Lasalle

Our club is one of the playtest groups for the new version of Sam Mustafa's 'Lasalle', and we played a couple of games last night. I say 'we' - I just sat and watched and asked obvious questions, whilst other played. Mostly because I forgot my glasses and couldn't read anything.

I'm not going to write a detailed report, not am I going to talk much about the detail of mechanisms, because as with all things of this nature, a lot of it is subject to change. However two decent-sized games were pretty much played to a conclusion in the evening, despite questions and relative inexperience. The mechanisms seem simple; firing and melee are similar to Maurice, with the former being a number of dice rolling to hit and then a 'save' based on the quality of the unit, and the latter being an opposed D6 roll plus and minus various factors. Melee is brutal; if you attack with a decent margin then you stand a good chance of sweeping your opponent away.

The initiative system is excellent and seemed to work very smoothly. It uses a PIP system, but the initiative of a turn swaps back and forth between the players as one side can react to an action by the other. This continues until one player runs out of PIPs, at which point the other one spends what they have left. Skirmishers are abstracted; each turn starts with a die roll representing the skirmish battle, with the winner being allowed to select an advantage for the rest of the turn.

I took a few picture. In the foreground Dave and Gary were using French (with an oriental flavour) and Prussians respectively. In the background Caesar used Austrians against Peter's British.

Turkish/Persian artillery. This stood in for regular heavy guns, but still looks nice.

Gary and Dave played a cautious game, with plenty of artillery bombardment and some cavalry actions on the flanks. They didn't quite finish but would have seen a result on the next turn.

Caesar and Peter played a more brutal game. Caesar deployed his Austrians in massed columns in the centre and barrelled straight at the British line.

Closer up he deployed into line and a firefight developed.

A British edge in shooting (of course) was offset by Caesar rolling really well in response, and both sides saw units shattered.

Caesar used his cavalry to sweep away the British gun-line. The battle would be won by the first side to destroy six enemy units, and this pushed the British closer to their break-point.

A turn began with both side one unit away from breaking, and predictably both sides lost a unit during the turn. As DBA/HOTT players, we assumed that victory was assessed at the end of the turn, so that it was either a draw or the armies would keep fighting until one had lost more than the other. But in fact a quick reread of the rules showed that an army broke the instant it lost the sixth unit, and Caesar was the first player to lose six, giving Peter a Pyrrhic victory in a very close game indeed.

I enjoyed spectating these games, and look forward to actually having a go at playing some time in the near future. The rules seem simple, intuitive and have some subtle chrome built into them for the button-counters and national characteristic fetishists.