Guest Blog Post: Maida, 1806 with Lasalle 2 Rules

The following post has been written by my friend Daniel Trilligan, who wrote and ran a Lasalle scenario of the battle of Maida for Harry and me in June 2026. The scenario is on the Scenarios for Lasalle page. I’m grateful to Dan for running the game and for writing it up. We had a very entertaining game of it.

​Wargaming the Battle of Maida – 4 July 1806

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Napoleonic Wars are not so much a ‘rabbit hole’ that wargamers fall into but rather an immense warren with air conditioning, a well-stocked bar and jacuzzi.
I count myself very lucky to have taken my first steps into Napoleonic wargaming under the kind tutelage of many generous friends (Tim chief among them) who have run entertaining games using a whole host of rulesets. Inspired by their example. I've long harboured dreams of running my own games so I can return the favour. The goal would be to run games not only for my existing wargaming buddies but also for other friends who might be interested in giving it a go. What follows is a description of the process that entailed and a brief report of the result.
The first task, picking a rule set, was easy enough. Of the half dozen or so rulesets I've played thus far, Lasalle by Sam Mustafa (specifically the second edition) is a personal favourite. The back-and-forth momentum system combined with the straightforward but satisfying ruleset is a winning combination. In the dozen or so times I've played it, it’s always been a fun game to play moment-to-moment, whilst also providing historically plausible results in a single evening. What more could you ask for?

Why Maida?

The next question was ‘What battle to focus on?’. Whilst most of my experience with Lasalle has involved scenarios based on a flashpoint in a larger battle, I was keen to try and find a battle which could be entirely represented in a single scenario. Part of this was a matter of general preference, but it was largely because I wanted to have a manageable painting target. Being something of a hobby butterfly, I hoped that having a coherent number of soldiers to paint would motivate me to actually get them done – rather than being daunted by a seemingly never-shrinking ‘to-do’ pile.
After a little digging online, I stumbled onto the lesser-known Battle of Maida, fought between the British and the French in 1806. Compared to the great clashes of the period, it was barely more than a skirmish, with only about 5000 men per side. Or in Lasalle terms, somewhere in the region of 8-10 units each. Perfectly manageable as a scenario (particularly for a learning game) without being daunting as a painting project.
Having identified the goal, now came the fun part

From Battle to Wargame

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the scenario - a brief summary. The Battle of Maida was fought on 04 July 1806 on the Calabrian coastline of Southern Italy. It saw an expeditionary British force under Major General John Stuart face down the French under General Reynier. The result ‘on-the day’ was what you might politely call ‘a thumping victory’ for the British. Indeed, the French defeat was so emphatic that their soldiers are reported to have referred to it as the ‘15-minute affair’ - not wanting to credit it with the formal title of battle. For the longest time, Maida was a by-word for the strength of the British line over the French column, until a later generation of historians pointed out that the French were probably also formed up in line too.
I started with sketching out the Orders of Battle for both sides. Maida was primarily an infantry affair, with the French only having some light cavalry and the British having no horsemen at all! When trying to build out the rosters from the internet, I quickly noticed that there were some inconsistencies, especially in terms of how much artillery both sides were reported to have and who was brigaded with who.
I therefore decided to dig deeper and picked up a copy of Richard Hopton’s history of the battle: Fifteen Minutes of Glory. This book was a very helpful guide not just to the battle, but also the wider context of the campaign, as well as specific information about the units involved. With its support, I finalised the OOBs, going so far as to adjust the points totals for units where needed to reflect units which were smaller (e.g. the Corsican Rangers) or just generally inferior (e.g. the 78th Highlanders) to the rest of the army.
The historical battlefield didn’t feature any built-up areas to contest or really any locations which could constitute an objective, so the goals for both sides would be simple: break the enemy before you yourself are broken. A little simplistic perhaps, but both in keeping with the history AND easy to explain for a pick-up game. Of course, with such small forces on either side, the break points were tiny, with both sides only able to lose 3 units each before hitting their ‘sudden death’ limit.
Given how potentially deadly combat (particularly melee) can be in Lasalle, I decided to add an optional amendment to the standard ‘sudden death’ rules. Rather than a player losing immediately when their third unit broke, they would instead grant their opponent a victory point, with play continuing until the end of the standard eight turns before ‘carnage’ would be calculated. Never mind that the real battle was short and emphatic, It didn’t seem right to run (and I doubted people would want to play) a scenario that took longer to set up / pack away than it did to complete!
I also decided to waive the requirements for both sides to have baggage markers on the table. Mostly, this was to streamline the battle and ensure that the focus was on the clash of armies, rather than trying to sneak around and capture the enemy's bits and bobs. In all my games of Lasalle I've only ever seen baggage captured once. That was achieved by some fast-moving light cavalry, which this scenario all but lacked, so I was confident it wouldn’t cheapen the game to just remove the markers. As both armies on the day had marched from very nearby camps, it seemed reasonable to just grant the standard baggage bonus to both sides without risk.
The final thing to determine was deployment and reinforcements. The armies at Maida were notable for the fact that they arrived at the battlefield in mirrored echelon, meaning that the British right flank made contact with the French left flank first, then the army centres and so on and so forth down the line. For the scenario, this meant progressively smaller deployment boxes for the various brigades as you went along.
I did (for the most part) elect to ignore the reinforcement rules for the last brigades to become engaged, given that it risked one side becoming severely outnumbered if they couldn’t manage to roll well. The only unit that was treated as reinforcements as per the rules was the 20th Foot for the British, who historically arrived at the battle after everyone else, and contributed to turning it from a disadvantageous situation for the French to an outright defeat.
So that’s how the scenario came to be, but would all the work actually result in something that was fun to play? The only way to find out was to give it all a go..

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A First Outing

As my chief enablers in the wargaming hobby, it seemed appropriate that Harry and Tim should face off as the first testers of the scenario. Both are knowledgeable in Lasalle as a system and interested in the period more generally. So really there was no-one better to put the scenario through its paces. Tim even offered to host the game in the wargames shed itself!
All the models used were from my own fledgling collection of 6mm MDF figures from Commission Figurines. As a distinctly middling painter, I've certainly found my niche working in smaller scales. Massed ranks and bright colours can do an incredible amount of the heavy lifting in making a scenario seem like a full battle, rather than simply a dozen or so men taking a flag for a walk – as it can sometimes appear in the larger scales. And in a hobby dominated by ever rising costs, the tiny wooden men remain a much cheaper alternative to their plastic and metal counterparts.
On the day, Harry took the French and Tim the British. As both players were familiar with the rules, we agreed to use the advanced skirmishing rules, and gave the British the linear doctrine to really try and capture the fearsome reputation of ‘the thin red line’.
With the smaller scale of the models, there was enough space between the two opposing forces to have a couple of turns of manoeuvring before things heated up. Harry’s plan involved sending his foremost left-hand brigade forwards as quickly as possible to try and pressure the Brits and prevent them forming a full defensive line. Weathering sustained fire from the British infantry and artillery alike (including some particularly painful rifle-armed Corsican rangers), Harry had some fortunate rally rolls enabling him to keep his battalions in the fight just long enough for the next French brigade to have made up the distance, at which point he started pulling back his weakened units. Unfortunately for Harry, Tim was able to get his light battalion around the flank of the left-most French unit, which, when combined with the extra shooting enabled by the linear doctrine led to the poor Frenchmen being repeatedly raked with fire from two sides, and eventually breaking under the strain.
In the centre, the French stormed across the table in mass formation, opposed by the 78th Highlanders and the 81st “Loyal Lincoln Volunteers”. Interestingly, these central brigades were made up of the poorest quality troops for both sides, making the French easier to shake, and denying the Brits their rapid-fire and resilient traits. The lack of those extra shooting dice meant that the French atually made it into contact with the British. The Highlanders were routed in the resulting daring charge, but an ‘upset victory’ result meant that the lads from Lincoln saw off both units of the Polish-Italian Legion without injury and then proceeded to counter charge and rout one of their attackers in return.
The third and final brigades were moving into position as quickly as they could, but their actual contribution to the battle was relatively minimal. The French artillery battery was perhaps the one exception, with Harry rushing it into position to try and hold his centre against the British counterattack. Sadly, by the fifth round the British shooting advantage had really put the French on the back foot, and it was only a matter of time before the third and final French battalion broke. As it was getting late, we opted to simply finish the turn and see whether the French could break another unit before calling the first run to a close

Aftermath

Both players reported having an entertaining time playing the scenario, and I very much enjoyed watching it pan out in my capacity as umpire. All agreed that the fight is a challenge for the French player, but not an insurmountable one. Indeed, both sides had good and bad dice luck at various moments throughout the game, meaning that the result never felt pre-ordained.
I was particularly pleased that there were no immediately obvious issues with the scenario as written. The only thought I had was perhaps ruling that the Corsican Rangers for the British must be deployed as sharpshooters, rather than being on the tabletop itself. That would limit the volume of firepower (especially those dreaded rifles!) that the British could bring to bear, but I suspect it will be worth running the scenario at least once more before making such a change. For no other reason perhaps than because I’ve already spent the time painting their snazzy green outfits, so they deserve to be seen at least a few times before they’re relegated to only being tokens!
All in all, the whole process has been a great deal of fun. Whilst ‘fictional’ scenarios can be entertaining, ‘historical’ scenarios just feel undeniably ‘closer’ to the period. And off the battlefield, games such as these encourages painters to work on some specific units that might not otherwise have become part of a gaming collection. How many other wargamers have got ‘de Wattevile’s Swiss’ in their British armies I wonder?
Tim has very kindly offered to upload the Maida scenario on the blog on the Scenarios for Lasalle  page, in case anyone wants to give it a go themselves.
Since the battle, I've started reading John Gill’s history of the 1809 campaign, so who knows, maybe I'll have a go at some more scenarios – if I can stomach painting all that white for the Austrians.