Waterloo Campaign - Turn 3

So we had the next day of our Waterloo Campaign at the club, using Lasalle. So another crop of fun games has been had. We were forced to play outside due to a scheduling conflict, but this actually turned out to be not bad, and is great for the pictures as it turns out.

Prussians vs French at Papelotte

My job was to attack the French forces in Papelotte, I moved a Prussian unit here to block their retreat, having assumed that all units would attack Chemin d'Ohain. So I played with mine and Tods Prussians against Nick using Serge's French.

Nick set up Jeff's terrain to emulate the area we were fighting in, it takes allot of different peopel to play a game it seems hah.

So here we are after turn 1, I took the Prussian infantry backed up by a cavalry brigade, and Nick took the regular French infantry with Old Guard Cavalry (I kept forgetting and thinking they were just curassier, although the difference is not huge).

In my view there are 4 ways to break units in Lasalle if you don't include be lucky.

1. Attack 1 unit with 2 units
2. Even better attack with infantry and cavalry at the same time
3. Use cavalry to force an infantry unit in square and shoot it with cannons for a long time
4. Just be a way better unit (have to be the best vs the worst)

So my plan was to march forward with a bunch of infantry and try to get plan 1 in the middle, and use a mix of 2 and 3 to get a unit on the flank. My cavalry is not great so I decided to march around the flank with my better 2 units, and keep the 2 crap units in the safety of the crop fields. The Old Guard are in reserve so I have a big advantage until they show up.

The French advanced up and then formed into lines, which I consider to be a big mistake. Then I charged in with all my units to give it a go. Sadly the unit charged by my cavalry was able to form into a square, and almost all the French units fell back so no great results yet, but my cavalary is now working its way into the back.

The French fired some shots and adjusted their units where it made sense. On my turn I charged in again and got a better result, a few of the French failed to fall back, also I had been getting unreasonable lucky with my musketry which helped allot. So I had a few units broke and my Cavalry was formed to charge. The French are close to reaching their break point now.

The French artillery was positioned in such a way that it prevented my cavalry from attacking a juicier target, I had hoped that they would move, and didn't align my unit well. So 2 units charge them, but I kept the best unit out to make sure they stayed fresh. Then charged into the line yet again. I was starting to think about the old Guard arriving now, even Nick's bad luck can only keep them out of the game for so long.

And arrive they did, but Nick positioned them in such away that my best unit could slip by into the meat of the French army. My other unit also tried to charge past but the Old Guard was able to clip them with a counter charge, which is not ideal. My artillery got lucky with plan 3 thou and destroyed the infantry unit on the hill, leaving a convenient whole for the Polish Lancers as we will see. Around now the French force was broken so the game turned into a dice rolling contest for Nick and my goal was now to not loose units. I am not great at this part.

General mayhem ensued after this point. Allot of units were broken. The Polish lancers charged up the hill killing one of my infantry units, and then my Landwher cavalry on that side. All the French infantry except for one unit were broken, and the Old Guard tried to beat up my poor mounted to score some easy points. But I was mostly able to avoid them due to the poor original placement. On the counter charge they count as the defender so lucky for me it was impossible for them to kill me on that turn.

So that is how thing went more or less, I took the French objective for a turn with my artillery, but the Polish Lancers came back to contest after they were done stomping all over everything. Nick was able to win the dice rolling contest in the end, as the game ended before his army failed it's morale roll. I would have had to kill the Polish to get a better chance of it, but it was impossible to get rid of such a big dangerous unit by then. So the game was a draw, but a fun game with lots of action. I think my army was also very close to the break point at the end, or at least very close. The old guard just had to go into the field to collect some Landwhere which admitably would have taken some time.

Still the Prussians are steadily doing better hah.

Lasalle is a fun game but has some big problems, I will liekly put my thoughts on that in a later post, maybe separate or with the last battle report we will see.

Thanks;

Mike