Rules Review - Lasalle

Here is a rules review of Lasalle, published 2009, at time of this review only available as a PDF. 

For more detail on my approach to reviewing rules, please see my Rules Review Page.

Command Level: Divisional Commander

Basic Tactical Unit: Infantry battalion, variable number of cavalry squadrons, or artillery battery.

Figures per unit: Any - units are small if they have four bases and large if they have six bases. Artillery batteries are 3-5 bases frontage.

Ground Scale: Not stated - depends on basing size. Distances are measured in base widths so that existing figure collections can be accommodated.

Time Scale: Not stated, though perhaps 15-30 minutes a turn.

Organisation: 5/5

Lasalle has excellent layout, referencing and organisation. Attractive diagrams illustrate concepts through the rules. Design note boxes helping to clarify the intent of the author as to why certain rules choices have been made. Quite possibly the best presented Napoleonic rule set published to date if still available as a hardback, though presently only a PDF is available.

Mechanics: 5/5

Mechanics are intuitive and simple. You should be able to memorise the combat factors reasonably quickly.  The "true IgoUgo" sequencing is innovative and clever without being an gimmick for the sake of doing something different, and the game flows nicely.

Simulation: 2/5

There are some issues here for Lasalle I think, and unfortunately the first one is significant and likely a game breaker for Napoleonics. The problem of the effectiveness of columns vs line has been well covered here. Arguably it is too easy to use columns more like a Macedonian Pike Phalanx than anything Napoleonic, and enemy is forced to do the same to counter.  Games can end up with two rows of columns butting heads. A related issue is the ease of doing combined assaults from the same direction. As the linked article suggests, there are numerous potential solutions, for example only allow one attacker per facing (as has also now been done with Blackpowder 2). If you houserule these issues then I'd change the simulation rating to at least a 3-4, but as it stands this issue is unsatisfactory.

Another common complaint is that despite the modifiers, large cavalry formations can perhaps run over squares too easily, and cavalry may also not be limited enough by rough terrain. For that matter large units may also be a little overpowered in melee. See here for more discussion and potential solutions, if you feel this is a problem. If this is a problem the magnitude is less than that of the column issue I think.

Skirmishers are very abstracted in Lasalle in a way that speeds play, but also has some limitations. Formed units have a number representing their inherent skirmish ability (represented by a number of skirmish bases), and you gain a bonus against units with lesser skirmish ability. This is a simple and elegant mechanic, though arguably it may not give skirmishers their due importance in Napoleonic warfare at this scale, for example when it comes to harassing formed infantry or artillery. Skirmishers do have a minor effect in reducing effect of canister on their unit - representing their harrassment of the gunners. 

Like many rulesets, the casualty system also doesn't scale linearly with numbers of attackers, but has stepwise reductions at certain critical points which creates quirks. For example three gun batteries end up disproportionately less effective than four gun batteries because of these threshold points. At close range a four gun battery is over twice as likely to break an enemy battery as a three gun battery is, rather than just being proportionally more effective.

So that's some problems, or potential problems, depending on how you interpret history. More positively, something I do very much like about Lasalle is that units largely just fire straight ahead at whatever is in front of them, rather than the "sniping" like target selection you can get with fire arcs in some other rulesets.

Friction: 2/5
Command is very simplistic - if you are within range of your general you move as you want in Lasalle. So it tends to play as a "always move as you wish" sort of ruleset, with uncertainty coming from enemy action rather than vagaries of your own control ability. Officers can also have a role in rallying units and giving bonuses to combats in the advanced rules.

Speed of Play: 3/5

Advises that it plays in 2-3 hours, though in 28mm with 10cm moves for infantry in line (assuming 5cm base widths) and 15cm in column, and no option for multiple moves, games could be quite protracted. Especially so if you are using more than a dozen units. However, units are also automatically removed once they take a limited number of disruption hits (equal to number of bases), which helps speed play. 

Clutter Avoidance: 4/5

You need disruption tokens (three per unit, or up five if a large unit), plus cotton wool puff to show an artillery piece has fired and therefore can't move later that turn. So pretty clean.

Pickup Play Support: 3/5

Lasalle has a helpful series of army lists and game setup procedure in the main rulebook, with victory conditions and terrain all highly specified. The army lists are quite restrictive however, which creates a problem of repetitiveness and limits to replayability. You have an non-variable core force depending on nation and year range, to which you add one or more optional Brigades which are similarly invariable.

Historical Scenario Support: 3/5

Little in the way of official support, but fans have developed quite a number of scenarios which are available here, and see my Battles Index for further resources for Lasalle and other rules.

Overall: 3/5 

While Lasalle was initially met with enthusiam, the simulation problems listed above caused consternation after a time and enthusiasm for it dropped off since the release. However, with a few fairly minor houserules to tweak the problematic simulation issues above (mainly columns), Lasalle still gives a good game and many people enjoy it. It's a shame the excellent organisation and mechanics were hampered by the problems described, and that a good effort at including pickup play army lists also made these somewhat inflexible to the detriment of replayability.

There's a great deal to like in the design of this ruleset. Sadly many rulesets never get past a first edition, and thus the design is unable to mature by taking advantage of wider playtesting, community feedback, and further testing and reflection. The author is a fairly prolific producer of diverse and high quality wargaming rule products. From what I can see these seem to be one-off creative efforts  that warrant his attention for a time before he moves to the next project. Whether Lasalle warrants sufficient attention from the author to see a second edition remains uncertain.

Lastly I'll also observe that the author Sam Mustafa has published "Blucher" in 2015. This is a Brigade level Napoleonic wargame with a well developed campaign system. It also has an option to play with cards rather than miniature figures making it a very accessible introduction to Brigade level Napoleonics. I own and have read but not yet played this ruleset at the time this post was published. However, my brief impression from other reviews of Blucher is that to date it has received more positive and sustained regard than Lasalle.


ADDENDUM:  01.02.2020
Just 10 days after this review was published, news arrived that a second edition is indeed in process, and it sounds like the playtesting group is attempting to address many of the issues discussed above.  For reference I've copied Sam Mustafa's news item about this below:


Lasalle: Second Edition
There has never been a "second edition" of any Honour game. I've always been proud that we test and edit every game ad nauseam, until we get it just right. But there has always been one title in the Honour catalog that I wanted to revisit.

It might seem quaint today, but Lasalle, released in 2009, caused quite a stir at the time. It sold out in five months, won three awards, and met with white-hot fury from more traditional Napoleonics gamers. It was the first tactical Napoleonics game intended to be used more like an Ancients game, in which any army can fight any other. It had an army-building system that used no points. It had an abstracted basing system that didn’t correspond to historical companies or platoons. It did not specify how many “real” minutes were represented by a turn, nor a precise figure-to-man scale. It had a funky “reverse” turn sequence in which movement happens last, so that there is no need for traditional Napoleonic conventions like “opportunity charges” or defensive fire at an approaching enemy, or emergency squares, and so on. It had no written orders or chits, nor in fact much of a command system of any sort.

And it had lots of pretty pictures. That made some guys really angry.

Most of the things that shocked people about Lasalle have since become ubiquitous and aren’t considered strange anymore. But I always wanted to revisit this title and address some issues. This has evolved into a full-blown redesign, so I am pleased to announce that there will be a second edition of Lasalle, most likely finished before the end of 2020.

Some Highlights of the New Lasalle

I will do a podcast about this in the near future, but here is a quick summary of the major changes:

- There is now a command/control system that drives a completely "open" sequence of play in which the number and type of phases that occur is driven by player decisions. No two turns are alike. As you do things that provoke or endanger your opponent, you trigger his ability to "interrupt" you by taking control of the sequence. Momentum passes back and forth unpredictably as the players act and react.

- Skirmishing has been completely reimagined and is unlike any other Napoleonic game. The skirmish screen operates separately from the formed units, without needing to move any figures, other than occasionally "feeding" more troops into it. If your skirmishers get the upper hand you have certain advantages that enable you to suppress enemy fire, baffle your opponent, or control the momentum of the game sequence.

- Movement and combat have been reconsidered to make the former more liberal and fast and the latter more restricted and decisive. We have re-thought the use of formations and relative numbers in combat. You can no longer squeeze both infantry and cavalry against a single defender, for example, nor overwhelm a line by packing columns shoulder-to-shoulder. It is harder to break a square, unless the defender is battered and exhausted.

- The army-building system has been completely reimagined. Each army has a set of "Historical Parameters" to inform you of what was available when, in what theatre, and doing what. But then you decide just how much History you want. Will you permit any army to fight any other, or will you restrict them to their historical opponents? Will you permit armies from different periods to fight one another? Will units appear in periods other than when they historically existed? For example: let’s say that a player in your group wants to create a British force based on Wellington’s army at Waterloo, but including Portuguese caçadores. Personally, I consider it an entirely plausible What If to imagine that Britain persuaded her Portuguese clients to send a couple of brigades to Belgium in 1815. But if your group finds such things to be intolerable violations of the historical record... then you can forbid them.

All of wargaming is a series of “What Ifs” inspired by history. The new Lasalle will lay out the historical limitations but also permit you to improvise to whatever degree you are comfortable with.

It's still Lasalle
As with the original game, you still create a small force of a few brigades and fight a battle in real time, with games lasting 2-3 hours. The figures, bases, and units from first-edition Lasalle will be compatible with the new version.

Second Edition Lasalle is in development and playtesting. Look for more announcements in mid-2020.

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.

Lasalle Test: Austrian vs French Allies

Paul and I played a test game of Lasalle last night, so here's a quick battlereport and a few notes on the rules. Lasalle is the Divisional level Napoleonic quick play rules by Sam Mustafa. They seem to be generally well regarded so we gave them a go. I've included a few notes on rule mechanisms in italics throughout the report for any not familiar with them.

I was the attacker using an Austrian core list, of 2 small infantry units, 6 large infantry units and a line artillery battery. For my support choice (in reserve so not starting on table) I had 2 large Cuirassier units and a horse artillery battery.

Paul defended using a core list of 6 small infantry units and a line artillery battery. His support choice starting on table was 2 elite infantry units, 1 light infantry unit, and a heavy artillery battery.  (So no cavalry in his force!).  His miniatures were a wonderful mix of Westphalians, Swiss, Croats, Neapolitans and a few French...

We didn't deploy the skirmisher figures for units, but the French units all have two (three for the light infantry), and the Austrians one. Red tokens indicate disruption (max of 3 for small unit, 5 for large unit, before breaking), as we didn't have prettier casualty figures available yet.

Game Report
The field of battle consisted of a small farmlet on one end of the table, and some hills on the other end. A couple of forests were also present. We used only a 6x4" table, as our goal was just to get the hang of the rules this time around.

Paul won the toss and decided to have me set up first and have first turn. I'm on the left in the photo below, with most of the strength on my right. Paul then sets up with his elite units ready to contest the farm hamlet, which suited me fine as I was content to let him have this provided I could slow him down a little in the process.

I start the advance. Move distance is 8 inches for infantry in attack columns, 6 inches if in line.

I take some disruption from French artillery as I advance but recover this. My own counter-battery fire gets lucky and silences the French guns for a turn which helps survival of my attack columns. 

Musketry and cannon fire is all one dice per front rank base (two dice per artillery base if in canister range) needing a 4+ to cause a hit. 2-4 hits cause one disruption, 5-8 hits 2 disruption, and more hits in a firing phase destroys the unit outright.  Range is 8 inches for musketry, 16 for canister, 40 for roundshot.   Roundshot fire in Lasalle will often do "bouncethrough" and affect two units, but at close range canister fire can only affect one unit.

Units can take 3 disruption if small, 5 if large, before breaking and being removed from play. You can remove one disruption per turn if you pass a recovery test, which for our units meant rolling 3+ on a dice. If you are within 8" of enemy you must roll another dice, and if you moved you must roll yet another dice, having to score 3+ on every dice rolled to successfully recover a disruption.

Skirmishes are abstracted, if your unit has more than the enemy (which applied in every case against the Austrians in this game, as the Austrians only have one and French have two), then you add an extra shooting dice. Each skirmisher also reduces canister fire at a unit by one dice too, so for example the French artillery was rolling 7 dice to hit my units rather than 8.

My attack columns reach the French right. On this flank I have two large and two small infantry units versus three small infantry units. My first assault by a large attack column is repulsed, falling back through another large attack column which fails a discipline test for being passed through, and is disrupted. 

In combats, each unit rolls two dice per base it has, needing 5+ to hit. A unit subtracts one dice for each disrupt hit it has taken, and other modifications can apply (some examples would be: infantry not in square vs cavalry halve their dice; cavalry vs infantry in square halve their dice; if fighting two units you halve your dice).  If you score more hits then you force the enemy to withdraw and inflict a disruption on them (and defenders win draws). If you are the attacker and get double the hits of the enemy you wipe them out!

I also try to assault the farmlet area on my left flank. Croat Light Infantry have entered the first building (which counts as a town area), but have not had the necessary turn to deploy to defend it. I hope to catch them before they deploy, but I'm repulsed here also.

Next turn I keep throwing in the attacks and suddenly break through on the right flank. The three French units over here break over a couple of turns.

My centre has fallen back as it is hit by canister and musketry and because it is also under risk of being flanked on my left. However my right flank is now storming towards the French centre, and Paul struggles to redeploy.

Paul's Swiss defend the centre nervously!

It gets worse for the French as my Cuirassier Brigade arrives at last. 

Westphalian elite infantry and one of my large infantry units have been battling over on the left and eventually I prevail due to weight of numbers, though not without some fierce fighting. Paul's reinforcements moving to flank me arrive too late to save him. His heavy artillery finally deploys but also too late to affect the game.

I break through in the centre, and we call the game over, as it would be shortly. Turn 12 of 16 (each players turn counts as a turn, so a game is 8 player turns each).

Conclusion
A rather strange Napoleonic game as it was concluded entirely without cavalry intervening(!), my own arriving too late to have any effect on the battle, and Paul not having any to start with! We were basically just charging with attack columns most of the game, which was rather deadly. A couple of exceptions to this occurred where the defensive French deployed in line. Paul's best infantry was caught up in the farmlet, and his heavy artillery battery never saw action until very late in the game which didn't help his cause. The Austrian large units are a very tough nut to crack. Not much of a reserve (in terms of second lines) was used by Paul or myself either, though I think it would have been useful in places.

We did wonder if attack columns were somewhat overpowered compared to lines, but having checked the factors it seems about right. An attack column will take two rounds of shooting (and deliver one more ineffectual one itself) in charging a line. Each lot of shooting from the line will do a disruption hit on average, which means the combat will be 8 dice for the line and 6 dice for the column (The column having lost one dice for each disruption hit from its original 8).  As described above dice cause hits on 5's, and you need more hits than the enemy to force them back (defender wins draws), or twice as many hits as the enemy to destroy them if you are the attacker. Various bonuses apply, e.g. a higher morale grade gives +2 dice, being higher on a hill gives +2 dice, and Guard units add a further 2 dice. So to take the classic example, an attack column attacking a line on a hill, the column will be in lots of trouble (especially if the defending line unit is veteran or guard) - likely to be forced back and then finished off with one more volley or charge.  Two attack columns against one line unit have a much better chance though, as does a large unit against a small unit.

The Lasalle rules were very easy to learn (both of us being novices) and I can well see that games would take about 2-3 hours with ease. We had memorised most of the important information by about midway through the game. The rules seem to be very clean and streamlined as others have mentioned. I'm sure we made a few mistakes but nothing too major, and I'm now having another read through the rules to check what we missed.