Let’s Play: Sharp Practice
November 2, 2017 by dignity
Richard from Too Fat Lardies gives Justin an introductory game of Sharp Practice.
This ball-and-musket skirmish game encourages a more "heroic" style than other traditional historic games. Battles play out like a cinematic period drama.
In this Let's Play the guys go into detail on how a game will play out and the various cards and rules that will come into effect during each turn, giving you a good reference for learning to play your own games.
Do you plan on playing your own dramatic set-pieces?
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Really enjoyed the Let’s Play, looked like you were having a hoot.
Great demo game.
fantastic, really made my day seeing some Napoleonic goodness, hope there’s more in future!!
Excellent play through, very enjoyable and makes me want to give these rules a try. More of the same please!
I really enjoyed that. The two lines facing off gave a very authentic historical feel – officers desperately trying to get some disciplined fire out while holding the line together and hoping their men will be able to endure the heat slightly longer than the enemy.
You’d imagine that two lines standing and shooting at each other could make for a static and dull game, but these rules created plenty of decision points and tension. And the flanking skirmishers on both sides showed how important clever manoeuvres can be. Would love to see the game with maybe one or two more units on each side to really up the importance of positioning and interactions between units. Great stuff.
Looked like you were having a lot of fun
A really interesting Let’s Play. May have to seriously consider this rule set.
Brilliant! We need more Sharp Practice!
One of the best, if not the best let’s play ever!
It’s remarkable how much fun that looked like with what amounted to a single unit per side plus supports firing at each other. I’d be very keen to see what sort of impact cavalry have on this game, from a decision making point of view. More please!
Keep an eye out for the articles coming out soon. Article 4 shows Cavalry but the basics are the faster you go the harder you hit but the faster you go the less you can turn. So they’re point and shoot unless you’re very good at planning 3 steps ahead.
Cavalry deploy even further from the deployment point and Dragoons can dismount so if the British had some they could have rode into that Monastery and been a real pain.
Excellent! Spread the (love of) lard!
Like all the Lardie games, SP2 a real fracker of a game which offers a credible and satisfying wargaming experience, combined with a lot of dynamism, run and unexpected events. It’s not so much the result of the battle which matters, but how the battle unfolded.
I’m off to the gaming club to play SP2 tomorrow!
This is one of the most enjoyable “let’s plays” I’ve seen. Sharp Practice looks a great game: a good historical feel; a focus on morale over killing with the poor weapons of the day; and perhaps best, an absolute hoot to play. Oh gawds, I’m now window shopping Napoleonics!
Also (my French isn’t pretty awfu) is that French officer really called Cow Face? 🙂
And those Grand Manner buildings are lovely!
No your French is correct. Visage du Vache (Cow face) has a long and dishonourable history in TFL’s Sharp Practice games.
Not a fan of historical wargaming, and the period I am least interested in is the black powder era….until I saw this.
What a fun game! clean, straight forward and with tons of character! I am sold! What brand of minis were in this vid?
The TFL games are certainly worth checking out. Chain of Command has a lot of similarities in mechanisms and apprpach if ww2 is more interest than horse and musket.
The sharp practice book covers French Indian War, American War of Independence, Indian Mutiny and American Civil war if any if them appeal more than Napoleonics.
I’m not sure what minis they were using but the Perry’s have some great ranges (plastic and metal) to cover most of those. Victrix do some really.good plastic boxes too. With the relative small.nunbers you need it’s a surprisingly.affordable game!
There is a smugglers Vs revenue men supplement or freebie coming out soon for SP. Might be for the Xmas special
Great to see the Let’s Play. I enjoyed the previous Sharp Practice introduction segment with Rich so much that I bought the rules set straight away. I’ve never ventured into this period of historical gaming before, but the rules set and this play through have really got me enthusiastic about getting stuck in. Any recommendations for 28 mm or 15 mm miniatures? (I’d most likely be playing 7 Years’ War / AWI period games for starters)
For AWI (in 28mm at least) id definitely go Perry. Warlord also have a quite in depth range including a lot of plastic sets. They mix fairly comfortably.
If you wanted to go a bit earlier and do French Indian War id recommend Galloping Major.
Not sure about 15mm I’m afraid.
Blue Moon do a one nice figures for both SYW and FIW in 15mm and available through Old Glory in the UK. Essex Miniatures isn’t too bad and Eureka Miniatures do some nice SYW
Also have a look at Minifigs.
Blue moon also do a large AWI range
Crusader, Warlord and Galloping Major are my recommendations for 28mm minis.
Perry Miniatures is definitely the best for AWI since they have a huge range of plastic and metal that’s all the same size. Great for Sharp Practice, and handy if you want to pick up a pack of “Hessian” Skirmishers or some Native Americans with Bows all in one place.
I don’t trust Justin since he shaved his beard either
Also awesome to see how much love this rule set it’s getting
What scale miniatures were they using, 20mm, 28mm?
28mm (I recognised the buildings as 28mm from grand manner)
Now that was great fun! Enjoyed this Let’s play very much. May we see some Chain of Command content of the same manner in the near future? As that would be perfect.
First time I have become interested in Napoleonics, great game!
Great let’s play. I have the rules but had not got round to using them. Now I am going to paint my French Indian figs I purchased 2 years ago!
Great viewing the game seems a lot of fun with plenty of scope for a lot of friendly banter. Certainly my type of game
Thank you BoW for something Original and different. That was a great Lets Play.
I know it is tempting to focus on the larger/medium sized companies games,but hopefully this awesome lets play opened some doors (and eyes) into games/game systems that normally would get smothered by the over exposure of more “main stream” games. I already know most of what the other, more popular games offer in terms of what kind of experience I can expect or at least look that information up at my own leisure almost anywhere on the web, any time of the day or night. Its not often lately that I log on to BoW and find two lets plays (This one and ASoIF) that’s I did not already know about. The cool thing for me about these is that both got my hobby juices going for periods that I would not normally give a second thought. Good job, and it was very entertaining (for me personally at least).
Whom ever that older chap was, he made for a very entertaining game.
Richard and Nick ( not shown) of TFL are two of the biggies in historical rules writing. Their games are always innovative and probably fly under the radar on sites like BOW because that don’t make figures,produce box sets or run Kickstarter or plaster themselves all over social media.They do it almost the old fashioned way by touring the wargames shows putting on great demos producing great reasonably priced products and relying on word of mouth and reviews on other people’s blogs to get their games noticed. Long may they continue
I love playing Sharp practice and really loved watching your lets play. I am not surprised you got caught up in the game.
And just to let you know, their Sharp Practice game won best participation game at the Crisis show yesterday.
Well done to the Lardies!
WSS said it was their CoC game that won it. Maybe there was more than one category .Hurrah fit them anyway as the Carribbean SP game did sound fun
Really great stuff guys! Probably the best Play through you’ve ever one! I know they must be a lot of work to make and produce but please keep them coming! I’d watch this over any rubbish that’s on tv nowadays
The rules also contain lots to really personalise your leaders – there are also rules for inteaction with civilians so you really can play it as an rpg lite and recreate the feel of an episode of something like Sharpe from the TV as well as being a cracking historcal wargame.
Really enjoyed this lets play, Richard looks like he certainly enjoys what he does.
Great demo, on of my favourite Let’s Plays so far. It’s left me really wanting me to get this on the table sometime soon.
I’m really tempted by this game, it looks great fun, not too many models to paint and I love the Sharpe novels (read them all again last year).
One question – any idea where to get the dice tower used in the demo? It looks really nice and I’d love to get one.
Bloody good stuff, thanks guys, wanted to see how it played, and like your selves got lost, in ‘Whats going to happen next?
Feeling you get with ‘I ain’t been shot Mum’ for the company WW2 game.
I this is going to go to must get a copy, as Luckily I have 28mm British & French forces for skirmish Napoleonis , which just need a bit of line for both siedes to pad them out(and have a box of various others in a box unpainted somewhere).
Really great let’s play. Had my first game of Sharp Practice with very similar outcome for the French. Cavalry where however a bit of a liability. Not sure we got it quite right so great to see a run through.
Never been one for historical gaming, but I did love the Sharp TV show, and this looked like a pretty fun game. Nice to see it keep whipping away at a pace, very fluid. Very entertaining to watch as well.
Sharp Practice is a fantastic set of rules. I’ve played countless games and every single one was full of enjoyment. I highly recommend these rules. A great play through guys. many thanks 😉
Cheers for a great let’s play.
I enjoyed the Chain of Command video too, but I went ahead and bought the Sharp Practice pdf version last night.
Might try out the game play with some old 1/72 scale minis I have, but will hopefully go to 28mm scale when I can afford some minis.
Will probably go for Perry’s.
A bit late in replying but definitely agree with everyone else’s reactions to the SP Let’s Play session. It was a very informative, fun-filled play-through. I have had the rule set for some while but haven’t had the opportunity to try them out. However I’m currently organising a wargame day to introduce our little group (well, actually my 4 brothers, 5 nephews and my son) to historical tabletop gaming and it’s got to include Sharp Practice. I have had British and American armies for the American Revolution for a few years but never found a ruleset that I was truly happy with. Not any longer! (By the way, my figures are 28mm, mostly Front Rank with a good proportion of Perry Miniatures). Thanks Justin and all at BoW.
I think I have fallen in love with this game!
Loved it 😀 .I came to this Let’s Play late though, having watched the latest American War of Independence Let’s Play.