Sharp Practice – ACW for Pennies on the Dollar.

Hi everyone,

Last summer I spent a lot of time war gaming – mostly Silver Bayonet and Fantasy Battles. In between I tried out several games, and one of them was Sharp Practice by the Two Fat Lardies.

I had the rules but I never played the game.  My friend had two ‘Indian Mutiny’ forces and I played a few games with him.  I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot.  I feel it is a game for mature players, but my friend was only 18 years old.

It has been mentioned often on OTT, that movement in Sharp Practice is a pain in the butt and there is truth to that.  My friend and I overcame this by adding extra movement dice.  This resulted in faster games, as the groups made better headway.

Therefore,  I decided to build two forces myself. At first I was going to do Napoleonics, but I was already playing and painting Silver Bayonet. Since I had bought several boxes of ACW in 1/72 scale from a car boot sale several years ago, I decided to paint them up.

I have never played in this period, so it was something new to delve in.  Also they are super easy to paint up.

Below is a quick summary of how I go about painting these miniatures.  The most time consuming aspect is the cleaning.  Some of these models come from the mid-eighties and the mold designs show their age pretty well.

There is a lot of mold lines on some of the miniatures, especially the Stretlets and Hat models. Therefore I recommend using a very sharp hobby knife to remove them.  The plastic is soft and can easily burr if sanded.

I will paint the army up in batches of 12 figures at a time, since the paint schemes are very simple: two tones of blue for the Union and a grey and two brown tones for the Confederates.

That is all for now.  I will post some short updates as I go along.  I will also be building some terrain for this period since I have none.  I will have to order some though, as I have never wargamed in this period.

Until next post stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Another twelve figures are ready and I have already started the next.  I hope to finish the Union infantry by the end of this week – time permitting.

I have decided to do more drybrushing and less layering, in order to speed up the process. Since these minis are only for gaming and not for display (besides being cheap and low quality), I think this compromise will work.

A short post for now.  I will be posting again soon hopefully.

Until then stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Just finished the third batch of 12 miniatures. This time I painted up half the Hat box into union soldiers.

The Hat miniatures are very nice, but the plastic is soft and if you do not use a sharp knife you will get a lot of burring.

Nonetheless, I like the way they turned out.

I now have another 12 Union figures to paint up and 9 Zouaves all from the Italieri box.  I also need to paint up the 4 leaders.

Until next post stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I have finally finished painting up the first batch of figures I prepared in the first post.  This last batch came out quite shiny.  I think it is because I did not shake the matte vanish properly enough.  I have now fixed this problem, but I was too lazy to take another picture.

The next batch will be the Confederate infantry. I want to leave the cavalry to the end, because I hate painting cavalry.

I also now that I have more infantry somewhere, but I do not know where they are? Over the weekend I will Spring cleaning my apartment and I will make it a point to find them.

Now I only have the character to paint up to finish up this first stage of this project.  I hope to finish them by Sunday.

So until then, stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Now that I have painted up the four leaders, the first stage of this project is now complete. I have also found the extra boxes of ACW models and I have calculated that I can add an extra 3 infantry units and one extra cavalry unit to both forces. This will give me a lot of flexibility of choice during force construction.

I also ran out of bases for my infantry.  These were customized for this project at 1.75cm x 1.75cm for infantry at the Warbases.co.uk. I have ordered more, but they will take at least 3 to 4 weeks to arrive.

I also had some customized movement trays done for the infantry, but I still have to order more.

I also went about making some ‘shooting markers’ in the form of smoke. You need these for Sharp Practice in order to identify which units have fired and need to reload.

I can also use them for my 1/72 Napoleonic armies.

Next week it is on to the second stage of this project with the Confederate infantry.

So until next time – stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

I started the Confederates, but I don’t have enough bases for now. I have made the order, but British Post is not what it used to be!

I spent several hours cleaning these models up.  It is by far the most time consuming part, since they are full of mold lines and bad undercuts.

While I was in the swing of things I also prepared Stage 3 of this project.  These are the Union cavalry. I had enough to make two units.

So the work goes on.  Hopefully at a good pace. So until next time.

Stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Just finished up the first batch of Confederates.  They took longer to paint than the Union troops, due to the fact they are not so uniform as the Union.

Nonetheless, I tend to like them more because of their non-uniformity.

A short and sweet post, but the work continues.

Until the the next post stay safe and have fun.

NR

Hi everyone,

Another quick post.  12 more Confederates painted up.  These are also from Italeri.  The next batch will be from Hat.

Until the next post.

Stay safe and have fun.

NR