Marcus, I think LaSalle is a fine rules set to introduce someone to Napoleonic warfare. I think that LaSalle well meets its design objectives. They help to get an army started with some loose ideas about constructing a force for those who dont want to do much researching or reading about the period, just throw down some figures and play a game. And they allow you to move figures around and play that game in a loose representation of horse & musket period wargaming. Mission accomplished.
For me, and my personal, individual view of Napoleonic warfare, they are just not very satisfying. But then I have been researching and wargaming the period for 25+ years.
I can tell you that everyone's tastes in wargaming Napoleonics typically changes over time. For me, at the stage I am at, I need a rules set that better reproduces the battle accounts I read in the military history. My personal taste is to re-fight a battle the way it reads in the history.
We can never know exactly how things worked, true, but we can get pretty close based on the rich library of diaries and biographies available to us from the men who were there and fought the actions.
For many people a quick points based, throw down game at a club night is their principal means of napoleonic wargaming. All power to them, sounds like fun, I want them to enjoy themselves and glory in the success of their lovingly reproduced units. LaSalle is great for meeting this design objective.
I prefer to research and layout an historical battlefield in my library/wargaming room, carefully organise the historical Orders of Battle and then re-fight the action as accurately as I can to understand what happened and why and re-live the history with as much atmosphere and authenticity as I can. The price I am prepared to pay in added time and complexity over an abstracted rules set like LaSalle is justifiable in my experience. Now, my battles dont take weeks but I am able to spend a weekend playing through an Eylau or an Austerlitz or an Aspern-Essling.
I'm not expecting Blucher to grab me as a big battle set of rules but its possible Sam has hit the mark and the reviews will reveal that I hope. I am more excited about the possibilities of his Campaign interface (Scharnhorst?) proving to be innovative and useful. Sam is an innovator.
We're all different, its a broad "church" and we all need to extract maximum relaxation and enjoyment from our limited hobby time. Nick
paints a Napoleonic caricature.
