Pre-'Napoleon' Lasalle

Our club is having an outing to see Napoleon this evening, so yesterday some of us played a Napoleonics game to get into the mood. We used Lasalle and picked one of the small scenarios from the book. This involved some Russians and French meeting in a clearing surrounded by dense woods and squabbling over a village.

Peter took four brigades of French whilst Caesar and I ran three brigades of Russians. I had the cavalry, naturally.

I had the position of honour on the right flank, but found myself face with a large group of infantry approaching, backed up with cavalry. Turns out they were conscripts, but I wasn't to know that at the time. Anyway, after a round subjected to Russian artillery fire (the best artillery fire in the world) they slipped off into the woods, thus causing me even more consternation because even I wouldn't go haring off into woods with cavalry to chase down infantry.

On the other side of the battlefield Caesar occupied the village and spread out his infantry to await the inevitable French attack.

The conscripts continued to advance menacingly through the woods.

I moved my cavalry out to threaten what I could, although this did leave our right flank (along with our camp and an objective marker) somewhat exposed. But there were French horse out there and conscripts who hadn't made it into the wood and who were seriously considering that square formation they'd been told about.

Caesar had formed square on our extreme left when threatened by more French cavalry. Peter responded by charging it with an infantry column and wiping it out in a typically shabby French move. The rest of our infantry put up more of a fight.

I softened up the French conscript square with artillery (Russian horse artillery - best Russian artillery in the world), then charged it with my dashing cuirassiers. The French infantry decided that they had somewhere better to be.

A turn  later my other cuirassiers swept away the French cavalry on our right. This broke the French army; they had taken heavy losses elsewhere thanks to our artillery and marauding Russian horse in a big open space was too much for them.

To be fair on the other flank they were doing very well, and our infantry was having a bit of a rough time. Mind you, our Cossacks held off an attack by two French cavalry units (who'd sneaked through the wood we thought was covering our flank) so that was a win of sorts right there.

Anyway, it was a fun little game played to a conclusion in a couple of hours. And as accurate as anything we're likely to see at the cinema tonight.