Lasalle 2 - online game completed

Another session with Stephen of our remote Lasalle 2 game which we managed to bring to a completion (despite much waffling about these rules and newly arrived O Group !)

Once again we found Lasalle to be a very slick and playable experience.

Russians suffered terribly in several combats but did manage to narrowly hang on for a win in the scenario.

This was partly because we had not realised that the village was worth 2 victory points not just 1 as we had thought and would more likely have seen a French assault had we known.

The third VP was in the other objective which French just failed to capture on the final (8th) game turn, they did however gain 1VP for greater 'Carnage' inflicted on Russians and the Russian Baggage was also in danger had there been another 1-2 turns to play. 

The carnage inflicted on Russians

We thoroughly enjoyed this game with Lasalle 2 both loving the MO system.

We discussed a lot about the various abstractions in the rules and its overall lack of chrome/granularity (certainly compared to many other sets) but in the end we felt it generated a fast playing and fun game.

Its Napoleonic feel might be down to the very bare bones (essentially Column, Line and Square),  and is essentially a Command oriented game with the somewhat generic troop types and grades along with very straightforward systems subsumed to the use of MO as the core.

But this very broad brush style certainly allows for a fast and slick game with plenty of decisions and ultimately rolls of dice to decide things, and to be honest none the worse for that.

Yes we would like to see (or at least we thought we would) more grades of troops, more formations (eg Close  Columns, Open Order, Skirmish) and some more tactical interactions (eg Assault Column vs Line expanded) and sometimes things like Opportunity Charges but and it is a big BUT that is not the design intent (clearly stated by Sam throughout) of this set which pares most of this stuff down to a fairly simple set of parameters with low numbers of modifiers or exceptions always leaning toward playabilty over any hint of complexity. 

And this is what gives the set its fluency and very easy to remember systems. We were both playing with just the QRS only having to refer to rules for one or two minor queries.

Probably my only real gripe is that the included lists (really only broad guidelines) are very generic and it seems one could load your OOB with large amounts of Artillery units (whether that is a good idea or not is open to question). We agreed our own limits.

We will definitely be giving these more outings in the future especially as a 'pick and play' option.