Lasalle - Lutzen 1813, the allied attack

We've now begun playing through the 1813 scenarios with the first being Lutzen. In the historical battle, a Prussian force under Blucher attacked Ney near Leipzig, with the aim of cutting the French forces in two and threatening their supply lines. For our game the Russians and Austrians assumed the attackers role.

The Allies deployed infantry to attack all three villages, with most of the Horse supporting the Austrians in the centre and west. The French focused on the west and centre, with a small garrison in the east supported by their light cavalry.    

Austrians in the east

Russians in the west

The Austrians attack in the centre quickly stalled when they bounded-off the first village, lost 2 units and found themselves attacked by the French. As the Russians advanced alone, they came under fire from two sides and took heavy loses, which ended their attack as well.  

Light cavalry clash 

Russians advance into heavy fire

The defeat of the Austrian light cavalry by their theoretically weaker opponents somewhat broke the Allies morale and so they withdrew to regather their strength for a second assault. French Win.  

Austrians attacking in the east 

We realised after the game that we had done the infatry melees wrong, having only done cavalry previously. The outcomes were not as destructive for the attacking Austrians as we had thought and so they could have fought on more effectively. So we'll refight next week with tweaked forces. 

         

In a galaxy not very far away

After a few months painting I've assembled enough terrain and figures to try out some scifi solo gaming using 5 Parsecs From Home by Modiphius Publishing. The premise is you recruit a crew and play a through a series of procedurally generated scenarios in whatever scifi setting you like - the default being a fairly generic one. The combat system is fairly simple, with battles taking about an hour with 4 - 6 figs a side. The depth comes from the campaigns which are narrative and usually fairly long running, with 20-30 turns seeming typical. 

My crew consists of Captain Strake, First Mate Creed, Would-be sniper Veyt, a combat oriented alien called Ivarr, engineer Skor, and trusty bot PDP-11.   

I began my campaign with two intro scenarios to get things underway. In the first my crew was hired to clear out some troublesome security drones from a chemical storage yard. Fairly simple - destroy them all to win.

The chemical yard

The haywire security bots

PDP and Ivarr make a flanking move

The captain and first mate keep the bots pinned down

Ivarr gets ready to attack

The sniper takes up position 

Things went pretty well with the bots all being dispatched. Ivarr was a casualty following a melee but suffered no serious injury's and was back on duty for game 2  

In the second game the crew were hired to intercept some Isolationist set on blowing-up some transport infrastructure. The aim was to patrol through the table hitting 3 points, 2 of which turned out to be on my left flank. 

Transport systems in the distance

The isolationists

Isolationist leader

My flank attack is countered 

This mission was tougher as the Isolationists had longer range weapons than the security bots and I needed to move right into their position. Their leader took-out Ivarr and the captain but all the Isolationist were eliminated. Ivarr was once again fine but the captain will be out for 3 campaign turns.   

Skor takes up a shooting position. 

Creed nails the Isolationist leader

     

     

Great North War - Blenheim reset

 The Great North War was a spawling affair which saw the rise and fall of a Swedish Baltic empire in a series of conflicts with the Russians and their allies. It saw a clash between The Lion of the North (Charles XII of Sweden) and Peter the Great of Russia. For our holiday weekend game we mustered our GNW figures and refought Blenheim in this period. 

The Swedes and German allies were the attackers with a superior quality force but facing enemy dug-in in villages. The Russians and Danes were lower quality but had the ground. The boggy terrain and village meant that both sides massed their Horse in the centre.

The field from behind the Russians on the defenders right

The attackers had the Swedes on their left, ready to attack the Russians opposite them and Germans (player by British) on the opposite side.   

  

Swedes read to attack

Swedish horse in the centre

Allied German horse 

British doubling-up as Germans

The defenders had Russian and Danish holding the flanks with a polyglot Horse centre.  

Russian defenders

Russian and allied Horse

Danes

The the opening moves the attackers moved cautiously on the flanks while the cavalry attacked in the middle. The Swedes were outnumbered but had superior tactics as they favoured the charge, sword in hand, rather than a steady trot shooting.   

Germans attacking the Danes

Swedish foot advance

As always in our GNW games the cavalry combat was messy and pretty deadly with both sides trading blows. Honours were pretty even, which favoured the defenders as they really just needed to hold out to stop the villages being flanked.  

Horse about the clash - in a few short moves lots of this will be dead!

When the attacking foot arrived they threw themselves into the defenders but were unable to break through the lines and take the villages. So unlike history the defenders were able to hold out and retain the field.    

 

Swedes charge in

        

More Lasalle

We continued our exploration of the game this week with a couple of games. the shots are from the larger of the games with French vs Austrians / Russians in an encounter game that was started last week. 

French and Austrian heavies clash

French attack a Russian held village

Melee has proved to be risky and deadly. If you beat the enemies score by 3 they simply rout no matter what they previous status. You are following 1D6 + strength (1-6) and a few factors (+ or - 1 usually) so good or bad dice can lead to disaster even if a pushback is the most likely result.    

Austrians take the other village

Being fast and deadly can feel frustrating but it does move the game along and reward reserves.  

Austrian Hussars join the fight

 

Lasalle

This week we played our second game of Lasalle - a Napoleonic's game from prolific rules writer Sam Mustafa. We're playing version 2 which contains a unique turn sequence as its big twist.

French infatry attacks 

Brigades, your baggage, and an abstracted skirmish phase all generate a currency called Momentum which you can spend in various ways to activate your troops. Available actions are move, rally, change formation, long range bombardment and volley / cannister fire, with the cost varying a little due to various "complications" like rough terrain.       

Germans vs French attacking a village

The key to the game though is that some orders affects everyone on your side (shooting and formation change) and others only a specific brigade (move and rally). You can play the activations in any order and can play them multiple times, although units may only do each thing once.   

Austrians and Russians vs French

The enemy can also interrupt you and take the initiative if you do things close to them or engage in combat or volley fire. So the effect is turns play out as a to-and-fro with things happening in different orders from round to round. You generally have plenty of Momentum at long range and can act as you will but once it gets in close you may lose the initiative and run out.        

Austrian horse charges

This week we did a couple of practice games as we learnt the rules. The basics are quick to pick-up but it will clearly take a while to master optimisation of Momentum spending.