With Boney In Spain: A Sharp Practice Playtest

 

Last week I had the chance to visit my friend Joe Saunders to playtest his Sharp Practice game for HotLead in two week’s time.   Joe of course is the proprietor of the Miniature Landscape Hobbies YouTube channel, and a friend of the Canadian Wargamer Podcast.   Here is the always friendly Joe beside one of his epic scratch built terrain boards, in this case depicting a village somewhere in Spain.    

The scenario was built around Napoleon’s one visit to Spain in 1808.  The Emperor is travelling cross country by coach wit a small elite escort but the details of his trip are leaked and Spanish partisans are lying in ambush.  French and British troops are hastening to the site.   The Emperor wins by getting from one side of the table to the other.

Close up of Napoleon (front rank on the right) with his elite escort Chasseurs of the Guard.  All figures painted by Joe.  The Napoleon casting is I believe a Warlord sculpt, and Joe’s tutorial on painting him is here.  Napoleon is rated as a Level 4 commander, the best in there can be in the rules, so he has a ton of clout on the battlefield.  The downside is that from turn on, he is in long range of Spanish guerrillas, so he needs to be careful.

When I learned that I got to play Napoleon in a tactical game,  I absolutely HAD to play the French!

The game unfolded with a full run of cards allowing all units from both sides to deploy.  The British had a light and a heavy cavalry unit on their side of the table, directly facing Napoleon.   It was only a matter of time before they decided to charge, and while I did my best to block them with a unit of dragoons, I had deployed my other unit of cavalry, cuirassiers, on the far side of the table where they weren’t able to protect L’Empereur, which proved to be a fatal mistake.

In retrospect, Joe and I decided that both sides should only have light cavalry, as heavy impact cavalry in Sharp Practice is murderous.  Otherwise, the British player will do their best to ride down Napoleon as quickly as possible and end the game.

As an example of what impact cavalry can do, here are my cuirassiers charging into a hapless formation of Highlanders.  The cards allowed me to hit them while the Jocks had their muskets unloaded, so they got bundled off the table with heavy losses. It was one of those rare moments in Sharp Practice where you get perfect card draws: I  moved into charge range with the last card of one turn, and got to charge with the first card of the next turn.  Fun when it happens, especially given how rare such moments are.

It’s always fun to help a friend think through the balance and structure of a war-game scenario.   I wish I’d taken some more photos of Joe’s lovely terrain and of his wonderful collection of 28mm Naps.   Hopefully I’ll get some more for you at Hot Lead in two weeks time.

Cheers and blessings to your die rolls,

MP+

Terrain Tuesday: Adventures in Basing and Building

Recently I mentioned that our guest on Canadian Wargamer Podcast #11 was Joe Saunders, who runs a small but mighty enterprise called Miniature Landscape Hobbies.  I was so impressed with his method for large scenic bases that I tried it, and here’s the result.

To back up a bit, my previous method was to cut a piece of MDF purchased from a DIY store.  This was never very pleasant or satisfactory because I used a craft knife and could never get the lines straight enough, and it was also very taxing on my hands and wrists.  There was also the very real worry that I might inadvertantly cut myself.  Once the MDF was cut, I would texture it with plastic wood (usually from Lepage), use diluted white carpenter’s glue to apply texture (usually model railroad ballast) and then once dry paint brown, two successive drybrushes (yellow ochre first, then maple tan) and then apply flock and seal with a matte spray.

Joe’s technique is explained in this video.  Not to describe the whole method, but in brief I used two sheets of cut boxboard with the corrugations going in opposite directions.   I them coated it with diluted matte Mod Podge mixed with brown umber craft paint, and while it was wet I applied the grit (ballast mixed with some clean cat litter).   The next step according to Joe is to mix rubbing alcohol with brown acrylic ink and then use a pipette and apply the ink mixture while holding the base at an incline to allow the mixture to run freely. 

I didn’t have brown ink but I had some green ink, so I thought I’d experiment.  What I got was a pleasant greenish hue and in a few places the green ink turned the grit a bright green, suggesting clumps of foliage.  I showed this image below to Joe and he thought it was a “happy accident” and suggested a tan dry brush before adding flock. 

 

Here’s the finished base on the left, with the Warbases cottage from their Prussian Napoleonics range of buildings.   I spent much of the winter cutting up cereal boxes to make the tiles on the roof of the cottage, until some bright chap told me to by the pre-cut roof tiles from Sarissa.  I did that for the Warbases Prussian barn on the right, but couldn’t resist the allure of the cereal box and also cut out the stones for the first floor of the barn walls.  The base of the barnyard was also made according to Joe’s recipe.

I wanted some texture on the walls of the cottage, which were plain MDF sheets, so smeared them with carpenter’s plastic wood filler to give the impression of stucco.    I did the same with the wall section on the barn beneath the wood timbers.  Thankfully the wood timbers were all one laser cut piece so quite simple to apply onto the plastic wood before it dried.

Some 28mm figures shown for scale.  The barn is a beast!  It won’t be hogging a standard sized table for a big battle, but it will wok for a skirmish game such as Sharp Practice, with Prussian jaegers defending against marauding cossacks, I think.

Another view of the stone wall on the ground floor of the barn.  Not sure what door halfway up is all about.  In my part of Ontario you sometimes see barns with an earthen ramp leading up to a doorway which I am guessing is for transporting hay bales and fodder.   I should consider constructing something similar out of styrofoam.

The Canadian Wargamer Podcast Ep 11 Is Out!

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It’s been out for a while now, but hasn’t been noted here until now.  Here’s the description below.   I can’t say enough times what a pleasure it was to meet Joe Saunders, a totally friendly guy with enormous modelling skills and a passion for teaching them to others.   I’ve started to incorporate some of his techniques into my modelling and I’ll showcase them in posts downstream.  MP

 

Joe Saunders is one of the nicest guys you'll ever hope to meet in the hobby - he's an artist, a modeller, and a gifted teacher who wants to share his many skills so the rest of us can build better looking models and fight our miniature battles on better looking tables.   In this interview, we talk about Joe's background with Games Workshop Canada (remember them?), building his YouTube channel, and his work with Battlefront.  We also discuss Joe's recent decision to get into Napoleonics gaming (One of Us!  One of Us! One of Us!).

In the second half of the podcast, Mike and James go into the Canadian Content Corner to talk about a little known and horrific battle, Kapelsche Veer, in the winter of 1945 as Canadian troops (Lincoln and Welland Regiment, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), some of them in canoes (!), cleared stubborn German defenders in a brutal week of fighting along the Maas River in northern Holland.  

In the What We're Doing segment, Mike talks about his early adventures in 3D printing, and his favourable impressions of Sam Mustafa's Napoleonics rules, Lasalle 2.   James talks about how artillery takes up a lot of space on the battlefield, and revisits his beloved Bavarians being annoying to Napoleon at Hanau in 1813.   We also talk about how things are looking better for HotLead in March (woot! woot!) and we look ahead to CanGames in Ottawa on the Victoria Day Weekend in May (hmmmm, gaming, or gardening????).

Links to This Episode:

 

Our Guest, Joe Saunders:  

Miniature Landscape Hobbies YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/MiniatureLandscapeHobbies/about

Joe's livestream on Building Terrain:

https://youtu.be/5A05nKypJww

Joe's Etsy Store:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/JoeSaundersTerrain

Joe on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/Miniaturelandscapehobbies

 

Joe's Books for the CWP Virtual Library:

Peter Morby, Creating a Napoleonic Wargames Army, 1809-1815 (Crowood Wargaming Guides)  Creating A Napoleonic Wargames Army 1809-1815 (Crowood Wargaming Guides) eBook : Morbey, Peter: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

David Miller, Fighting Men of World War Two: Axis  (Simon and Schuster)  Fighting Men of World War II - Axis eBook : Miller, David, Smith, Graham: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

Canadian Content Corner:

Paul Woodage of WW2TV talks to Edwin Popken on the Battle of Kapelsche Veer: https://youtu.be/8_LzRfAuARY

James Holland and Al Murray of We Have Ways podcast talk to Mark Zuehlke about the Canadian Army in NW Europe:

https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/the-canadian-story/id1457552694?i=1000548427211

 

Other Stuff Mentioned:

Becke and Summerfield, Hanau 1813: Napoleon's Retreat from Liepzig

https://kentrotman.co.uk/newbooks/hanau-1813-napoleons-retreat-from-leipzig/

Sam Mustafa's Lasalle II rules: https://sammustafa.com/lasalle/

HotLead 2022 (Mar 18-20) https://hotlead.ca

CanGames 2022 (May 20-22) http://cangames.ca

 

Our Closing March

The Lincoln and Welland Regiment:

The Lincoln and Welland Regiment - Wikipedia

The Lincolnshire Poacher:  March of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment  https://youtu.be/s6vyUcF_F2k