Lasalle 2 - Solo game completed

Finished playing through my solo game with Lasalle with it ending in a close draw.

This scenario has no sudden death level of losses so its all about the controlling objectives (one centrally place worth 1 VP and the village on the ridge being worth 2VP) within the 8 turn limit.

As it turned out the French only managed to take the central objective but inflicted sufficient losses on the Russians to gain a VP for 'Carnage' thereby offsetting the Russian retention of the village for a 2 all draw.

Another turn or two would likely have seen Russians wiped out however as Russians had lost all their gun batteries and 6 units of infantry against just 2 Young Guard units.

The elite French force was interesting to use especially the Infantry as the 5+ Resolve level meant they suffered a lower level of losses generally.

Of course the Old Guard seemed to suffer above average and were underwhelming in the game. Author Sam Mustafa is not a believer in Old Guard being super troops (in any of his rules) but they are certainly better than average with extra strength point, said better resolve and good traits (Assault Columns and Resilience). 

Certainly less impressive/potent than they are in say Black Powder where they are essentially juggernauts.

Fun time with Lasalle even solo and yet again the MO 'orders' system shines as a very neat and slick mechanic, as I have said previously regarding the rules they are 'Napoleonic lite' with much abstracted and simplified but they are fun and produce an excellent game despite lacking much flavour/chrome compared to something like Gen D'Armee. If you like Maurice and Blucher by Sam you will like these if not then probably not so much :-)

Planned outing with them in a few days with Le Duc as our first post-plague game.

French right wing pushing towards central objective (red poker chip)

Russian delaying Brigade doing its job in front of the ridge

But under real pressure from Young Guard

Russian canister from their heavy battery decimated Young Guard infantry to their front

Struggle continues around ridge

Old Guard fail to deal with Jager

Young GUard unit shaken due to losses (yellow marker)

Young Guard held at bay temporarily

All four Russians units visible in this pic were duly lost.................

Zorndorf with Field of Battle 3

Game with Stephen today with a refight of Zorndorf using FOB3.

We have refought this action (based of the Might & Reason scenario so with units equating to Brigade formations) several times with various rule sets and it is one of my favourite battles to recreate.

We used FOB3 mainly as it was still fresh in our minds and being such an enjoyable game system.

For a change I took the Prussians and Stephen the Russians with no real rule changes other than Prussians having first initiative and a Move card in hand (sort of standard for attackers in our games).

We stuck with the historical deployment areas for the commands of both sides which probably favours the Russians a tad.

So Freddies lot duly opened hostilities with some ineffectual long range bombardments by his guns and equally paltry Russian artillery response.

And in a change to historical action as Kanitz command first occupied the Stein Busch prior to Dohna's command attacking the Observation Corps with Schlormers Cuirassiers supporting his right.

What a disaster this proved to be as Dohna's infantry were completely pummeled by the Obs Corps in particular their 2 Grenadier Brigades !

I know one ought not to complain about dice rolls but Stephen (in full 'dice demon' mode) simply rolled stellar dice, he rolled a D12 5 times achieving 3 rolls of 12 and 2 of 10 and then 2 D10 rolling 10 twice, simply staggering degree of luck !! 

Of course I consistently rolled low in response as per normal. 

And as in last game he then had fortuitous card sequence getting a melee card just when required to charge into my battered units which had been Forced Back with hits and no chance to react.

I had by this time pushed Mantteufel's 2 Grenadier Brigades forward on my left and these too suffered this time from Russian cannister shot.

To add insult to injury the single unit of decent Russian cavalry the Horse Grenadiers charged and routed 2 units of Dragoons under Bieberstein.

With all this carnage I had 5 units Routing and 3 destroyed and was in serious trouble.

The Prussians did manage to pull 3 Leadership cards out of 5 cards (after a reshuffle) giving them lots of opportunities to Rally but they could only rally 3 units and recover a couple of hits.

On an Army Morale card things just turned to a complete shambles for Prussians as I had to roll for risk to 4 of my Commanders and managed to kill 3 of them with rolls of 1 on D12s, what are the chances !?

Thankfully they soon returned on one of the Leadership cards but damage was done.

Soon after this further losses saw the Prussian morale sink inevitably to zero and I conceded as three quarters of my foot units gone and Russians pretty undamaged (only 1 unit Routed)

Seydlitz who was historically very much the saviour of Prussians at Zorndorf did not manage to get involved today at all, in fact bar the Horse Grenadiers and my 2 Dragoon units the cavalry of both sides took no part beyond some maneuvering about the place.

But again what a fun game with FOB with so many decisive outcomes and a strong narrative (albeit of solely of Prussian calamity and disaster) that very few other game systems generate in such an exciting fashion, definitely not a rules set for 'control freaks' but damn it feels like a proper battle action.

Initial action as artillery bombards

Kanitz command occupies the Stein Busch

Russian left wing cavalry moves forward 

Up close with Kanitz and his lads

On Prussian left not much happening early on with just some disorder from artillery

Disaster is befalling Dohnas command as Russian Grenadiers batter them to pulp

A stand off (for whole game) on Prussian right 

Manteuffels Grenadiers have gone forward into trouble (one unit routed and other damaged and disordered)

Kanitz troops deploy in Stein Busch but pinned by Russians

Prussian right wing in dire straits as infantry have melted away and Kanitz now suffering and indeed nearing the end of hostilities.

Field of Battle 3 - another solo Seven Years War bash

Set up and played, over last 2 days, a solo SYW game with FOB3 pitting Russians against Prussians, as I want to try to keep a handle on these excellent rules whilst in gaming limbo.

Used a randomly drawn Seasons of Battle map card to select terrain then just drew up two opposing forces that seemed 'balanced'.

Russians nominally defending a stream and village against attacking Prussians.

Both sides had 3 Infantry Brigades and 2 Cavalry Brigades with Russians having more Infantry and Prussians superior Cavalry (23 Russian and 18 Prussian units).

Russians had a lowly D8 CinC and an Average deck, the Prussians a D12 CinC and a Superior deck.

Russians deployed (on left) defending the line of stream.

Prussians arrayed to attack

View from Prussian lines

The game played out really quickly with Russian Artillery (2 medium and 1 heavy batteries) dealing a lot of punishment to approaching enemy, whilst Prussian guns (2 medium batteries) inflicted minimal damage in return.

But once the forces engaged each other the Prussians gained some revenge especially in melee combats.

The Prussian mounted on their right (Kuirassier and Hussars) attacked straight across the stream after a good run of move segments were gained, against the weak Russian horse (weaker Cuirassier and Hussars) and pretty much wiped them out in short order.

A more even dual between Infantry forces, with Prussian Grenadiers on their left suffering losses and just about holding on as Russian mounted attacked, albeit mostly poor Dragoon units.

In center however the Prussians decimated Russians brigade around the village and bridge and this led to a huge drain on Russian Army Morale (Russians had 32 Prussians 25) and they failed the very first Army Morale Check due to poor CinC.

Despite being forced to solo yet again this was a short sharp but fun outing with this never disappointing rule system, I still love the game narrative the system builds and the lack of formal (ie predictable) turn sequencing leads to some great and exciting moments even solo. 

However roll on face to face gaming !!

Russian Infantry faces off vaunted Prussian foot at steam bend

Emplaced Russian cannon bombard

Heavy (12pdr) battery joins in 

Inferior Russian horse cower behind stream with Prussian mounted seeming so far away

Overview of early stages of engagement

Russian right wing mounted try to turn Prussian flank, but Frei Korps and Grenadiers bloody their nose (Horse Grenadiers routing)

Prussian Infantry stalls in Disorder after a Brigadier is shot from saddle

Crunch time in center as Russian foot forced to flee by oncoming Prussians

Prussian mounted wing has forced the line of stream and crushed the enemy horse.

Then they ride to threaten Russian left (note the massed Russian losses in foreground, by contrast Prussians lost just 1 Grenadier unit although they did Rally several Routing units)

Russian Brigade of Grenadiers heemed in (they took no part in action)

12pdrs have been overrun and Russian center in real difficulties

As Prussian force the line of stream here too.

Russian right wing to slow to engage

Overview as Russian yielded the field..............................

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.