New Sharp Practice Army Lists

So with the kind help of Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies fame, I've managed to put together army lists for the South American Wars of Liberation to go with the realease of the wonderful new set of rules "Sharp Practice 2."  The list give you many variations for both Patriot and Royalist forces fighting in the Northern Campaigns of Simon Bolivar in Colombia and Venezuela (1817 - 1824)

You can find them here:

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=5829

Coming up next will be photos of the two armies from these lists and some first games.

Krakow-Niepolomice Historical Show 2012

So the annual trek of the Prague club up to visit our chums in Poland went off smoothly again. We brought a Sharp Practice display game with us, including loads of lovely 28mm figures and terrain, plus about 8 club members, all packed into two cars. (Above you can see our Polish friend and fellow wargamer Kris, in the courtyard of the castle where the event was held)

The rules of course are fun to play, very popular and with the added advantage that they are great for display games.

 In this scenario written by our club member Jakub, it's 1813, somewhere in Germany, and we have the French trying to cross the table to exit at the other side as their main objective. The objective of the mixed force of Austrians and Bavarians is to stop them, with a Small Austrian blocking force of Landwehr and regulars being steadily joined by Bavarian reinforcements. A sort of miniature battle of Hanau, only in this instance the French ended up getting a bit of a trashing through a mixture of bad dice and worse tactics (I of course was one of the French commanders...).

 It seems to have been a big hit with the locals, many writing down the name of the rules to go off and purchase them (note for the Lardies, we can accept a commission fee ;-)  )

We also managed to stop off at the Army Museum in Krakow which has a great display of both original Renaissance, as well as Napoleonic, armour, uniforms and equipment. Really quite excellent.

British for Sharp Practice

Colonel Sharp as a young lad...

I realise that I have not put up too many pictures of nicely painted toys on this blog. To make up for this, here is a batch of 28mm British Napoleonic infantry from the Peninsular War that I recently finished (a light company of the 87th Prince of Wales Own Irish to be precise).

These toys are for a Sharp Practice game the club will be holding on Sunday. I used the smartphone on indoor settings for these shots and seem to have ended up with the warm evening light of Spain. An unintended effect, but it looks nice anyway.

 Here's the whole group together on normal light settings. The figures are from Victrix, which are very nice, but a pain to assemble, and even more frustrating when the bayonets break off (which they often do).

Here are a few more figures which are in the final stages  of completion.

If I go for more figures for these rules, then they will be in metal, as time spent on painting is the true cost and far outweighs any savings on Victrix plastics. If only they would use sturdier plastic...