We had a bit of a bash to try out the Lasalle rules last night, pitting some Austrians against some Russians, both from the Empire theatre – just about all our club’s forces are going to be Empire theatre-based, I think. Since neither my opponent (Anthony) nor I have finished working on our armies, we just used the bases, without figures on them – sacrilege I know, and some of you will be shaking your heads with dismay, but it worked enough for us to try out the rules and get used to them. I’ve often found that the best spur to finishing off an army is to have a game or two using the rules to get used to them – now we can’t wait to get them finished so we can have a ‘proper’ game.
We rolled for the clearing table, and added a couple more woods in the centre and a marsh over to one side. As the A-G, I chose to attack; Anthony chose to defend. The objective ended up roughly in the middle of the deployment zone. Anthony set up with grenadiers, artillery, 2 more grenadiers, artillery, then more grenadiers, all in assault column, while I set up my three infantry on my left, with artillery, and the Jagers, Uhlans, Grenz, Hussars and more Grenz on my right. I pushed forward with everyone in column, the Grenz heading straight through the woods (I chose to take them as irregulars because of the terrain) and towards the marsh, the Hussars heading for the narrow gap between the woods and marsh, and the Jagers and Uhlans heading between the two woods in the middle of the table, while on my left flank, the 3 infantry units headed through the woods and the artillery made for the gap between the woods to set up there. Anthony pretty much stayed where he was, with a little moving around, prolonging artillery to get them into better position etc.
After a few turns, I’d got to the edge of the woods / marsh with the Grenz, my Jagers were poised to move out wherever needed, the Hussars had taken a few hits from the heavy Russian artillery, and had managed to arrive on the other side of the woods and marsh still in column. D’oh! No charging this turn. My cuirassiers had turned up almost immediately, and deployed in column on the extreme left. In the centre, my Uhlans recklessly charged one of the grenadier units unsupported, but luckily for me the grenadiers failed to change into square, and disappeared immediately. Momentum carried me into the next grenadier unit, which did manage to form square, but despite having almost twice my dice, managed to get fewer than half my hits (I did get something like 5 hits with 7 dice though) and also broke. This left the path clear to the objective – nice, this game could be mine in a turn or two. 
Unfortunately, Anthony managed to roll for his reserves, and two cuirassier units and another of those huge artillery units appeared next to the objective, right in front of my Uhlans. Ulp. Meanwhile, on the left, my infantry had slogged through the woods and were busy forming into assault column, and my cuirassiers, having quickly reached the same distance on the left, unlimbered their artillery (it looked so sad and despondent, my 3 gun medium battery, compared to the Russian 5 gun heavy monsters. Sniffle.) and started to charge forward with the cuirassiers.
After a few more turns, the situation on the right was pretty stable – my Hussars, having charged and been mauled a bit by incoming fire, retreated to the rear of my grenz and tried to recover; the Grenz units, meanwhile, were doing quite nicely, taking the odd disruption but giving just as many, if not more, in return (just a shame I couldn’t charge in with them to finish the grenadiers off). In the centre, my Uhlans were charged repeatedly by one of the Russian cuirassiers, but kept falling back, allowing my centre artillery to open fire on them. By the end of the game, I had one of my infantry units, my Jagers and the artillery all trying to wipe that unit out, and got it to 5 disruption just after my artillery were broken after a charge. Luckily the cuirassiers, surrounded by my troops, couldn’t recover enough to be able to charge anyone, so were effectively out of the running after that.
On the left, we had a brief cuirassier battle, mine being repulsed to start with, but then a fresh unit following up and sending the Russians heading for the edge of the table. My artillery on the left pounded away at the grenadier square that I wisely decided not to charge with my disruption 4 cuirassiers, and I tried to get one of my infantry units into position to charge the square, but never managed to – it was getting quite cramped at that end of the table. Another grenadier unit broke, and I was getting tantalisingly close to having Anthony make morale checks, but we reached turn 16, and despite having 4 bonus turns, I couldn’t quite manage it. We ended in a draw, and that was a really fair result – despite having more units left on the table, quite a few of mine were on 3-5 disruptions, an could easily have gone. Both Anthony’s cuirassiers were on the ropes, and a couple of his grenadiers were looking ropey, so I have a feeling that we would have managed to win the day if we’d had more turns, but it would have been close and could easily have turned.
We both really enjoyed the game, made a few mistakes here and there (both in not remembering the rules properly and in tactical errors – several times one or the other of us blocked our own units from firing, and we both brought on our reserves when we rolled equal to the turn number, not below it), and kind of forgot a couple of things (I don’t think we ever used any tactics rolls, despite my having an upgraded and poor subcommander, and Anthony having a poor subcommander), which I’m sure we’ll deal with next time. We only had to look at the book a few times, near the beginning of the game mostly, and the game flowed really smoothly and quickly. We had a couple of other club members as an audience, and several others came over to have a look while their opponents in their games did their moves; several members have said they’re going to pick up the rules too, so it looks like we have a winner here in Toronto for Napoleonic gaming. Next week, I hope to either get another game in or maybe umpire a game between two noobs who don’t have the game yet, to get them interested and show them how it plays.
Thanks for the game, Nick!
[...] Austrian Avant-Garde vs. Russian Grenadiers [...]
Cheers Anthony, it’ll be interesting to take you on again after we both have a few more games under the belt, to see if the result is drastically different. I’ve a feeling that when those grenadiers charge into my Grenzers in the future, that I’ll be suffering quite a bit. You never know, you might actually hit something with those artillery of yours too.