Being a fan of Sam Mustafa's rules in general and Blucher and Rommel in particular when he released a revision of Lasalle I invested in a copy. While Blucher is an army-level set of rules LaSalle is set at a Corps level. I'd never played the first version of the rules but from the reviews this revision was more in line with Blucher and used somewhat similar mechanisms.
For a first solo try I thought I'd play out the introductory scenario, the fictional battle of Eselbach set in 1809 and pitting three brigades of Austrians against three of French.
The Austrians approach in march column:
The French appear opposite, again in march column:
The Austrians quickly approach the town and riverbank:
The French move up:
In order to determine who has the initiative and how many actions each commander can take there is a skirmish phase at the start of every turn. Each side gets some initial dice depending on the number of brigades, if they still control their supply line and if they commit the general to this phase or not. They then throw a number of dice (depending on the skirmish rating of their units) with every 6 being a success. This turn the Austrians commit their general and get lucky on the dice throws giving them more actions and the initiative:
The Austrians continue to deploy, the presence of the stream, crops and town makes this expensive in actions though (it costs one action to move in the open, two in terrain):
The French also continue to deploy and move forwards:
The next turn sees the French acquire a lot more actions than the Austrians (the officers are the wrong way round!) giving them the initiative and a lot more flexibility in what they can do:
The French continue their advance and start bombarding the Austrian lines with their artillery. Unlike in Blucher there is no limit on artillery ammunition:
In response the Austrian artillery manages to put a couple of hits on the French square holding the end of the line. The Austrian Chevauleger charge home to see if they can force the French back:
Despite being one factor up the Austrians only manage to draw the combat resulting in them taking a hit and falling back:
The French use some of their surplus actions to take a rally phase and rally both hits off the French square. In Blucher it is impossible for most units to rally while in LaSalle any unit can though if you fail to rally the hit is then permanent:
The next turn sees the French easily winning the skirmish phase (with a lot more dice) again giving them the initiative and more actions:
The French decide to start by charging the Austrian hussars with their cavalry. With one French unit damaged already this may not be a wise choice:
The cavalry all charge home:
The French hussars are routed while the Chasseurs are pushed back:
French infantry prepare to assault the Austrian line:
In the centre the Austrian infantry cross the stream:
The next turn sees the Austrians remarkably out-skirmishing the French despite a large disparity in skirmishing dice giving them both the initiative and substantially more actions:
They decide to open by volley firing the infantry in the centre before the French can charge them:
Most actions within 4BW of the enemy pass the initiative to the opposition so the French choose to charge home on their right. If I'd thought about it the Austrians opposing them could have fired using the same action as the ones in the centre (some actions can be used 'globally' on everyone, others only on 'forces', units from the same brigade within 4BW of each other):
Combat consists of a dice throw for each side added to their initial strength and a few factors for outnumbering the enemy, being uphill or shock troops. The French column assaulting the Jaegers breaks them instantly:
Somewhat surprisingly the Grenzer's hold on against two French columns and are only pushed back:
The end of the combats:
While the French have broken the Jaegers the Austrians have a unit in reserve and the French columns have been somewhat weakened. The Grenzer's and Austrian artillery volley fire at the French columns facing them inflicting further losses on the French:
The French decide to charge home in the centre as well. Despite having two units against one the Austrian infantry fight fiercely:
The French are thrown back taking more losses:
With the initiative passing back to the Austrians they decide to try to finish off the French cavalry. Only one unit of Austrian hussars can charge in but, being a better unit (7 starting strength to 6 for the Chasseurs) and being less damaged the odds are in their favour:
The combat dice fall kindly for the Austrians:
The remaining French cavalry is swept away
At this point I stopped the game as I felt I'd done enough to get an idea of how the rules worked and would need to read through them again to look up some of the things I wasn't sure about or had probably done wrong!
LaSalle isn't really that much like Blucher other than having similar ratings for the units. The momentum system is quite different to Blucher where you have to really decide what's important to move as you don't now how much MO you have. In LaSalle on the other hand you know at the start of the turn both how many actions you and your opponent will have allowing you to work out what you can do and losing the suspense of Blucher where you are never sure at what stage your opponent will tell you that's all you can do! It also lacks the Scharnhorst pre-battle of Blucher but does include several scenarios (like Rommel) so they may add interest to the games.
I'll be giving it some more games but suspect that it may be a bit like Regimental Fire and Fury, the beauty of the original Fire and Fury was it's simplicity which (in my opinion at least) was lost in the Regimental version as it added a lot of complexity that didn't add much to the feel of the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment