Warlord Epic Scale Napoleonic French for Lasalle V2

In another epoch (pre-Covid) I used to visit a wargaming clubs and lots of guys were going to build up 28mm Napoleonic forces using 6figs to 50mm square bases. I even made up a battalion. At the time, I was keenest on using the new Lasalle V2 rules as a structure. Quite a few gamers I knew from playing Flames of War had built armies for the V1 version so I reckoned it would probably be a set that did what I wanted.  I stopped at that one battalion because I couldn’t get everything for the Russians in plastic and it just all seemed to ‘big’. Warlord Games released their Epic (approx 13.5mm to the eye so small 15mm) Napoleonic range this year. I’ve gone for it. Caliver books, my preferred UK stockist, sell those brigade boxes for ~$40 NZD and two or more easily qualified for free shipping. Those three boxes are actually more than enough for a 250pt Lasalle French Division to get started. Now that the Highlanders are out, I’ve ordered a similar amount of British plus some French heavy Cav…. because I’ve always had a thing for Cuirassiers. So in short, that’s my new plan - two playable armies so I can game with others just like if it was a boardgame. Long version?

What’s Lasalle Like? You can watch! It’s ‘Divisional Level’ so not skirmish but as the units are whole battalions with the ability to model formations (square, column, line, attack column) it is still at the smaller end of gaming for this period. The rules are not wordy, most of the rulebook is actually examples and summaries. The lists, including a unit design system, are on the downloads page of the website and armies are point-buy. That’s unlike Lasalle V1. While I’m at it, I think they toned down attack columns from V1. In the basic game, skirmishers are abstracted. It’s got it’s version of ‘pips’ (MO / Momentum) ie command points. The skirmishers basically contribute to more of those and also who goes first. It’s not strictly IGO-UGO in that a player issues orders but in many cases an opponent will be able to interrupt and start having a turn. 

I’ve taken the Epic 20 fig (two ranks) bases and halved them. So the above unit (mass / attack column) is a battalion of four bases of 10 figs. Each base is now 30mm so all of that is the size of a standard DBx base for 25mm miniatures. Artillery is based on the same frontage. Standard units have 2 guns. Cavalry are based like infantry. I haven’t built up any but they’ll be 2-3 figs per base. Skirmishers don’t have miniatures in the basic game but I will be making some latter as they are markers in the advanced game, which gives them more to do. 

I reckon these figs look decent in a line and four bases also allows square and March column. They’ll end up in units of 3-4 battalions with an attached battery of guns, ie brigades. Those are the standard grouping to receive orders like movement and shooting. A ‘small’ 250 pt game will usually be three brigades, probably two infantry and one cavalry like the French force for the starter scenario from their downloads page. The below army just needs two more battalions of light cavalry to be 250pts. A ‘Large’ game is 300pts.

Many of the scenarios have mismatched forces eg 200pts defender vs 250pts attacker but attacker must move on to defender held objectives. Table size is 24 basewidths x 36 basewidths. Since a battalion in line is four basewidths, six would be the entire width of the battle and nine the entire length. So potentially space is quite constricted. The author seems to have worked that out on the premise of 50mm bases fitting on a 6’x4’ table. 30mm bases like mine will easily fit on my smaller kitchen table. I’ll probably use 4’x3’ and just work out deployment zones from the centre line. 

This means I’ll have light, easy to carry, plastic armies that can play almost anywhere. I’ve seen videos of these played unpainted and also barely painted. So I think I can muster the confidence to production line paint them in generic schemes. I’m really just aiming for video-game style representation as the detail is too small to see while playing. I’m pretty hyped - I might watch Warterloo again after this.