I have been slowly buying up a painted Russian Grenadier Division from my friend at the local club, and I finally have enough for a brigade plus support, with the exception of the artillery. This was my first crack at Sam Mustafa’s Lasalle rules.
The battle was a French division attacking a village held by the Russians. The Russian plan was to anchor their defense around the town and whittle down the rest of the French with my overwhelming artillery advantage. In the end the French were able to maneuvre through around the town through a patch of woods that covered their advance and overwhelm the Russian defences. The French Dragoons dueled the Russian Cuirassiers on the far Russian right and with the French breaking through on all sides we decided to call the game for the French. I think the deciding factor was my complete misuse of my artillery and never really got a good shot off with them.
As for my impressions of Lasalle, I find the rules streamlined and straightforward while producing good and realistic results. The turn sequence takes some getting used to but I like it because it forces you to do some planning. The other players at our club found the victory conditions lacking and produced their own victory point system that can be found here: http://www.torontohmg.org/
While I like Lasalle, I would like to play a Napoleonic game on a slightly larger scale, perhaps corps or even army level, and I would like to see some more advanced C&C and battlefield friction elements. But I understand that those aren't in Lasalle's scope so I think the game does what it aims to do perfectly well. So while I like the game and will continue to play it I don’t think it’s THE Napoleonic that I want. I really like Sam’s ideas that he put into Maurice and were originally planned for Blucher so I think I will continue to play and build my forces and playing Lasalle while I wait for the next installment of the Honour series. Other Napoleonic games that I may want to try are Black Powder and Le Feu Sacre, the only problem is that I don’t like reading rules.
Enough of my rambling here’s the eye candy, the miniatures are mix of AB and minifigs in 15mm. All of the miniatures on the table were painted by my friend and his blog can be found at http://toronto15.blogspot.com/.
JJ That was a good game, The trick with Laselle is to be on the attack as much as possible, even when in defence, be on the offensive where it is applicable. After a few games I realize that I should have taken the momentum away from my opponent and attacked.
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