There are perils to self-publishing. Take Renaud Verlaque’s Swords Around the Throne, a sky-high vantage on the Napoleonic Wars that, unlike his earlier published titles Age of Napoleon, The Price of Freedom, and The Big Push, is available only through the Game Crafter. As a consequence, Swords Around the Throne defies ease of entry. Its rulebook is a muddle of misplaced information, details that could have been offloaded to cards or the board are absent, and like many wargames there are exceptions aplenty.

Which is a pity, because somewhere behind a veil of its own devising is a novel portrayal of European upheaval.

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