Objectives

There are now three objectives on the board. The first, the defender’s camp, is placed as per normal rules. The other two are placed according to one of two ways:

Option A: Each player places one objective each, which must be at least 1′ from each table edge.
Option B: Each table layout from the book has set places for the two objectives. I suggest the following:
EVEN 1: Bridge; 1/3 of the way along the river from the top left.
EVEN 2: Village; Top tip of L-shaped woods on the left.
EVEN 3: Left-most Town base; Pass between ridge at top left and the small hill on the left.
EVEN 4: Chateau; Bottom right town square.
EVEN 5: Farmhouse; Bridge.
EVEN 6: Point 2′ in from the left, 2′ from top and bottom of table in centre; Point 2′ in from the right, 2′ from top and bottom, in centre.

ODD 1: As Even 6.
ODD 2: Top farm; Road between top and bottom farm openings on right.
ODD 3: Point where stream meets woods on left; Point where top stream meets rightmost woods.
ODD 4: Rightmost Rocky Ground (pale ‘hill’); Point where dark top right hill meets touching rocky ground on left.
ODD 5: Building at the crossroads on left; Central town square.
ODD 6: Bottom left town square; top right town square.

These objectives are contested like the defender’s camp. There is one noticeable difference: If both players have a unit within 4 base widths of the defender’s camp, then it counts as a defender hold; if both players have a unit within 4 base widths of one of the 2 other objectives, it counts as contested and no-one scores. You must have a unit within 4 base widths of an objective to be able to contest it, except for the defender’s camp – the defender does not need to have a unit within 4 base widths to count as holding it as long as there are no enemy units within 4 base widths..

The game plays out as usual, ending either with a morale roll failure or after all turns are played out (including bonus turns). When this happens, each side counts their victory points as follows:

Game Ending:

If enemy morale has broken (failed morale roll): 3 pts to the winner.
If game has timed out after all turns played: 2 pts to defender.

Objectives:

If defender’s camp is held by attacker: 3 pts to attacker
If defender’s camp is contested or held by the defender: 1 pt to defender.
If other objectives are held by a player: 1 pt for each to holder.

Commander Casualties: (Only score once per officer)

If enemy C in C is killed: 2 pts
If an enemy sub commander is killed: 1 pt

Unit Casualties: (These are cumulative, and based on the table on p.66)

Enemy has lost 1/4 of unit points: 1 pt
Enemy has lost 1/3 of unit points: 1 pt
Enemy has lost 1/2 of unit points: 1 pt
Enemy has lost 2/3 of unit points: 1 pt
Enemy has lost 3/4 of unit points: 1 pt
Enemy has lost all units: 1 pt (and automatic victory (3 points, above) to the winner.

Misc:

Higher Pursuit Score: 2 pts
If enemy is subject to “Send in the Guards”: 4 pts

When these VPs are totaled, if one side has 1-4 pts higher than his opponent, then he has a marginal victory; if he has 5+ pts higher than his opponent, then he has a decisive victory. If both points scores are equal, then we have a draw.

For tournament scoring: We could either use the raw scores as above, or portion the points as follows for each round:

Decisive victory / decisive loss: 4 / 0
Marginal victory / marginal loss: 3 / 1
Draw: 2 / 2

Notes:

I wanted to make sure that a morale failure would be a massive failure, one that you’re unlikely to be able to win with if you fail a morale roll. I also wanted to encourage the attacker to attack, hence the defender points if the game times out (and to make up for those extra units the attacker gets – he needs to use them!). Ditto for the defender’s camp. The other 2 objectives ensure that the battle won’t only be fought around the defender’s camp, and the need to possibly leave a unit behind to hold an objective while the rest of your army moves forward / defends other objectives. Kills for officers add a little bonus – if it’s otherwise a draw, but Wellington has been knocked out of action, that should count for something. I also wanted to increase the penalty for losing units – so if your opponent is over the break limit, there’s added incentive to keep at him, not pull back and hope he fails a morale check before he does enough damage to you for you to need to roll one too. Finally, I wanted to keep some form of current bonus for having cavalry superiority in place, and some form of penalty for having Guards, but ones that aren’t insurmountable. An attacking French Guard army that seizes one of the objectives, contests the other, and seizes the defender’s camp while inflicting quite bit of damage on the enemy can still end up with a marginal victory over his opponent, despite not having light cavalry, and despite being subject to the Send in the Guards rule, which is currently impossible.

IR 60 Gyulai

As you can see from the pic, the uniform of the Hungarians is different from that of the Germans in the Austrian army. Where the previous unit (IR 3) wore entirely white uniforms, with black gaiters covering their legs, the Hungarians eschewed gaiters and wore blue trousers instead. A further difference comes with their headgear – the Hungarians are wearing the shako rather than the helmet of the German unit. The Hungarians were the first to use the new shako after the reforms of 1860, the Germans not catching up until several years later. At Aspern-Essling and Wagram in the 1809 campaign, the German units continued to wear the helmet rather than the shako, for example. IR 60 fought as part of Nordmann’s Avant-Garde Division in the First Column (VI Korps) at Aspern-Essling alongside Hussars and Grenzers (fellow Hungarians) and men from the Vienna Volunteers.

Here are some close-ups of the bases:

IR 60 close up 1

This pic shows the first couple of bases, and you can see the blue trousers and shoes. The figures are Warmodelling / Fantassin again, though they have limited poses compared to the Germans, so all of the front rank are charging forward (the second rank will be in march attack pose).

IR 60 close-up 2

This pic shows the command figures, with the standard bearer carrying the Leibfahne, with the Imperial Eagle on one side, and the Virgin Mary on the other, on a white background. Compare with IR 3 which has the Ordinärfahne, a yellow flag with the Imperial Eagle on both sides.The flag, as before, is from Fighting 15s, and I highly recommend them. A dab of paper glue is all that’s needed and they’re easy to place.

IR 60 close-up 3

This pic shows the final stands of the unit, a large one in Lasalle terms. The cuffs and collars of this unit are steel green.

IR 60 skirmisher stand

The IR 60 infantry unit has only one skirmisher point in Lasalle terms, so I’ve again used a single figure to show this. The figure is an AB one, which fit in nicely with the Warmodelling / Fantassin ones. Since they’re basically just markers, I’ve mounted him on a dime (cheap bases!).

IR 60 casualty stand

The final pic is of the casualty stand for this unit. Rather than just use generic markers for casualties, I decided to get some casualty figures (Warmodelling / Fantassin again) so that each unit would have their own individual casualty marker. That way, if I have several units on the battlefield, there’s little chance of getting them mixed up. I quote like this one, he’s lost his shako, and is running from the field of battle rather than face the Frenchies.

I’ll be posting  new posts sometime in the next few days with pics and info on the units I’ve completed, when I have enough time and the desire to take a break from completing my thesis. Coming soon are my Hungarian infantry unit (IR 60 Gyulai), two Grenz units (the 6th, Broder or Brooder, and the 7th, St Georger), Uhlans (2nd Schwarzenberg), Hussars (10th Stipsicz), and Cuirassiers (1st Kaiser). Next up for painting are the third (and last) of my infantry units (Germans, in the new shako, IR 50 Stain), my second unit of Cuirassiers (6th, Liechtenstein, two sets of horse artillery and my command bases. This will give me a playable army (in attack or defence) with a Cuirassier reserve support option. As soon as these are done, the second infantry ranks will be next up, followed by my Hussar support – the 3rd (Erzherzog Ferdinand), 6th (Blankenstein), 7th (Liechtenstein) and 8th (Kienmayer).

After they are all complete, I might do a few more support options – Grenadiers perhaps, which would be easy to expand to a core Grenadier army, or Infantry so I can get a few units of Landwehr or Militia units thrown in there for good measure (I’d like to do some Vienna Volunteers and a few others), as well as a few more Hungarian and German units. Failing that, I might go for another army completely – at the moment Duchy of Warsaw sound compelling – but that will probably be after I complete my thesis and start earning money again.

It was fun umpiring a Lasalle game, and I’d be up for doing so again. One of the players (Prussians, MarkE) has played a few times, so has a decent grasp of the rules, but the other (French, MichaelD) was playing for the first time, so we did away with all optional rules other than “I’m with Stupid” which limits the commander to a shorter command radius for direct command, and which is a must if you want to avoid the cheesy my-crap-subcommander-is-staying-all-the-way-over-here business that some players seem to have adopted elsewhere. Luckily the players at our club are relatively immune to that cheesy crap. We also played the straight Lasalle endgame rather than use my variant VP system – given that it was Michael’s first game, I wanted it to be as straight as possible to avoid confusion. We timed out at turn 16 (due to the shop shutting), with even casualties at that time, so I called it as a draw. Michael’s cuirrassier reserve had only just entered play but with some good manouevring (and a little luck) he might have been able to force his way to Mark’s objective. Having said that, Mark is a canny player, and might just as easily have stopped them from getting to their destination through judicial use of infantry squares and counter-charging Hussars.

All in all, it was a fun game, and I’m now hoping to complete my Austrian Avant-Garde army by the end of the month so I can get some more games in myself. I’m under a self-imposed ban on playing any game without painted miniatures, so this gives me the impetus to get finished as soon as I can. Talking of which, I’m also working on completing my English Hundred Years War army for Impetus, so that will be the next project I take up after I get this army completed. And I really should get that FoW Irish Guards army finished up too…

IR 3 Erzherzog Karl

On the right you can see one of my hexagonal casualty bases and a skirmish base. I also took a closer shot of these two:

IR 3 Casualty and Skirmish stands

I’ll be doing all the bases when I complete the units. I painted these figures as the IR3 Erzherzog Karl, with sky blue turnbacks, collars and cuffs. Unfortunately almost all these figures obscure the turnbacks, but you can still see the collars and cuffs.

IR 3 Command stand

The flags are by Fighting 15s in the UK, and highly recommended. They were really easy to attach too, just a dab of paper glue on each bit, then stick around the pole and press together. It didn’t stick instantly, so I could move it around a little to make sure it was all done properly.

IR 3 Erzherzog Karl from the side

For the colour scheme, I undercoated black as usual, then used black for the helmets, with brass plates (gold for the officers, though they look exactly the same as the brass ones to me), and yellow trim on the crest (gold for the mounted officer). Boots were black drybrushed dark grey, coats and trousers were white linen drybrushed with pure white after getting a brown wash. Guns were as the Jagers below, as were backpacks and overcoats, waterbottles and sword sheaths etc. The officers had dark grey coats, drybrushed lighter grey with a little blue mixed in, and gold sashes and the horse was dark brown, drybrushed a slightly lighter brown, with a red saddle cover with gold trim. The drummer has wings in the facings colour (sky blue), with white trim and ‘rose’ (just a splotch of white) in the centre, and the drum was middle brown drybrushed light brown, with black and yellow stripes and a linen white top. The standard was white, gold and black in a sort-of stripey pattern going up it.

I think next time I’ll go for another infantry unit, maybe Hungarians, though I am thinking of one of my cavalry units – possibly Uhlans or Hussars. Decisions, decisions…

Jagers

As far as painting goes, I used dark flesh then flesh for well, the fleshy parts, boots and other leather was black with a really faint highlight of very dark grey. The coats on the top of the packs were black, drybrushed dark grey. Uniforms were dark grey, with a heavy highlight of light grey, and a light drybrush in an even lighter grey. Guns were dark brown drybrushed lighter brown for the wood, and gunmetal drybrushed silver for the metal parts. Hats were lack, drybrushed with very dark grey, as were pouches etc. Powder horns were medium brown drybrushed light brown, and the packs were dark brown, drybrushed medium brown. Other decoration was gold (horn, commander’s sash etc), the ponpoms yellow and black, and the facings dark green.

Jagers 2

For the bases, I used air-drying clay and coarse gel, painted dark brown, then highlighted light brown, added flock, grass and some bushes here and there, as well as a couple of clay rocks.

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.

The latest in a series of recent releases for Napoleonic wargaming in a ‘glossy’ format (Napoleon, Black Powder, etc), Lasalle, from the author of Grand Armée, Sam Mustafa, is a petit-tactical game that covers roughly a division or so, plus supporting units. The time period covered is from around 1805 through till the Hundred Days campaign in 1815 (thus omitting the Revolutionary period). The game should be able to be played in about 2-3 hours, and thus is an excellent candidate for playing a game in an evening at the club, rather than some previous Napoleonic rules which encouraged you to set aside a month or so to finish off a game. As far as presentation goes, this book is a beauty – filled with photos of 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 25mm and 40mm figures painted to an excellent standard, as well as copious diagrams to aid in understanding the various situations described in the rules. The writing is clear and eminently understandable, does not degenerate (like some wargames rules do) into jargon-filled paragraphs, and offers many examples of play (with the aforementioned diagrams).

In his introduction, Sam notes that this is the first book in the Honour system – the next in line will be Blücher, a much larger scale game where players will control entire corps. He also makes it clear that there will not be supplements released for Lasalle in the future – you’re buying a complete game here – but that the Honour website (www.sammustafa.com) will offer new army lists, optional rules, historical articles and a scenario wiki and forum for questions / comments etc.  Indeed, there’s already a lively group of posters in the forum, a number of scenarios in the wiki, and several downloads, including FAQs, errata (of which there are very few) and another copy of the QRS.

The game can be played with any size bases, but there are recommended sizing for competitions etc, and any size figures. For the purposes of this review, I’m using 15mm figures. As long as all players use similar base widths, there shouldn’t be a problem. Recommended base width size is 40mm for Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery; markers for skirmishers, engineers, objectives and disruption are suggested, but optional. Commanders should be based on smaller bases, usually just one or two figures, while infantry units generally consist of around 8 figures in 2 rows per base, cavalry of about 3 figures per base, and artillery one gun and several crew per base. Base depth doesn’t matter as much as width, but the recommended size is 25mm, though many people (myself included) are using 30mm (40mm for artillery). Units are usually 4 stands for normal units of infantry and cavalry, 6 stands for large units (some large Austrian units, some British guards units, quite a few cavalry squadrons), and between 3 and 5 stands for artillery units, depending on type and nationality.

After discussing basing, Sam goes on to define a few terms (What ‘near the enemy’ means, for example) , and straightforward basic concepts such as formations (line / abreast, attack column / waves, square, march column. Each is clearly shown with the aid of pictures, for both small and large units. Other concepts include disruption (each unit has 4 or 6 disruptions, depending on size), which covers both morale and casualties – when you reach the limit for the unit, it breaks. Some can be recovered, but this is not easy. Each unit also has an esprit level (valiant, reliable or shaky) and a discipline level (experienced, amateur or irregular). Some units have other qualities (shock and pursuit cavalry, lancers, and guards units). Command and control is quite basic – if a unit is within command range, they’re fine; if outside, then they can’t charge and suffer penalties to combat and discipline tests. Terrain and cover affect movement and combat, as is usual.

The turn sequence is one familiar to Principles of War players, but may be new to most other Napoleonics players. The first phase is the reaction phase, and covers changing formation, countercharging, falling back and firing; the second phase is the combat phase (at the end of which, units may fall back / advance some more). The third phase is the activity phase, where units move and make recovery attempts, and the final phase is the status phase, where reinforcements arrive, army morale is checked, and where the possible end of the game is decided. In effect, you react to your enemy’s moves in your first phase (including shooting at them), conduct any combats that resulted from his movement, then you make your own movement. As with most wargames rules, discipline, formation and terrain affect movement, and formation changing is relatively easy unless close to the enemy. Shooting is directly ahead of your unit, and is not allowed if another friendly unit is even partly in the line of sight – this is going to take some getting used by some until they learn not to position units in the way. Skirmishers are covered quite simply – each unit has a 0 to 3 skirmish rating; advantages go to the unit with the higher rating. There’s the usual stuff about target priority, partial targets, and modifiers depending on formation, cover and terrain. Each unit has a number of dice depending on size and formation, skirmish capability, artillery range etc, up to around 10 dice or so at a maximum. The number of hits is cross referenced on a simple chart to give the effects – no effect, 1-2 disruption, or an immediate break result.

Combat is similar – esprit, disruption, qualities such as guard status etc all affect the number of dice rolled, along with the usual modifiers for terrain, cover etc, up to a maximum of about 18 dice. Results are either decisive (if one side rolls double the number of hits that the other does) , which leads to the defender breaking or attacker losing some disruption and falling back, or inconclusive, in which case one side falls back and takes some disruption. Cavalry also take 1 disruption whether they win or not, to represent being blown after a charge. As can be expected from such an illustrative book, these sections are filled with many, many examples of complex situations and examples of combat.

Army morale depends on either losing control of any objectives or reaching break point when too many of your units have been destroyed. Each turn, dice are rolled in the final phase to see whether your army continues or not. Games have a finite length – usually 16 turns, with dice being rolled in the final phase to see if another turn is played, up to a maximum of 5 more turns.

The rest of the book covers various supplementary stuff – town fighting, advanced rules such as engineers, 3 historical scenarios, the set-up procedure for the table (which includes 12 basic set-ups that can be customised) and the army builder. This latter part is the army lists, covering Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Russia and Spain, with a load of info about minor countries following. Army lists are split into five theatres – Conquest, Empire, Peninsula, Liberation and Hundred Days. Not all nations took part in each of these theatres (with the obvious exception of France). Each list has a core of troops that you must take (eg an Austrian Avant Garde Division from the Empire theatre, which is what I’m working on in my blog) has 1 Jäger, 2 large Grenz, 2 large Infantry, 1 large Uhlan and 1 cavalry artillery battery, with a commander and subcommander. If I’m going to be attacking, I also gain a large Hussar unit and another large Infantry unit as well as another subcommander. In addition, I can take at least one support unit – though if players agree, more than one can be taken – from a list that (for the Austrian A-G) includes Infantry brigades, Cavalry brigades, Hussars, Grenadiers and Cuirassiers. The latter two are reserve brigades, which means that they don’t start on table, but come on during the game as reinforcements. Reserve brigades tend to be better units (cuirassiers, grenadiers, French Old Guard etc). There are also allied brigades, for those minor nations, but the Austrian A-G doesn’t get those. Support units tend to provide another 2 (large French Old Guard Cavalry) to  7 (Russian Opolcheniye) units. Each of the army lists also provides some special rules – nothing gamebreaking – some armies have to use linear tactics, the Austrian large units can form a mass formation, Grenz can be regular or irregular, etc. Unit statistics are given here too.

Ending the book are a section of FAQs and 4 sheets of QRSs, covering pretty much everything in the rules, in fairly large print. The rules for the most part are pretty simple and easy to understand, and after a few games, you’ll probably be relying on the QRS rather than the rulebook; after a few more games, you’ll probably only be glancing at the QRS every now and then. As such, these rules are perfect for quick competition or pick-up games, while still allowing players to use historical OOBs to refight parts of certain battles (the attack on the granary at Essling, for example, rather than the whole Essling battle, which would be better served using the forthcoming Blücher rules), or small engagements.

So, how does Lasalle play? In a quick test game, it went very smoothly. The game lasted for just under 2 hours, a French Guard division trampling the Russian Infantry division. The support choices certainly give much to think about – do you go for some light cavalry or more infantry that you can use now, or wait for heavier cavalry to come on later? If the latter, do you hang back before launching an attack until your reinforcements arrive, or attack forthwith, hoping the cuirassiers come on quickly and hurry down the table? If a defender, do you hold your position, or advance to meet the enemy before his reinforcements arrive? In the test game, the Russians decided to defend, even though they had their grenadier support already on table, while the French Guard hurried forward without their Old Guard Cavalry support. Luckily for the French, their attack columns were aimed straight at the mass of Russian infantry, leading the Russians to hastily scramble to get their grenadiers into the fight. While the formidable Russian artillery caused quite a few hits on the oncoming French, the elite status of the Guard soon made itself felt when the two armies clashed, and the early arrival of the old guard cavalry really made the battle decisive, facing no Russian equivalent. Although the French took some damage, the Russians reached breaking point first after losing a good number of their infantry and a few grenadiers and the luck if the dice meant that they failed their morale on the 14^th turn, their remaining hordes scurrying away. The game was fun, and I’m looking forward to another attempt soon. The game flowed smoothly, without much looking up after the first few turns, and wasn’t just a lucky / unlucky dice affair as some fast play rules can be.

Undercoated Jagers, waiting to dry.

As you can see from the pic, it looks really gloopy and thick, and glossy at the moment, but it will tighten and become a nice matte black after a few hours.

Close up of freshly undercoated Jagers

The figures themselves are beautiful – very little flash or mould lines, a decent assortment of good poses, no anatomical weirdness, and from what I can tell (I’m a medievalist, not a Napoleonic expert, and I specialise in monasticism, not military history), their gear is also correct. It took me about 2 hours to clean them up – remove what little flash was there (mostly on the horses) and level off the bases, which wasn’t bad considering there are 6 cannon, 86 horses and about 400 little blokes. Despite the large number of figures, not a single bayonet was broken off, and no-one has had their legs break off from their base, even where figures are charging and only affixed by one leg. Pretty impressive.

Here’s a quick pic of them, sorted into bags for units and after having been cleaned up:

Austrian Avant Garde (15mm Warmodelling)