Vedette · Napoleonic Wars · 1798–1815

Exploring Officer

A Napoleonic scenario generator, and the great battles to fight again.

For wargamers. Not a history reference — games, built to keep the general in you fighting. Pick a theatre and a table; print the scenario.

Buy Exploring Officer · £15One file, yours to keep.

Early release — £15 while the next major update is still being built, then the price rises. Feedback: feedback@vedette-wargames.com.

Any rules
Tables from 8 to 14 ft
Inches or centimetres
An evening a game: 10 to 16 turns, 20 to 74 units on the table
Solo, umpired or two-player
One file. Offline. Print it, send it.

A minute of it

The film is the app itself, driven a frame at a time — a reroll, then the sheet it printed: the staff map, the balance, both orders of battle, the objectives. Nothing in it is mocked up.

Exploring Officer — the app, and the sheet it prints.

Sixteen battles, fifty-three engagements

Fought again, an evening at a time

Every battle is cut into the engagements that decided it. Each is a complete scenario on its own: its own table, its own map, both orders of battle, its own victory conditions. Play one, or fight the chain and carry the result forward.

Battle	Year	Eng.	Units	The engagements
Austerlitz See the whole set, as the app prints it →	1805	5	34–70	five engagements Telnitz and Sokolnitz · The Pratzen Heights · Staré Vinohrady — the Guard Counter-attack · The Santon and the Bosenitz Corridor · Aujezd and the Pond Causeway
Jena–Auerstedt	1806	3	36–69	three engagements The Landgrafenberg and Vierzehnheiligen · Hassenhausen · The Collapse toward Weimar
Eylau	1807	3	41–63	three engagements The Town · The Blizzard and the Russian Centre · Kutschitten and the Southern Flank
Friedland	1807	2	62–64	two engagements Sortlack Wood and the Loops of the Alle · Ney's Attack and the Town
Arroyo dos Molinos	1811	2	24–26	two engagements The town at dawn · The plain and the mountain
Fuentes de Oñoro	1811	3	24–60	three engagements The Village: First Storm · The Plain: Poço Velho and the Fighting Withdrawal · The Village: Second Storm
Borodino	1812	4	25–61	four engagements Shevardino Redoubt · The Bagration Flèches · Uvarov and Platov's Raid · The Raevsky Redoubt
García Hernández	1812	1	20	one engagement The squares on the Serna slope
Krasny (Krasnoi)	1812	3	21–56	three engagements The Losvinka Gully: Eugene's Breakout · Napoleon's Gambit: The Guard's Feint and Davout's Escape · Ney's Rearguard: The Losvinka and the Ice of the Dnieper
Salamanca (Los Arapiles)	1812	4	27–53	four engagements The head of the column · Leith, Maucune and Le Marchant · Clausel's counter-attack · Ferey at El Sierro
Leipzig (the Battle of the Nations)	1813	5	48–74	five engagements Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz · Moeckern · Lindenau · Probstheida · The Bridge and the Rearguard
The Six Days — Champaubert, Montmirail, Château-Thierry and Vauchamps	1814	4	34–55	four engagements Champaubert · Montmirail · Château-Thierry · Vauchamps
Ligny	1815	3	45–68	three engagements Saint-Amand and Wagnelée · Ligny village · The Guard breaks the centre
Quatre Bras	1815	2	60–70	two engagements Perponcher holds · Kellermann's charge and the Guards
Waterloo	1815	5	33–72	five engagements Hougoumont · D'Erlon's attack and the great charge · The squares and La Haye Sainte · Plancenoit · The Guard's last attack
The Waterloo Campaign	1815	4	59–70	four engagements Quatre Bras · Ligny · Waterloo — the decisive hours · Wavre
Sixteen battles		53	20–74	From 20 units on the table to 74, at 12 ft; the 8 and 10 ft tables take fewer.

And six theatres that build a battle to order

Germany · 1813
Danube · 1809
Peninsula
Egypt · 1798
France · 1814
Hundred Days · 1815

Each builds a fresh action every time you ask, on whatever table you have.

Buy Exploring Officer · £15One file, yours to keep.

Three ways in

Pick the evening you want — small, big, or a whole day

A small, sharp one

García Hernández, 1812 — the squares on the Serna slope. One engagement, twelve turns: the King’s German Legion dragoons against French infantry in square. The whole battle on one table in one evening.

20 units on the table: eight battalions, eleven cavalry regiments, one battery.

The set-piece

Borodino — the Raevsky redoubt. Sixteen turns, the biggest fight in the box, the redoubt and the ground either side of it.

42 units on the table.

A day in a chain

Austerlitz. Five engagements that follow the day. Each result changes the next: a brigade arrives a turn early, a start line moves, the bar for a win goes up or down, and the sheet says exactly what. See the whole set →

34 to 70 units a table, five tables.

What prints

The sheet is the scenario

One of many generated actions, printed as the app prints it and cut into four. This is The Action at Klein-Niederau — code GE12-RLGJ-7766, the battle in the film. What follows is an example of what the app produces for a generated scenario; none of it is drawn for the page.

The staff map The ground and its villages, the lettered deployment zones, the objectives and what they score, the roads, a scale bar and a key. A different one for every scenario.

The balance section: a tilt meter between the two sides, and the reasons for each of them in two columns — The balance, shown not hidden Who holds the edge and why, in words: the odds, the ground, the command. No index and no invented strength totals — you can argue with the reasoning rather than take a number on faith.

Both orders of battle, French and Allied, organised by division and brigade down to the battalion — Both orders of battle Division to brigade to battalion, quality graded, every formation under the man who commanded it, every unit sized so it can be set out.

Objectives with their point values and a keystone marker, and the victory bands spelled out in full — Objectives and victory, spelled out Points weighted by what the ground is worth, and the victory bands written out — nothing to argue about at the table when the last turn ends.

Read the whole sheet

Any rules you like. Exploring Officer works with any set of Napoleonic wargames rules. A scenario is written in battalions, squadrons, guns, turns and inches — what every rule set uses and none owns — so it plays on your table with the rules already on it, whatever they are.

Save the scenario and you have the finished battle — one file, plays offline, keeps forever. That’s what to send a friend or the club. Every scenario also carries a short code, so you can find it again in your own copy of the app — see how it works.

Portrait miniature of Arthur Wellesley in a scarlet coat, about 1806 — John Wright · c. 1806–7 Arthur Wellesley, before the Peninsula. Watercolour on ivory. Cleveland Museum of Art.

What it stands on

Every sheet names its sources, to the page

The historical battles are built from the published orders of battle and the histories, and each sheet says which, with page numbers where the source has them. Where a source names a unit but never counts it, the unit goes on at the standard strength for its army that year, and the sheet says so. A generated action has no history to cite, so it is built to the same standard strengths. Made by a wargamer, not a historian: a guide to the game, not a work of reference.

The Sources block from the Waterloo sheet: a list of published orders of battle and histories with page numbers and links — The Sources block, from the Waterloo sheet Siborne, Houssaye, the Waterloo Letters by page, Nafziger’s returns — and what each one was used for. Unedited, and on every historical sheet.

The Scots Greys charging a French column — 28 mm figures on Andy’s table — From the page to the table.

French generals behind their column, the British line and its colours beyond — 28 mm figures

A French gun and its crew, close to — 28 mm figures

Your collection

Tell it what you own

Tick the figures you have, by nation and arm. Every battle and every generated action is then measured against them: what you can field as it stands, what a friend’s figures could stand in for, and what would need a proxy. Reroll with the box ticked and it looks for a battle you can field. What you tell it stays in the browser you typed it into, and nowhere else.

A French general riding past his infantry — 28 mm figures — Every battle measured against the figures on your shelf.

Technical

What it needs

What it is

One file. Exploring Officer is a single page of HTML — about 23.6 MB, 23,647,923 bytes in this build — with every battle, every theatre and the generator inside it. Nothing to install, no account, nothing sent anywhere.

Open it in a browser and it runs, with or without an internet connection: it loads no fonts, scripts or pictures from anywhere else, and once it is open nothing is fetched. Checked on 17 September by watching the network log while it generated battles and loaded Austerlitz — the only request made was the file itself.

What it runs on

Tested in Chrome and Edge on Windows 11. Firefox and Safari not yet.

Phone and tablet: tested at phone and tablet size, not yet on a real iPad or phone. The controls stack, the sheet reads, and the full-size map opens without scrolling sideways. Save to send has not been tried on either.

Tables and distances

Tables of 14, 12, 10 and 8 feet by 6. The forces are cut to the table, not the map squashed onto it.

Distances print in inches or centimetres, whichever you choose, and the same sheet reads both ways with no arithmetic. Read them as centimetres and the 14 ft list fits a 6 × 4 ft table — the same game at half the size, which is what 15 mm figures are for.

Printing and saving

Prints from the browser’s own print dialogue. Save to send writes the finished battle to one file that opens in any browser and does not change.

Your collection

What you tell My Collection is stored in the browser you type it into — that computer only. It is not synced, it is not sent anywhere, and clearing that browser’s site data clears it. Enter it again on another machine, or keep a note.

Buying, updates and help

Early release at £15 while the next major update is being built; the price rises with it. Something wrong or something missing: feedback@vedette-wargames.com. Trouble with a download or a print: support@vedette-wargames.com.

Buy Exploring Officer · £15One file, yours to keep.

The period in its own pictures

Gillray’s hand-coloured etching: Napoleon as a gingerbread baker drawing a tray of small kings from an oven — James Gillray · 1806 *Tiddy-Doll, the great French Gingerbread-Baker, drawing out a new Batch of Kings.* The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Goya’s etching: a woman standing on fallen gunners to fire a cannon — Francisco de Goya · 1810 *Que valor!* — Disasters of War, plate 7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lithograph: French lancers charging past the dead and dying, with infantry in square beyond — Auguste Raffet · c. 1834 *Dernière charge des lanciers rouges, à Waterloo.* Cleveland Museum of Art.

Oil painting: Wellington on horseback among his staff, the battle continuing in the distance — Jan Willem Pieneman · 1824 *The Battle of Waterloo.* Rijksmuseum.

What these prints are, and what they say about the period →