There is an understandable wish at our club to cater for all tastes and offer a varied menu of gaming options. We therefore tend to flit between periods and rule sets. The drawback of this approach is that games can be slowed down mightily by unfamiliarity with the rules., so we do try to play one rules set several times in succession, to help bed them down. We find that when we do this, games really speed up as the focus shifts from checking the index to playing the period, as someone or other says. Paul has done this in the past with several great WW2 games using Battlegroup, while recently Alistair has been running a very successful linked AWI campaign using Sharp Practice. The result of sticking with the same rules for several sessions is certainly rewarding.

We don’t have a favourite Napoleonics set at the club. The contenders for games above skirmish level are Black Powder, Blucher, Soldiers of Napoleon, General d’Armée 2 and Lasalle. We have played them all in recent months, but rarely more than a couple of times apiece. Each has its fans. Blucher stands apart for Corps and Army level games, though there has been talk of trying Napoleon’s Battles again. My own top candidates for ‘divisional’ rules are Soldiers of Napoleon and Lasalle. So far, I have honestly been unable to choose between them, partly because we have not yet played enough games with the same rules to really get used to them. Until recently, that is.

Outside the club, we have a smaller gaming group that occasionally meets on a weekday evening. We tend to lean heavily on Napoleonics and for the past four meetings, we have played Lasalle. I am very glad we did as the ease of play has improved noticeably with each game.

Our first Lasalle game was at the club, where we played the combat at Markkleeberg (Leipzig, 16/10/1813), using 15mm figures and a Base Width of 40mm. This and the other scenarios described below are on the Scenarios for Lasalle page. The aim of the scenario for the Allies (Russians and Prussians) is to dislodge Poniatowski’s Poles from the village of Markkleeberg and so help their Austrian Allies to cross the river Pleisse into the French right rear. In this first game, the Allies assaulted the village several times without success, having elected not to soften it up first with musketry or artillery fire. We repeated the scenario a few days later but trying to apply the lessons of the first game. The result this time was much more satisfactory for the Allies, who pummelled the village with fire before taking it by assault. I am certain that the challenge in the first game was unfamiliarity with the interplay between firing, movement and close combat in the rules. Every rules system has its nuances that it is important to grasp if you are going to make the best of things.

The third game was Jakubowo, an action between Oudinot’s Corps and Wittgenstein on the northern flank of the invasion of Russia. For this one we used 6mm figures and a 30mm Base Width. Harry and my Russians emerged from the forest to find Dan and Ian’s French deployed around the settlement of Jakubowo. We tried and failed to dislodge the French in the 8 turns allowed in the scenario. I think on reflection the game should have been 12 turns to reflect the greater distances we had to cover on the table with our 30mm BW, but I think we would still have been bottled up by a very effective French defence. I do enjoy the mass visual effect of playing in 6mm and am so impressed by the MDF figures that now make up most of our 6mm armies. They are as cheap as chips and look stunning on the table. (If you are interested, look for Commission Figurines, who makes Napoleonic and ACW figures in 6mm as well as some lovely buildings and ruins in various scales). All players were comfortable with the rules by now and the game flowed well.

We played our fourth game on 18 June so thought it fitting to play something from the Waterloo campaign. I only have French and Prussians in 6mm and we have not long ago played the first Prussian assault at Plancenoit, so we jumped back two days to the battle of Ligny. I had written the scenario for both Soldiers of Napoleon and Lasalle and we had played the SoN version twice before, but this was the first time with Lasalle. Will led the Prussian counterattack against Dan’s 7th Division holding Saint Amand la Haye, while I champed at the bit in the wings, hoping to bring French reinforcements onto the table in time to make a difference.

This fourth game was the most tense and entertaining I can remember for a long time. Dan had an option to cover the whole front but chose to anchor his left in St Amand la Haye, more or less at the mid-point of his baseline, thereby leaving Will free to send 5th Brigade deep into the French left table half, for much of the way in march column. Dan therefore found himself with Prussians both in front of the village and on the high ground to its left flank. This was a bold and risky deployment by Dan and initially, he seemed at risk of being chewed up from front and flank as a lot of Prussian firepower converged on the northernmost sector of St Amand la Haye. Indeed, Will damaged and then evicted the garrison from this sector. Meanwhile, however, Dan’s right swept away the Fusilier battalions on Will’s left, and his compact division was then well placed to support the remaining two sectors of the village. Then Will inflicted an upset by capturing Dan’s baggage, - the first time this has happened in one of our games. The French camp was decidedly gloomy at this point but at the end of the turn, the French reinforcements finally arrived.

The French reinforcements appeared to the left of St Amand la Haye, to find Will’s flanking force on the high ground. Will turned his troops to face them and it looked as if they could contain the new arrivals, at least long enough for the village to fall. However, the French then had one of those turns when nothing can go wrong and the reinforcements charged and immediately broke two previously unscathed Prussian battalions and an artillery battery. Not only did this effectively snuff out the Prussian threat to Dan’s flank, but it brought the Prussians to within one unit of sudden death. The struggle continued to the final turn when Will’s Hussars, having survived all sorts of scrapes thus far, were finally destroyed by canister fire. And that was that.

I am really glad we have had a run of Lasalle games in a shortish space of time. There is nothing like being punished for your mistakes in one game to teach you to do differently next time around. The best example of this for me is Dan’s tactics for defending a village. In Markkleeberg, he had all battalions in garrison and no reserves close by. They held out well until they didn’t and at that point, there was no way to recapture the village. At St Amand la Haye, the two sectors nearest the enemy were garrisoned but the third had a battalion in mass formation, ready to counterattack if needed. He also had friends outside the village, near enough to support the garrison. The result was far better!

Gamers like variety, especially on club night, so I won’t push my luck with Lasalle. But we ought to play another game before long, so we keep on top of the rules. It would be a shame to have to go through the learning process all over again!

I recently finished reading the memoirs of Henryk Brandt of the Vistula Legion, which have a detailed account of his experiences during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812., I was interested by his account of the battle of Valutina Gora or Lubino. This was fought on 19 August 1812 between a Russian rearguard and a combined French and Württemberger force under marshals Ney and Murat. It was described as another wasted opportunity to destroy Barclay de Tolly’s Russian field army, which was strung out along the Moscow road after abandoning Smolensk. The battle was closely fought as the small Russian rearguard was constantly reinforced during the afternoon, just managing to keep the French from disrupting the retreat. It also had some interesting ‘what ifs’. For example, Junot’s corps was in a position to outflank the Russian position but despite Murat’s pleading, Junot refused point blank to bring up his troops. Also, Napoleon himself seemed not to realise the opportunity that Ney and Murat faced, so did not attend the scene himself or inject more urgency into their efforts.

The battle had two quotes attributed to it. When Tuchkov, the Rearguard commander, sought out Barclay de Tolly to demand reinforcements, the C in C allegedly said to him: “Return to your post and get yourself killed. If you come back again I will shoot you myself.” On the French side, when Napoleon realised he had missed an opportunity and was told of Junot’s inactivity in the face of the enemy, he declared that Junot would never receive his marshal’s baton.​

I found a scenario for Lubino on the excellent Free Napoleonic Scenarios website run by the Grognards group https://napoleonicscenarios.weebly.com/. There doesn’t seem to have been any action on the site since 2015 but it is a great resource and I hope the Grognards are still playing. The scenarios are written for Age of Eagles which I don’t know or play. They are however adaptable to Sam Mustafa’s Blücher, as both rules are at the same operational level. So thanks to the Grognards and with a bit of help from George Nafziger’s history of 1812, my scenario for Lubino is on the Scenarios for Blücher page. The map is closely based on the one in the Grognards scenario but the OOBs and special rules are mine.

Four of us played the scenario on 22 January. It was a tough game in which the initial Russian hilltop defence held up well against Ney’s corps, but was eventually overwhelmed. It had however bought enough time for Russian reinforcements to form a solid second line that the French could not break before nightfall. As happened on the day, Junot’s corps did not arrive on the field.

I adjusted the victory conditions after the first game. Originally they required the French to take the town of Lubino. The amended conditions allowed the French also to win by exiting at least two infantry units off the Russian table edge, thereby obliging the Russians to cover their whole front and not just cluster all their troops around the town.
I ran the game again with two other players on 30 January. Dan and I took the French side, while Harry led the Russian rearguard. This game ran differently from the first one: the hilltop was contested right until the end of the day, but the French and Württembergers went around the hill position and obliged Harry to extend his left. Also, in this game Junot’s Westphalian corps arrived,  on the high ground almost behind the Russian position. Things initially looked promising for the French and their allies as Junot had a clear run to the Russian base line. However, Harry threw his badly depleted cavalry in Junot’s path and scrabbled to shift more infantry to his left. The cavalry was destroyed but had done enough: night fell and the game ended with the Russian position crucially intact.
Both games were close fought with lots of memorable moments. Russians on the defensive are so hard to shift! I am happy with the scenario as it now stands. It is always a balancing act to allow for events that didn’t happen but could have done (in this case, Junot’s arrival).

I’ve read some interesting discussion on the Sam Mustafa forum recently about the merits of Blücher.  Some players miss the column/line/square options and tactical choices offered by Lasalle and similar rules. Now, I really enjoy Lasalle too, but I am perfectly happy with the operational scale that Blücher targets. While the players don’t make decisions about formations or other matters that would not trouble a commanding general, the rules  nevertheless present them with plenty of options and tricky decisions from turn to turn. So Blücher suits me very well for the bigger battles, though when the urge to go tactical strikes, my figures are based for Lasalle too. Why choose between rules when you don’t have to?