Revolutions: France 1820-1880 is published by Fellowship of Simulations and designed by Laurent Rix. This is not a wargame in the usual sense but a political simulation, covering sixty years of French history from the Restoration through to the early Third Republic. Players represent the competing political currents of the century and fight for the shape of the regime itself, with appeals to the people, coups d’etat, and outright insurrection all on the table. If you sit on the conservative side you start comfortably in power and have to contain the forces of progress; if you are pushing for change, patience can be just as effective a weapon as the barricade.
What makes the game stand out for me is how much negotiation sits at its heart. Tact and diplomacy are needed to hold together the balance you want for France, and the table dynamic shifts constantly as alliances form and dissolve across the decades. The mechanisms have been deliberately pared down to make that political reality playable rather than to bury it under detail. The presentation deserves a special mention too: the iconography is drawn from period archive material, posters, press caricatures, hawker sheets, paintings, and cheap prints, which gives the whole thing a genuinely nineteenth century look. Note this is the V2 published by Fellowship of Simulations, a reworked version of the original crowdfunded release, with the rules rewritten for clarity.
Below I am presenting the game components, giving also a quick overview of the rules and key design features:
Enjoy the material!