Friday Night Sharpe Practice and a Small Package

 For the second Friday in a row, I headed over to Julians place for a one-on-one game, this time of Two Fat Lardies Sharpe Practice rules. We have played a few games of this previously - but not for quite some time, so Julian spent the first hour or so reading the rules to get his head around it again.

He already had the table set up and the mission was for four units of French (2 Legere, 2 Ligne) to get at least one unit over the river. The defending Brits (1 Rifles and 2 Line) simply had to prevent them doing so. The river had two fords available for the French to cross.

For some treason, this game was far bloodier than I remember them being in our previous outings, as you will see in the AAR below!

Julian has amassed and painted a decent sized collection of Perry plastic Napoleonic troops for this project.

It's tempting to me to add a small force of my own, but I think I will resist!

A view of the table - the four French units will start at the top of the picture.

One of my British line infantry units - Julian has also acquired a batch of sabot bases to make movement quicker.

We each used a drummer to keep track of force morale, I started on 11, Julian on 10.

One of the French Legere units.

Julian sent one force (1 Legere. 1 Ligne) against each ford

I had the rifles, with their longer range and more deadly fire, in the woods between each crossing, and a line unit on either side. As the leading Frenchies approached the first ford, Sharpes boys let rip - 6 riflemen with 1 D6 each, plus 1D6 for expert shots plus 1 D6 for effective range plus 2 D6 for officers' reputation and they had add 1 to each score because it was their first-time firing....

And the result was half the legere dead plus a heap of shock markers!

Next turn, and the rifles aimed at the second (ligne) unit in the same sector of the field.

The ligne unit took a battering too!

Meanwhile, Julian's second force was marching around the field to get in position to assault the other ford, on the right of my position.

The legere got into position and let rip with a devastating volley their own - basically the same stats as riflemen but with a shorter effective range......

And the line unit took a pounding - 5 dead and 2 shock!

My riflemen switched position so they could engage the ligne in the open (a tactical error, I should have tried to take out the legere ...)

The ligne suffered heavy casualties and an abundance of shock from the riflemen...

But the legere in the woods got revenge for the French ... 

.... OUCH!!

The depleted line infantrymen, now in the shelter of the woods, put in a first fire shot on the legere. They had been joined by my grade 3 mounted officer, so had 6 x D6 and adding one to each roll for the first fire.

A few less legere now - if I had done that with the riflemen as well, there may have been very few legere left to fire at the men in green with the devastating effects shown above.....ah, well!

The few remaining ligne attempted to cross the ford and claim victory .....

But my line infantrymen let out a volley again from the woods.

And they were driven back with loss!

The single rifleman was able to move forward and, inspired by his officer, rolled 3 D6 - getting three hits!

The ligne unit disintegrated and fled.

Having skulked out of range since the first couple of rounds of firing, the two French units on the British left now made a last desperate attempt to cross the other ford. The activation chits came out in Julian's favour, and the legere made it across the stream...just!

As it was 10pm and Julian had technically achieved the victory conditions, we called it a day. I could have suggested we play on to the end of the turn, because I am pretty sure, if the card had come up for my fresh line infantry unit that had the legere in sight, it would have been quite likely they could have been driven back to their own side of the river again - but I was ok with letting Julian have a TKO this time!

We both really enjoyed the rules although they seemed a lot bloodier than previous games - I recall having light infantry both in woods blazing away at each other half the night and achieving very few hits - perhaps V2 of the rules made it easier to achieve hits? Or maybe our dice rolling was just above average last night.....

On arriving home around 11pm, I found a small cardboard carton waiting on the hall table for me.

My six Blitzkrieg motorcycle troops have arrived from 1st Corps - yay!

I have also just received confirmation from Dave at Caliver that 6 packs of Crusader infantry I have picked up to represent the dismounted motorradschutzen have just been dispatched - so hopefully, they should be here mid-December. I possibly won't make any more overseas purchases this side of Christmas, as delays in the postal network will doubtless increase between now and the 25th!

Thanks for your visit and extra kudos to anyone who leaves a comment. I am off to Barrys tomorrow for a Sudan game pitching British led Egyptian infantry against the Mahdist tribesmen, so another AAR should follow in about 36 hours - busy times here!