The Intelligencer, for the War of the Spanish Succession. Pick a theatre and a table; print the sheet — staff map, both orders of battle, objectives, victory conditions — and play it with the rules already on your table.

French infantry storming the stone bridge at Fromentières — 28 mm figures on Andy’s table
Exploring Officer · the Napoleonic Wars. Fromentières, 1814: a scenario the app generated, built on the table and fought in an evening.
Buy Exploring Officer · £15
White- and yellow-coated battalions with their colours advancing on a village held in red, the church and the timbered houses beyond — 28 mm figures from Paul Ireland’s collection, on Andy’s table
The Intelligencer · the War of the Spanish Succession. The village from the attackers’ side — 28 mm figures from Paul Ireland’s collection, on Andy’s table.
Buy The Intelligencer · £15

Napoleonic or the War of the Spanish Succession. One file each, yours to keep.

Early release — £15 each, or £25 for both, while the next major update is still being built, then the prices rise.

Or both for £25 →

Why you’d buy it

A battle for the army you own.

Sized to the figures most of us actually have, and cut to the table you’ve got — 8, 10, 12 or 14 ft.

Every fight has a reason.

The sheet says why both armies are here, what each must take or hold, who is attacking, and when it ends.

Real men in command.

Each commander’s card says who he was and what he had done, and rates what he can get his army to do in an hour’s fighting.

Your rules. One file. No subscription.

The sheet states the situation and leaves the mechanics to the rules on your table; the app is one file you keep, offline once its key is in, with no subscription and nothing to renew.

vedette, n. — a mounted sentry posted beyond the outposts, to watch the enemy and report what he sees.

Vedette makes scenario generators for the wargamer who reads the history. Each one is built for a single period and named for the man that period sent forward to look at the ground: the exploring officer of Wellington’s Peninsula, the intelligencer of Marlborough’s wars. What comes back is a scenario you can print and play — orders of battle, a staff map, objectives — built from the sources and ready for the table.

The whole table: horse, guns and infantry in line across a field — 28 mm figures on Andy’s table

Napoleonic Wars · 1798–1815

Exploring Officer

Pick a theatre and a table; print the scenario. Six theatres, from Egypt in 1798 to the Hundred Days, and seventeen researched battles — Austerlitz, Leipzig, Waterloo and fourteen more.

Available · Early release · £15

Austerlitz is the biggest of the seventeen. Most engagements are a division or two a side, and a generated action is built to the table you have. See one built to order →  ·  Watch a minute of the app →

Austerlitz, E1: Telnitz and Sokolnitz - the engagement’s staff mapAusterlitz, E2: The Pratzen Heights - the engagement’s staff mapAusterlitz, E5: Staré Vinohrady — the Guard Counter-attack - the engagement’s staff mapAusterlitz, E3: The Santon and the Bosenitz Corridor - the engagement’s staff mapAusterlitz, E4: Aujezd and the Pond Causeway - the engagement’s staff mapThe Austerlitz set, all five engagements, as the app prints them. See the whole thing →
Blue-coated infantry under the Bavarian colours firing over a stone wall, a mounted officer behind them — 28 mm figures on Andy’s table

War of the Spanish Succession · 1701–14

The Intelligencer

Marlborough’s war: seven theatres — Flanders, the Danube, Valencia, the Upper Rhine, Italy, Aragon and the French frontier — that build a new action whenever you ask, and fourteen battles from First Höchstädt to Denain.

Available · Early release · £15
The Action at Kerkhove, Flanders - a generated staff mapThe Action at Stillnau, Bavaria - a generated staff mapThe Action at Sumacárcel, Valencia - a generated staff mapA new action every time you ask, in Flanders, on the Danube or in Valencia. See one built to order →Blenheim, E1: Blenheim village and the Danube flank - the engagement’s staff mapBlenheim, E3: Oberglau - the engagement’s staff mapBlenheim, E4: Lutzingen and the hills - the engagement’s staff mapBlenheim, E2: The centre — Unterglau to the Höchstädt road - the engagement’s staff mapThe Blenheim set, all four engagements, as the app prints them. See the whole thing →

How a Vedette scenario is made

From the sources

The historical battles are built from the published orders of battle and the histories, and every sheet names what it stands on. A generated scenario has no history to cite, so its forces are built to the standard strengths of that army in that year — and where the record gives no figure for a real unit, the same standard strength supplies one, so every unit plays.

Exploring Officer and The Intelligencer work this way today. The apps that follow are held to the same rule. See how it works.

Cut to your table

You say how big the table is. The scenario is fitted to it, not the other way round.

Etching: a cavalryman in a crested helmet, his back to us, on a standing horse
Édouard Detaille · 1875 The Cavalryman. Etching. Cleveland Museum of Art.

Ready to keep

Both orders of battle, the staff map with its deployment zones, objectives, victory conditions, special rules and umpire’s notes — one printed sheet, saved as a single file that will not change. That’s what to send a friend or the club.

Made by a wargamer, for wargamers

Vedette is made by a wargamer, for wargamers. I’m not a historian. The scenarios are built from the published orders of battle and the histories, with the sources cited, but they are a guide to a good game, not a work of reference: where the history and the table disagree, the table wins, and where the record is silent I have made the assumption or the substitution a playable scenario needs. If you want to argue about the numbers, the sources are there to argue with.

Oil painting: Wellington on horseback among his staff, the battle continuing in the distance
Jan Willem Pieneman · 1824 The Battle of Waterloo. Wellington, the Iron Duke, mounted among his staff. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum.
Buy Exploring Officer · £15Buy The Intelligencer · £15One file each, yours to keep — it runs in your browser and prints as a staff document.

Want to hear when the next app or battle pack lands? Write to feedback@vedette-wargames.com and I will tell you.