Monday, 14 December 2009

Lasalle Basing

One of my recurrent wargaming nightmares is that I must to rebase all my miniatures to cope with a new ruleset. The last time that happened such thing was in 1996, when I changed from Empire to Napoleon's Battles and I don't want a similar experience with Lasalle.
Luckily, Sam Mustafa gives advice about how to recycle miniatures based from other popular systems, including Napoleon's Battles (NB). Although I use a modified NB basing with slightly bigger bases than official, an arrangement required by my 20mm figures (see main
web site), the Sam's guidance can still be followed.
For infantry, my initial choice was one NB base equals to one Lasalle base. However, that leads to infantry units with only 16 miniatures, thus losing part of visual impact and joy of a tactical game. The solution is to use "virtual" Lasalle bases composed from one and half NB bases. The distortion is small as can be seen in the accompanying diagram, and only becomes apparent in the 'March column' formation that is longest (and more reallistic in my opinion). The Base Width (BW), the distance measurement unit in Lasalle, is thus 1.5" (3.75 or 4 cm).

For cavalry and artillery the choice es simpler. Lasalle requires cavalry, artillery and infantry units with similar frontages, so this lead directly to the 1:1 ratio. In the case of cavalry, the only appreciable distortion is, as before, the greater length of the March column formation. The following diagram shows the cavalry system.
The only drawback of the system is the small number of cavalry figures, eight, for unit but, according to Sam's own words, whereas infantry units in Lasalle represent 500-700 men battalions, cavalry units are "single, understrength regiments" of 300-500 men.
Whereas this solution is perfect for competition games, using balanced armies, it could be a problem for historical Scenarios, but that is another question to be considered later.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Rafa - glad to hear you can work around things without rebasing particularly as I have just finished rebasing all my 15mm figures for AOE! I will be really interested to hear your verdict on how the rules play out.

    Ian

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  2. Hi
    AOE is a great ruleset... but I am an adict to Napoleon's Battles. The AOE basing is veru similar to NB, so you can use also your new bases to fight small battles with Lasalle.
    I want to play the first Lasalle game around Christmas.
    Rafa

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