Yesterday (Thurs 28 Jan) Julian and I had a second game of Sharp Practice, once again using his Front Rank SYW/FIW figures painted 20+ years ago. Julian had laid out the scenario before I arrived and explained it to me thus:
"The French occupy two farms and the approaching British wish to secure a nice dry billet for the night. To win, the British must assault and take one or other of the farms."
A quick glance at the table indicated the British seemed to have the easier job this time, so I volunteered to take them (as I was French last time, this seemed eminently fair to me!). Julian being the absolute gentleman that he is, had no objections.
This was pretty cool - Julian had made up "chits" with Red 2, Blue 6 and "Command" cards etc that he pulled from this cup to decide which unit went next. The cup is a family heirloom and dates from the aftermath of Waterloo - 1817 or 1819 etc.. It has a number of "frogs" inside it, so that as you drink the contents, the frogs are gradually revealed - 19th century humour apparently!
This is "most" of the table - two farms occupied by the French in the top left and top right - I determined to attack the one in the top right - after all, there was a female figure amongst the occupants! I started from behind the large wood at the bottom of the picture
I deployed my four units of Jaegers into the woods, combining two of them under a leader into a "super unit" of 12 men
The Coureur de Bois and Regulars defending the farm I intended to ignore.
The object of my assault, the farm ers daughter on the right!
The Jaegers were quickly in action, and drove off one of Julian's units of Coureur de Bois, who were reduced to half strength
It took a few moves but I eventually managed to combine three regular units - twelve grenadiers and two lots of twelve centre company men - into a single combined unit
The Coureur de Bois from farm two moved out to head towards the central woods - Julian had made a similar move with the same troops from the target farm, leaving a single unit of twelve regulars to face my 36 man unit....
Julian activated his unit in the target farm and was about to take the first shot - unfortunately for Julian, I ended up with 4 "Command" cards - this allows you to interrupt and take an additional action out of sequence - which I did! The first volley - I rolled 1 D6 per man, needing 4-6 to score a hit - the twelve grenadiers were classified as expert shots and hit on a 3+. I rolled quite badly and only got 5 or 6 hits out of 36 possible. I then had to re roll the 6 hits, killing a man on a 6 or causing shock on a 4 or 5.
A couple of card draws later, my mounted officer in charge of the regulars came up and the 36 man unit fired again - results above - 6 dead and 8 shock. For every two shock a unit has, one less man can fire - so Julian's 12 man unit was now reduced to two effectives and to add insult to injury, BOTH his attached leaders had been killed!
The two man unit pulls back from the hedge line. Their junior leader had rolled a 6 and rejoined but at a lower grade than before
Meanwhile, in the centre, the light infantry exchanged fire - but not very evenly. Julian had two six man units and I had one six man and one twelve man unit - my superiority in fire power can be seen in the red shock markers on the right hand French unit
Having fired pretty ineffectually for much of the game, the second French regular unit emerged from Farm 2 but they were too little, too late.
My Grade 3 mounted officer ordered the grenadiers to split off from the remainder of the British regulars and take the farm, whilst their colleagues fired long range volleys into the already shaken Coureur de Bois
The Jaegers in the woods added their fire power too and both of the French units were reduced to 50% strength, plus carrying shock markers
The grenadiers enter the farm yard to rescue Ms Alice Munro (Last of the Mohicans reference there!)
A view of "most" of the table at the end of the game, but from a different angle. The French in the target farm (foreground) have been eliminated and the grenadiers are in possesion.
The victorious British commander, Major Duncan Heyward (LotM again).
Another very enjoyable game and we seem to be getting the hang of some of the mechanics although there was still quite a bit of referring to the rules to get things right - and we forgot quite a few things, such as "first fire" bonus for regular units on their first shot, or the "blazing away" rule that means once you fire at a target, you men will just continue to load and fire at it until you use command to stop them! I am enjoying these rules and they have given us two nice little games so I look forward to doing a few more of these over the coming weeks.
