Lasalle Game: Austrian vs French

A friend from England was visiting over the last week, so we went down to the local wargames club for a game. I watched and tried to figure out the rules, while Andy and Ion directed some of my Napoleonics about the field of honour. Ion took command of an infantry heavy Austrian force while Andy led a cavalry heavy French force.

This was only the second game of Lasalle I have been involved in, the previous one being in January this year. Most rules were worked out ok, but thanks to my misdirection the lads ended up firing their artillery in the wrong phase all game! Fortunately this didn't seem to alter things too much, though it did add to some confusion!

Forces

Austrian Force

Infantry Brigade:

• 2 Experienced Austrian Infantry 
• 4 Experienced Austrian Infantry (large formations)
• 1 Battery of Medium Foot Artillery

Landwehr Brigade

• 6 Amateur Austrian Landwehr
• 1 Battery of Medium Foot Artillery

Heavy Cavalry Brigade (In reserve)

• 2 Cuirassier Regiments (large formations)
• 1 Battery of Horse Artillery

French Force

Infantry Brigade:

• 6 Experienced French Infantry
• 1 Battery of Medium Foot Artillery

Light Cavalry Brigade

• 2 Hussar Regiments
• 2 Chasseur Regiments
• 1 Battery of Horse Artillery

Heavy Cavalry Brigade (In reserve)

• 2 Cuirassier Regiments (large formations)
• 1 Battery of Horse Artillery

Both sides heavy cavalry brigades started off the table and would arrive randomly, though with increasing likelihood as timed passed.

The Game

Here's the a view down the table. Ion deploys his Experienced Austrian Infantry on his right, where they are opposed by the French Light Cavalry and assorted food, while the Landwehr advance on the French right.

View from the other end of the table, as the French move to redeploy infantry columns to their left flank.

The French Light Cavalry dance around on their left flank, but the Austrians press on undaunted.

Forward!

Austrian Artillery bombard the French centre causing some confusion. The Landwehr start taking some disruption from the French artillery in turn.

The French Cuirassiers arrive first, and advance on the startled Landwehr.

Meanwhile on the French left flank Andy reinforces with some infantry.

The Landwehr start to form some squares, though one is very disrupted by artillery fire. [Units can take 3 disruption (5 for large units), and break (removed from play) if they take more.]

The Cuirassiers charge the disrupted square and it breaks! [In hindsight this was done a little wrong though the result would probably have been the same!]

On the French left flank the French Chasseurs and a Line Infantry regiment prepare to hold the Austrian onslaught, while the Horse Artillery limbers up and retreats. The Austrian Cuirassiers arrive and advance behind their infantry.

The French Cuirassiers continue the charge hitting two more Landwehr units - which both fail to form square in time! [Amateur have a lower chance to form square than Experienced units - and thanks to Tony in comments below for the clarification!]. One Landwehr unit is run down, but the other by some miracle holds and then forms square before the Cuirassiers can realise their mistake. Curaissiers must have lost impetus to a volley or something...!

The Austrians charge the French left flank infantry, and the supporting French Chasseurs countercharge in support, helping to force back the first Austrian assault.

Meanwhile the poor old Landwehr are trapped in squares while French foot and horse artillery blasts them with cannister...

The French counterattack the Austrians on the left flank but are forced back in disorder.

The Austrians smash through in the central woods, breaking a French infantry unit that was defending this, and the French infantry on their left also breaks from musket fire.

However the Austrians have also been taking hits, and one of the big Austrian units finally breaks as musketry and cannister takes its toll.

Landwehr units still trapped in squares by roaming Cuirassiers are falling to pieces under cannister fire, while the French Cuirassiers struggle to recover some order. 

Only one Landwehr unit left! The Austrian Cuirassiers which had been coming over to help, turn around and head back the other way as French Hussars have snuck in behind them!

French Hussars, time to run away again!

A combined assault on the Austrians in the woods breaks them, and the Austrian army has had enough, and begins to quit the field. Victory to the French!

Conclusion

Well a game full of action! The combined French Artillery and Cavalry assault on the Landwehr proved deadly, and the Austrian successes attacking the French left came too late. The French Light Cavalry danced about effectively, while the Austrian Cuirassiers never really saw action and this proved costly for the Austrian cause. Ion decided in hindsight that he should have brought them on to support his left flank.

Anyway a good game for learning the rules! Which I think I am finally getting to grips with, as last game no cavalry saw action, and I also identified a few other errors in that first playthrough.

Also, I must make some proper casualty bases, and think about getting some sort of better cloth for away games at clubs. A shame GW doesn't make the old cloths anymore, does anyone know if there is a comparable product available? Best I can see is probably these Deepcut Studios Plains Mat?

Lasalle Quick Reference Sheet

The Lasalle rules have some nice features, but I wanted a more compact version of the Quick Reference Sheet than the one supplied with the rules (which is unnecessarily spread out over 4 A4 sheets in my opinion).  So I made my own which fits on a single double sided A4 sheet.

I also included a couple of house rules (noted as optional house rules) in the Combat section. One giving a slight nerf to large units which some regard as a little too powerful apparently, and another further hampering cavalry attacking infantry in rough terrain for similar reasons. Also I converted the Base Width (BW) notation to inches (1 BW = 2 inches or 5cm which suits the bases we use which are 5cm wide). If using with base widths then either modify the sheet or remember that you need to halve these numbers to get base width measures.

Download it here:
Lasalle Quick Reference Sheet


And of course, a full PDF of the Lasalle rules is available from Sam Mustafa's site for a reasonable price.

Converting some Napoleonic French...

So my brief WW1 intermission is over, and the Perry Twins are on their way to New Zealand to put together the diorama, exciting stuff!

Now back to Napoleonics :) I've got two Waterloo refights coming up, one with Blackpowder in Wellington, and one with General de Brigade in Christchurch. This is of course an excellent reason to paint up more French, as if one was needed! I only need one more Lancer unit for these battles, but I'm going to be adding many more units, mainly infantry. 

I currently only have a dozen French infantry regiments painted, which I'm eventually aiming to more than quadruple if I include half a dozen Germans and Italians plus the Guard (4 each of Old, Middle and Young Guard). Plus some Polish on top of that. 

Today I've been experimenting with ways to get a few more Voltigeurs and Grenadiers in my dress uniform regiments. I'm using Perry Plastics, and separating out the great coat figures for their own regiments so they are easily recognisable as conscripts or similar. This has left me a little short when it comes to dress uniform Voltigeurs and Grenadiers. Fortunately the Perry box sets come with six additional skirmishing Voltigeurs which I've been chopping up so they will fit into a march attack pose formation as NCO's directing troopers. The Perry Austrian set actually includes two such NCO figures and I quite like how they add a little variety to the march attack formations. Of course these figures can also look like they are Voltigeurs in the formation about to leave and go skirmishing.

The painted figures on the right are two of the original skirmisher models. The figures immediately to their left have been assembled in the same pose but have had their musket hands chopped off at the wrist and re-glued vertically. I've also made a careful cut before assembly so that the pointing arm is pointing forwards a little more directly. 

There's a greater variety of poses that can be made but I'm now satisfied enough that this should do the job and give me the extra two figures per regiment of 24 that I need.

More French to come. Below are nine Perry French Infantry boxes, and three Victrix French boxes - lots to do! Six more Russian boxes have also arrived so now I have a dozen of them in a pile, but French first.

Turkish casualties - Gallipoli 1915

Here's the last of my figures for Sir Peter Jackson's Chunuk Bair diorama, a range of Turkish casualties...

...and also three Turkish officers, and another Turk who looks like he might be routing? He's running without a weapon anyway.

Also I got urgent word from Alan Perry that the New Zealanders in my last post had been mislabelled and were in fact British! Thus a quick repaint of their tunics was in order and they are now suitably regular looking! Hopefully the colour is appropriate for British, if not a quick retouch job will be needed when they arrive in Wellington as all these figures have now been sent!

So that's my lot done. Good luck and thanks to everyone else involved, and I look forward to seeing the final display.