A Thursday Night game...and some reinforcements

My regular gaming host Julian has a new project - he is going to get a few boxes of Perry Napoleonic plastic figures and make them up as individual figures for use with Too Fat Lardies Sharp Practice "large scale" skirmish rules.

As a first step, he and I set up a game on Thursday evening to try and work our way through how the rules function. We have previously (about three years ago) played a series of games using Chain of Command - so some of the mechanisms were familiar - but it took us the best part of four hours to stumble our way through the first game, with many errors made and ironed out along the way - here are a few pics and a brief report. We used some of Julian's 25 year old Front Rank French and Indian Wars figures and only the Native Americans (or should they be Native Canadians - maybe First Nation is safer??!) were individually based. It was not hard to overcome this although the aesthetics of "units" based in regular stands of threes lulled us into the mistake that Regular troops were per se "Units" when in fact, they are not unless two groups are combined together - this has some implications in the rules that we missed for about half of the game!

Initial layout from my side of the table - I had two bands of Indians (I mean First Nation Warriors....) two Troupes de la Marine Regulars, and one Coureur de Bois militia - Julian had two Regular Infantry units, Rogers Rangers and two units of militia.

The Indigenous warriors in some woods 

Rogers Rangers - the SAS of the 18th century (apparently!)

Two "groups" of redcoats combined into a unit under the command of a "leader" The white card indicates they have been given a "present" order, which improves control over firing and adds hit bonuses. Only regular troops in combined units can take advantage of this order.

Front Rank Woodland Indians close up and personal

My Coureur de Bois unit pulverised Julian's first militia unit with in the opposite woods

One of the Native leaders was put hors de combat in the third or fourth move, so the other one took over command of both units.

Close up of one of my French officers - a very nice Front Rank figure

Julian's unhappy militia with 5 dead and a pile of shock markers - just after I took this image they routed 15" to the edge of the table and remained there for the rest of the game.

The regulars fire a controlled volley at the natives to their front - they had a "unexpected event" occur and this caused the smoke to hang around for the rest of the game, obscuring the battlefield and reducing their fire effectiveness by one!

A length ways view down the battlefield, my French force to the right. Units are numbered - the blue 4 indicates it is the French no 4 units turn to do something.

Troupes de la Marine and Coureur de Bois in the woods opposite Julian's militia (below)

That was it - I drove off one unit of Julian's militia and he killed one of my officers, we didn't get to have any hand to hand (called "Fisticuffs" in the TFL's usual tongue in cheek manner) because to come out of the woods and close with the enemy would have probably been suicidal! 

A good game - quite a lot to the rules as I mentioned, so we got quite a few things wrong but by the end we felt we had worked out most of the key aspects - a rerun is scheduled for next week so hopefully we do better next time!

A couple of days ago, I emailed The Assault Group just to let them know the figures they sent me on 22 Dec had not yet arrived and today they replied. Very sportingly, Pete the guy at TAG said they would start packing a replacement order for dispatch in a few days and said they would use UPS rather than Royal Mail this time. However, I arrived home this evening to find the original parcel had arrived, so have let TAG know all is well.

I really must acknowledge TAG again for how good a deal their postage is - spend around £58 and postage is FREE anywhere in the world - that's £16.45 value on this package - compare that with some companies who charge 50% of the order value to the RoW, regardless of the actual postage cost they incur - a great company to deal with!

The first box contained 5 packs - 3 x 4 of Border Reivers and 2 x 4 of Border Militia Calivermen firing

The second box contained the "Unit Builder" deal I bought - 1 x 4 Border Militia Command and 5 x 4 Border Militia Calvermen.

These are all intended for our Border Reivers skirmish project, when it eventually comes to fruition. The Militia will be used as "regular" troops loosely under the control of "central government" (such as it was). Julian actually has a few Reivers himself, so mention was made last night of the possibility of giving THOSE an outing in a couple of weeks, after the second Sharp Practice game!

Finally, the following two images were taken out our back window a couple of hours after last weekends "sunny walk" images - not quite up to the standards of Storm Christoph of course, but just wanted to let readers know that it is not all milk and honey here!