Rules Review - General d'Armee

Next in my series of Rules Reviews is General d'Armee by David Brown.
For more detail on my approach to reviewing rules please see my Rules Review Index Page.

Command Level: Divisional Commander and above
Basic Tactical Unit: Infantry battalion, two or more squadrons of cavalry, or artillery battery.
Figures per unit: Works with any, units are just "small, regular, large", though note ground scale and consider that a battalion in line should take up roughly 150-200 yards (so maybe 10-20 cm in 15mm, 20-30cm in 28mm).
Ground Scale: 1mm to 1 yard/metre in 15mm, proportionally more in 28mm.
Time Scale: 10 to 20 minutes a turn

Organisation: 4/5

General d'Armee is a well laid out set of rules, in logical sections. That said, there's a bit much white space for my taste, and font could definitely do with being bigger in the charts. Pictures of individually based figures with no clear connection to the rules are scattered throughout, though mainly in the margins as a bit of Napoleonic colour. There are a few minor errors or clarity issues in places but a FAQ is available to help with these. The Quick Reference Sheets are also well designed, though at four pages in length one might debate the term "quick".

Positively there is also a forum on which the author himself regularly responds, as do other players with a couple in particular being very helpful. In addition there is a very good set of tutorial gameplay videos which puts these rules ahead of most competitors in that regard (though the Too Fat Lardies really need to sort their videos into playlists!)

Mechanics: 3/5 

I've seen the mechanics of General d'Armee have been described as quite "crunchy", meaning there are  a good number of procedures and rules to work through. At the same time if one compares it to General d'Brigade (a predecessor aimed more at the Brigade Level of Command as the name suggests), it is clear that much thought has gone into minimising the list of modifiers and streamlining systems so larger games can be completed more quickly.

The Brigade skirmish screen idea is one nicely done addition supporting this goal. In General d'Armee, you do have individual battalions, but the Brigade is the basic tactical unit for purposes of command and general effectiveness. Each Brigade has a skirmish screen consisting of a number of bases (generally one per battalion), representing the light companies from its battalions fulfilling this role. Thus there is no micro-management of the actions of individual light companies, but skirmishing is still an important part of the game. 

Some of the mechanics feel quite "old fashioned" (meaning 80's/90's rule complexity rather than the even earlier formative period in wargaming history). For example, typical firing involves a modified 2D6 roll on a chart, plus a bonus casualty dice or two in some situations, then sometimes another dice roll to see if a "half casualty" result is actually a casualty - so a bit clunky.  Skirmishers, garrisons and melee just use casualty dice, and I would have prefered volley and artillery fire to use a similar mechanism rather than a chart.

Looking at the forums, the charges section and all the potential rules around this appears to be the biggest source of confusion, as it can be somewhat convoluted. The FAQ contains further examples of charge procedures to help clarify the intention of the rules, and the videos mentioned above should also help with this.

When it comes to reaction tests there are a range of outcomes to get your head around that can also be confusing. For example, the three "R" words with similar names and meaning - "retire, retreat, rout", with fairly extensive rules applying to each, and I can't help but think I'd prefer something simpler here. Aspects of this also seem counter-inutitive, for example a retreating unit retreats once then halts, but is still classed as "retreating" until it rallies, even though it is not supposed to be withdrawing (moving) any further.

These various complexities of the rules produce more graduated outcomes compared to some other rulesets. Whether this extra detail is worth the time and process of working through the mechanics will be up to player preference of course.

Simulation: 5/5

Overall General d'Armee fits well with at least my own reading of Napoleonic history. The odds ratios and actions of forces feel about right and I feel confident to refight historical battles with them.  It's been argued that there are not enough "national differences", but I'm inclined to agree with the author that these have often been overstated, especially as armies became more homogenous later in the era. I'm also persuaded by his argument that some factors in Napoleonic wargames rules have persisted more for reason of Napoleonic wargaming tradition and assumptions (e.g. bonuses for higher ground or enfilading), rather than for reasons of substantive Napoleonic history, while other issues have been neglected. Skirmishers have due importance paid to them in General d'Armee, and the Brigade Skirmish line is nice idea to reflect their utility without complicated rules.  Similarly "massed column" rules discourage the solid wall of columns units you see in some rulesets - they work better if they are chequerboarded historically to have some deployment space.

Given the strength point system is said to reflect attrition in terms of morale, fatigue, and general disruption, in addition to casualties, it is perhaps odd that good quality units are no more resistant to this attrition loss from enemy fire than poorer ones. The only exception is rare elite units which have three more attrition points. Otherwise good units lose attrition points to fire as quickly as poor ones, in contrast to a systems where this loss is influenced by morale of the unit under attack. Moderating this slightly is the fact that certain results on a firing table will also result in a "discipline test" which is affected slightly more by quality (+1 or -1 on a 2D6 roll for veteran vs raw troops for example), which can result in units retreating or being removed. The General d'Armee attrition system seems like a holdover from earlier rules where you track casualties which were actually "casualties", and then had morale separate to this. I also feel that the certainty with which units are auto-eliminated as attrition is reduced might be perhaps a little too predictable in General d'Armee, though I personally prefer it to say the Blackpowder system which feels too random.

Another issue to be aware of in General d'Armee is it is rather easy for infantry to be overrun by cavalry unless you are hypervigilant for this possibility. The discipline test to form square as a reaction is quite harsh compared to many other rulesets, even when cavalry is quite some distance away. My understanding is that infantry were rather relentlessly drilled to form square quickly as a priority if threatened by cavalry. Instances of non-disordered infantry being caught out of square by cavalry is not a common occurrence in battle accounts I have read. French infantry in attack column could form square in under a minute according to Nafziger, yet in the rules you have approximately 40% chance of failing to do so against cavalry that would likely take two to three times as long to reach them on optimum ground. You have an approximately 60% chance of failing if you are in line or have reached your first demoralisation level (4 attrition points lost), and it gets worse from there. If you fail to form square you are also unformed and in a world of trouble against cavalry, and then breakthrough moves can easily tear through multiple units that will not get to react. I can understand that forming square is harder in the fog of battle, but one could say the same about organising a cavalry charge. All this is deliberate though, the author has commented that he really wanted cavalry to be more dangerous and unpredictable than they are in some Napoleonic rules, and they are certainly that!

Given it is so challenging to form square as a reaction test, during their turn players would be wise to check cavalry charge ranges, and form their units into square if in range rather than relying on reaction tests. Or just stay in attack column against lighter cavalry types, as this also offers protection and is less risky than trying to form square as a reaction to these. Forming square should likely not be as easy and non-influenced by circumstance as it is in rules like Blackpowder. However in General Armee you really need to be micromanaging this detail, which I'd prefer to be left more regularly to an automated reaction test in a game purportedly focused upon Divisional or Corp level command. As with everything in wargaming this is personal preference. 

Another criticism I've seen directed at General d'Armee is that the randomness to skill ratio can skew towards the randomness. For example firing a volley can hurt your own unit (as they lose "fire discipline", inflict no casualties and have to spend a turn reordering), or it might strip half the attrition points from a enemy unit (5-6 casualties) and inflict a rout test in a single turn. The chance of these extremes occuring is 1/4 for a veteran unit, with more graduated casualty outcomes being inflicted between those extremes.  The charge roll is also a nerve racking situation where even being significantly better quality than your opponent only gives you a +2 on a 2D6 rolloff to see who might hold to the charge or panic and become unformed (difference of 3 or more),  or even rout (difference of 6 or more).  Friendly units nearby let you reroll one of the D6 dice to reduce this variance, but it's still a high risk venture. The fate of an entire Brigade rests on a single dice roll after rout of a battalion, though an ADC allocation at least provides a reroll of this. My thought is that these outcomes are not unhistorical, though from a game perspective one might dislike the frequency of such butterfly effects of disaster.  However,  I can also see a case for the argument that Napoleonic warfare was more regularly slowburning and attritional in nature as Clausewitz described it, relative to the unpredictable firecracker effects many rulesets produce.

Anyway, despite some caveats or questions here, you'll note I still gave this category a 5/5, meaning I rate it highly and the results seem a very plausible interpretation of the Napoleonic period, that also takes a refreshing look at some aspects.

Friction: 4/5 

General d'Armee uses a simple but effective mechanic to generate command friction. Each Brigade must roll a 3+ on a D6 to activate otherwise it is "hesitant" and cannot advance. You can reroll these command roles by allocating from a limited number of ADC's available each turn, representing the influence of the commander and his chain of command. There is also the option to use special Brigade orders - like bombarding with artillery, ordering a quick advance, rallying the Brigade, and so on. These special orders add some nice character to the game.

The system doesn't scale well to lower numbers of Brigades, and it is best played with 5-6 minimum in order to have sufficient ADC's to use special orders. It's also not clear what the role of Divisional Commanders is in larger games, except I imagine they are abstracted into the command effects in Corp level games. It has been argued that the rules should perhaps be called General d'Division given the scale it is aimed at, though you could play a corp with more time, or players. Additional optional rules for higher level Corp or Army Commanders above the Divisional Commander are provided. 

Speed of Play: 3/5

The number of attrition steps (12 for a standard unit), movement rates (6" for line, 9" for column in 28mm), turns representing only 10-20 minutes, mechanics (e.g. reaction fire, reaction, melee, and reinforcement steps in a charge), and fussing about with counter clutter, means General D'Armee will take longer to play than some other rules.  On the forums the author has suggested taking a few attrition points off units if you want to speed things up. With the intuitively laid out tables and modifiers I would not characterise it as "slow", but there are definitely faster options at this same level of representation.

Clutter Avoidance: 2/5

General d'Armee requires a fair number of counters. 12 hits need to be recorded for most units (damage dials are good for this), and then there's a host of order and status counters. At least there is no need for order writing or record keeping beyond this. A four page quick reference chart is used, and it is in quite fine print. This quick reference sheet is well laid out though and the game can tick over just by referring to this most of the time.

Pickup Play Support: 2/5

There are points values in the rules, and I have made this Army List Creator to assist with use of these. Unfortunately there are no rules for setting up a game, terrain, nor victory or scenario conditions.  Lack of any system for generating pick-up battles is something that lets this ruleset down in comparison to popular wargames in other periods, though this is a not infrequent limitation of other Napoleonic rules at the time of this review.

Historical Scenario Support: 2/5

There is a single book of six scenarios for the 1815 period at the time of this review, and one Peninsula book, though these limited scenarios tend to be portions of battles rather than more comprehensive listings. These are also theatres already oversupplied with information by Anglophile enthusiasts. Earlier scenario booklets for General D'Brigade rules are also available and these are quite usable and have a similar format, and so this rating would be a 3/5 with those included. 

Overall: 4/5

General d'Armee gives a good game of Napoleonics and feel for the Napoleonic period. The tabletop counter clutter, slower mechanics and consequent time needed for a larger game prevent me playing it more regularly. However, I am happy to play it with experienced rather than casual players in smaller games, and I prefer it to many other sets of Napoleonic rules.

Rules Review - Blackpowder 2

Next in my series of Rules Reviews is Blackpowder 2.
For more detail on my approach to reviewing rules please see my Rules Review Index Page.

Command Level: Divisional Commander or Corp Commander.
Basic Tactical Unit: Infantry battalion, two or more squadrons of cavalry, or artillery battery.
Figures per unit: Works with any, units are just "tiny, small, regular, large"
Ground Scale: Not stated, though perhaps 6" or 15cm = 100 yards in 28mm seems about right.
Time Scale: Not stated, though 15-30 minutes a turn perhaps.

Organisation: 2/5

The Blackpowder rules have been criticised as "conversational" or meandering rather than just delivering specifications succinctly, though this seems to be a stylistic choice that will appeal to some. They also contain many distracting pictures and background material which often fills space rather than being linked to the text in any planned way. This might be a bug or a feature depending on your preference. For myself it is more of the latter, as I prefer rules to get to the point with a minimum of text rather than flicking through background with which I'm already familiar, and I also prefer that rule and justification are not mixed up.

The rules cover a large period which makes it harder to parse out just the Napoleonic specific material if that is all you are after. Consequently a local gaming group wrote out the Blackpowder 1 rules from scratch, with additional notes to resolve ambiguity and increase clarity, and making sure it was more tightly focused on Napoleonic as opposed to a broader period of warfare. That is quite some effort of course. 

A common description is that Blackpowder provides a toolkit that you can tailor to any "Blackpowder" era wargame. For example I've played variants of it for Napoleonics, American Civil War, American War of Independence, and the Sudan, and it is quite easy to switch between these once you are familiar with the core system. If you play several Blackpowder eras this is a definite advantage then. Unfortunately the new cover of Blackpowder 2 makes it look like just another set of Napoleonic rules, whereas the first edition cover (below) clearly advertised that it covered a broader period.

A caveat to this toolkit approach, is that much Napoleonic material is in three Blackpowder expansion books: Clash of Eagles, Albion Triumphant Volumes 1 and 2. So you could be looking at the annoyance/cost of needing four books rather than just one for Napoleonics.

The fact that it can be challenging to play "straight out of the box", rather than setting up different  special rules for what you want to do, could be something of a drawback. On the other hand the encouragement to adapt as you see best matches history and your gaming preferences frees one from overly stilted rule adherence. 

Unfortunately it seems poor proofreading in the new version of Blackpowder 2 may contribute to confusion for new players as this review indicates. On the other hand, there are also a number of improvements in both rules and organisation in the change from Blackpowder 1, listed here in this summary of changes.

BP Mechanics: 3/5

Mechanics are generally quite clean and intuitive and not difficult to comprehend, though there is more detail than is initially apparent.

One common criticism of the mechanics is that probabilities don't seem to have been considered sufficiently at times. For example, a shaken or disordered unit has reduced fire effect, but weirdly is still just as likely to disorder enemy.  A common house rule is that disorder occurs on a 1 rolled on the defender's morale save, rather than on a 6 rolled by the attacker, and one wonders why the rule was not designed this way in the first place.  Another example of this might be that command roll odds also don't scale linearly (e.g you are usually more likely to move one or three times rather than just two times), though there is also a simple fix to this.

Support factors can be confusing to remember the allocation of when you have large engagements happening, and may detract from an otherwise relatively simple system. I've seen groups start using extra counters to keep track of these in large refights where you have dozens of units tangling with each other.

Blackpowder can also end up with a large number of "special ability" type rules to remember in an attempt to further distinguish troop types. I don't see this being any more complicated than what is done in other rules though.  Supplements such as "Clash of Eagles" provide a large number of additional optional rules, though it seems most people don't bother with these or only use a small portion of them. I believe the Perry twins of Perry Miniatures fame use no additional rules at all for example, and this approach would seem very wise for beginners also.

BP Simulation: 3/5

I believe Blackpowder is not at poor as some Napoleonic grognards would suggest, once you include the appropriate modifiers. While there are quirks, the overall package still seems to give historical outcomes in large battles, though I guess it could be argued this would often occur simply due to "weight of numbers" in a circumstance rather than guaranteeing particularly Napoleonic interactions are happening.

Many of the issues in the 1st edition have been improved in the 2nd edition, as already noted in this  comprehensive list of changes mentioned above. Still there are some common criticisms. For example musket range seems too far in several respects (18" for muskets when unit in line is going to be about 8 or 10 inches wide for 24-36 strong units in 28mm), and the distance doesn't seem to match up with the shorter artillery ranges either, e.g. canister vs musketry. On the other hand actual artillery effect is still quite powerful relative to musketry despite the unusual ranges specified, so this is less of a problem than it might seem. Artillery battery frontages are small though (one gun), and thus firepower per width of frontage arguably too effective relative to infantry. A common houserule sees wider gun frontages than appears in pictures in the rules. For example using two guns instead of one gun (or three for Russians), though you could also just stick one gun on a larger base.

Another issue many complain of is that it lacks situational character or "flavour" present in other rules.  For example, square forming is pretty automatic for infantry and not dependent on troop quality, existing formation and attrition, how close the cavalry are and so on. Guards are no better than regular or even green troops at forming an emergency square. Few people like massive lists of modifiers to tests, but given what modifiers exist elsewhere (e.g. for command tests), there are equally simple alternatives to the existing rule that could be used to reduce this blandness.  A common "form emergency square" test variant is that you must roll your morale rating or higher, modified by +1 for each move away the cavalry is, and -1 if shaken/disordered.

The issue of disorder being inflicted on a "6" being largely unaffected by troop quality, formation, disorder etc, has already been referenced above, though at least some better troops do have a chance to ignore disorder with the special "Elite" ability. Disordered cavalry can now also fall back in Blackpowder 2 rather than sitting around being shot as occurred in Blackpowder 1 - this being an example of a community house rule that was played by virtually everyone and adopted into the new rules.

Woods rules are simplistic and unfortunately Blackpowder 2 didn't take the opportunity to amend this, despite there being better rules in some of the Blackpowder 1 supplements. Many groups also seem to houserule and abstract or even abandon skirmishers for large games, due to issues with rules for them. This is a shame given the importance of skirmishers in Napoleonic warfare.

The attritional system means there can be an emphasis in ganging up on a unit as much as possible in one turn with micro-management of enfilading and so on, in order to maximise chance of success at the break test. If the morale test is passed though, there is no carryover effect on the target from attrition which can result in what seems like some excessively long engagements. Enfilading can be viewed as a "gamey" and unhistorically common tactic, especially given the multiple moves in Blackpowder, though criticism has at least seen it toned down in 2nd edition (rerolls rather than double dice).

The support mechanic seems like an unusual choice for such a simple set of rules, and is coarsely applied so that it has a major impact relative to other factors like troop quality. Like enfilading, it seems like a rule mechanic introduced from a fantasy rule set (Games Workshop's Warmaster on which the system is based) perhaps without giving sufficient consideration to its importance relative to other factors.

Infantry is also prone to experiencing prolonged hand to hand combat in the open, which by my reading never happened in this period. One side or the other would quickly break and run, usually before bayonet blows were exchanged, with fighting in towns being the exception to this.

Of course there exist potential fixes for most of these issues and others I haven't listed, if you see them as issues. There is a useful set of houserules for Blackpowder 2 here for example, and see a previous set of houserules for Blackpowder 1 that we used for several large refights. However, using extensive houserules also makes it more challenging to a new or casual player, which seems to be one of the main target audiences.

Friction: 4/5

The command system adds some nice uncertainty, and even chance of catastrophic blunders with troops going in the wrong direction. This is something that many other rules do not do but arguably should, though it does add some additional complexity compared to other rulesets. There are also some oddities. For example, units close to the enemy get automatic 'initiative moves' - when likely this is an occasion when manouever should become more difficult not less so. Note also the point above about command rolls odds not scaling linearly.

Speed of Play: 4/5

Large moves and potential for multiple of them help speed up play, though extra rules needed to account for these multiple moves can add complication and time. As accumulated attrition disappears after a certain limit units can often last a long time rather than eventually dispersing or having steadily increased chances of doing so. Nonetheless, compared to many rulesets Blackpowder moves quite quickly making it suitable if you want to complete a large game in a reasonable timeframe.

Clutter Avoidance: 4/5

Standard units can take up to three hit counters and become 'shaken' at this point, and then you pile on more beyond this once they reach this level. You take a morale test at the end of a phase for any unit taking these extra hits with a minus for each one taken, and they might break or just discard all those hits beyond three. Thus you need a pile of these hit tokens handy and apart from these no other counters or record keeping is necessary. Disordered status can be simply shown by tilting a base or two at an angle to others in their unit so does not require extra counters.

Pickup Play Support: 1/5
This seems more of an afterthought with points that were quite unbalanced in Blackpowder 1, scenarios barely developed, and no good system for deciding on terrain for a battle. Unfortunately it seems the the new edition of Blackpowder 2 leaves out points altogether. The ballpark points in Blackpowder 1 were still better than nothing and at least a starting point and it's unfortunate these were removed. The authors also acknowledge they are not aiming to provide this sort of support with their product so be aware of this if choosing these rules.

Historical Scenario Support: 2/5

As described above there are three Napoleonic source books for Blackpowder, two for British versus French (Waterloo and Peninsula), and one for everyone else! So a definite Anglophile bias thus far, and very sparse coverage of non-British Napoleonic engagements - which formed the vast majority of the Napoleonic period. These source books are rather heavy on basic background information, but lighter on historical battle scenarios and orders of battle. The background material is helpful enough to introduce new players to the different armies, and if considered from this perspective alone I'd give this category at least a 3.

Overall: 3/5

A good introductory Napoleonic wargame due to the historical background material and relative simplicity of the rules. At the same time it can also require quite some work on the part of players to get it historically optimised and workable for Napoleonics. Most experienced groups seem to use fairly extensive lists of houserules or clarifications, though this detracts from a main selling point of the rules which is simplicity.

On the positive side, action happens quite quickly and it does enable you to fight big games in a reasonable timeframe, to a degree I've not seen with most other rulesets. That Blackpowder is often chosen for this, may speak to the lack of better quality products in this particular Napoleonic niche rather than Blackpowder itself being particularly good.

As others have commented, if you have the Blackpowder 1 rules, another option is to perhaps just keep using that together with a list your preferred house rules and changes, at least until Warlord makes a better effort at proof-reading their book!

Lastly, while this review contains many criticisms, or at least caveats, please do read this article by the author about the sort of ruleset Blackpowder is intended to be. As I discuss on my rules review page, all rules are aimed at a particular preference. While Blackpowder has some issues as all rules do, I think it succeeds well enough in meeting the purpose it is designed for. And with its emphasis on encouraging house rules, it can be tailored further to meet your personal preference, or that of your group if you have enough consensus.

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.