Battle Report - 21 September 2013 - Sharp Practice

After a couple of sessions playing Dux Britanniarum at his place, Saturday saw Tim D (of Wargaming Rediscovered fame) come up to visit for a game of TFL's Sharp Practice. It's not a ruleset I've played before, but I do own a copy and I'd familiarised myself with the basics thanks to some videos Rich and Sid put up a while back.

We used my terrain tiles, woods and hills, the bridge I'd knocked up that morning, and some of Tim's scenery including some very nice 4Ground buildings. Forces were also provided by Tim and mostly painted by him, being AB with a sprinkling of Essex.

I chose the British - four units of 8 line infantry, 2 units of six 95th Rifles, a light gun and four big men including the legendary Captain Fondler. Sharp Practice, like IABSM, uses blinds, and I deployed on four, with the one on the hill on my right flank being a dummy. So, amusingly, did Tim, sending a dummy blind through the village across the river on his right.

Once the dust had cleared and we'd all figured out what was real and what wasn't, I had two lines of infantry forming up either side of the central wood, while the Rifles ranged along the riverbank, and managed to take potshots at the French gun and drive its crew off due to excess shock.

Two groups of French started to push through the woods in my centre, at about the same time as a unit of voltigeurs got to the higher ground above my right flank. I sent a formation in line into the wood to deal with the French...

Disaster! The French got the activation first in the next turn (when I was sitting there with a Thin Red Line card which allows me to fire and then charge 3d6), charged me... cue rout of both groups of British line.


To add insult to injury, the voltigeurs then got to activate and shot the living daylights out of my other line before I had time to turn them - result, massive shock (aided by a card that doubled the shock they did).

We carried on for a few rounds after that, but it was apparent that with a large hole in my centre, there was only ever going to be one winner.

So - after my first game? I can confidently say that Sharp Practice does what you'd expect from a TFL ruleset - loved it. It feels like a mix of Dux Brit and IABSM, mechanics wise, but it does definitely work as a set of rules for the period. However tempting it is, though, I am not going to use it to play Napoleonics with the Victrix 54mms. Really I'm not. Gorgeous to look at though it would be.

Many thanks to Tim for coming up for an excellent day.