Sharp Practice: The Culpeper Conspiracy

Too Fat Lardies' Sharp Practice is pretty popular down BIG, with regular French and Indian War events held on weekends. Whilst George and I have been happily testing out and tweaking Rebels and Patriots AWI games, we are open minded souls and when Andy said he was up for running a game for newbies, we jumped at the chance and roped in Steve with his newly painted Hessians... As I was trying to pay attention to Andy teaching us the rules I didn't take lots of photos.

George swapped his Tory sensibilities to side with the brave Whig rebels taking command of three units of State troops and one skirmish unit, whilst I had two units of Continentals and one of skirmishers. Steve had two units of Musketeers, two Guards and two Jaegers, both sides have one level 3 leader, one level 2 and two level 1. Both sides were given secret missions to complete, the Americans to rescue and escort a brave spy across the table.

My first deployment was the Contintentals, who started marching up the road, similarly Steve's Hessian Musketeers started up from the opposite side. Our next deployments brought on Skirmish units and second deployment points further up the table.

This allowed George to deploy his State troops close to the road junction and await the oncoming Hessian Musketeers...

Against who he launched a series of devastating volleys!

Inflicting casualties and Shock points on the cabbage chomping mercenaries, forcing them back. 

Off camera, George's skirmishers found the spy, we now had to escort him down the table - through the Hessians!

Meanwhile one of Steve's Jaeger units, whose heritage would one day clearly include the Brandenburg Kommando, rushed up the table using the building for cover and started pumping lead into the flank of the State troopers inflicting a casualty and some Shock.

My skirmishers tried to engage them and in a flurry of rifle fire both sides took Shock and my leader was knocked to the ground! 

Falling back the Kommandos, sorry Jaegers, chased the heroic American riflemen...

...and in a round of hand to hand combat, both units were badly mauled. After another round only the American leader remained but he managed to force the last few Jaegers to fall back into the arc of the (slowly advancing) Continentals who wiped them out.

At that point we had to call it a night but concluded that if we had played on the Americans would have likely won as Steve's Grenadiers had ended up with low ammo (so half firing effectiveness) and his Musketeers were badly mauled. With the Continentals and State troops still in good heart, they would most likely be able to protect George's skirmishers whilst they escorted the spy off the table.

This was a very different game to Rebels and Patriots, the most noticeable differences being the (much) longer weapons range and the lower number of casualties. As it was out first game I'm not sure if it would be as appreciably slower as this game was, given the learning curve, but there are more modifiers to consider on dice rolls. It was very helpful having Andy take us through the rules, as we'd all been a tad confused reading the rulebook!

Overall an enjoyable experience, we all enjoyed the game and have picked up sets of poker chips and tokens from Lardies for future games...