My First Impressions of Sharp Practice 2 (a Review)

[Rob_bresnen]

Sharp Practice 2 arrived this week and I have just finished reading it. I have yet to play the game but I am very excited about the new rules.
I had the old Sharp Practice but I always found the rules were a bit disorganised and a little bit rough round the edges. Added to this was the fact that my regular gaming opponent strongly dislikes games which don’t have at least some sort of point based system to give a ‘fair’ game. I did like the quirky character generation rules that imbued your leaders with personalities and back stories, as this really helped to get the Bernard Cornwall/ CS Foster feel for the game. But in the end we never really played the old Sharp Practice, preferring to play smaller skirmishes with Songs of Drums and Shakos.

Sharp Practice 2 is very different animal to its predecessor. First impressions are that it is a slick produced, and good quality rule book:  modern and full colour all the way through, as you would expect. There are lots of nice colour photographs of figures too, although no illustrations. The next thing which struck me after a casual flick through the rules was how superficially similar it looked to Chain of Command (obviously by the same writer/production team). This similarity continued to strike me as I started reading the rules. Players familiar with Chain of Command will be already familiar with many of the concepts in Sharp Practice 2- Deployment Points, Random Movement, shock points etc. At first I wondered if Richard Clarke had just adapted the winning formula from Chain of Command to the Napoleonic period but the more I read the more I realised that this wasn’t CoC, but rather something new. It borrows form CoC, then mashes them up with the old Sharp Practice, and what comes out is a well written, well produced rules that it very fit for purpose, and yet retains much of the character and narrative driven of the original Sharp Practice rules.

The rules are written in a manner that suggest it is not to be taken too seriously (I wonder how well this will go down with some of the notoriously serious-minded Napoleonic gamers). For example close quarters battle is called ‘Fisticuffs’ and there are rules for some of your men deserting in search of loot of being lured away by attractive milkmaids. The character generation rules from the original rules have, thankfully, been retained, and even expanded on. I was glad to see they kept the rules for caddish officers seducing ladies, as these were something of a unique selling point in a wargame rules.

While the original Sharp Practice focused on the Napoleonic Wars, Sharp Practice 2 expands the period to cover from 1700-1865. There are army lists for the French and Indian Wars, the American War of Independence, The Peninsular War, The American Civil War and The Indian Mutiny included in the core rules, and Richard Clarke is promising to make many more army lists available on the Two Fat Lardies website. I am particularly please with this as I have forces for the French and the British for the Peninsular War, and I am building up forces for the French and Indian Wars. I have also always wanted to wargame Clive of India’s campaigns, and there is a good chance there rules would fit the bill nicely. The army lists have a point based system, and a lot of flexibility in how you build your forces, as well as the chance to take support options not normally used in wargames, such as supply wagons and engineers.

My overall impression is that this is a great game that brings the original Sharp Practice rules up to date without compromising its charm and narrative driven plotlines. This could be my new go-to rules for 18th and 19th  century wargaming.

[axabrax]

It's an excellent rule-set. We are excited about it over here in California and I really like how the focus has shifted to many periods.I played the old version and we did our first trial game of the new rules last weekend.

My only complaints are that the rules are not terribly well-organized for finding things during game play, which means a QRS is pretty essential and yet there is none in the book. The author has pretty much stated that there won't be one as he feels he can never make people happy with them, which I think is a terrible cop out--especially given that the old rules had one. I'm sure someone will make one eventually, but still annoying. The only other complaint is the second half of the book has some very annoying typos although the main rules are well-edited.

Otherwise highly recommended.

[Lardy Rich]

Rob,  thanks for your very kind words about Sharp Practice.  I do hope that they live up to your expectations.

Axabrax.  Actually, the rules author said, (and I am he) tongue firmly in cheek, that he wasn't gong to produce a QRS because whatever he did people then superseded with a huge document with almost every rule in the book included. This was a joke. I will be producing a QRS next week.  It will contain what I consider to be essential to have to hand during play. What is not a joke is that people will then produce their own with far more information than is generally required. 

As to the rules being well organised or not, The rules for firing are in the firing section, the rules for moving in the movement section and so on.  If they do not fit perfectly with the particular pattern you prefer then I can only apologise. We put offer a thousand man hours into proofing and layout. Meeting people at Legionary in Exeter today I've a dozen people made the point of congratulating me on what they thought was the best laid out and presented set of rules we have ever produced.  I'm sorry we couldn't persuade you of the same.

Rich

[Elk101]

One of the things that struck me reading through is that there's a certain logic about all rules and modifiers that relates well to the task in hand; I.e. they're the things you would think of doing yourself. There are a lot of things in our own house Napoleonic rules that were important to us that are in Sharp Practice 2, only they are much better conceived and implemented! I really liked the rules and will use them for Napoleonics and ACW (and I'm tempted to see if ECW can be worked in).

Just a query for Rich but will there be a Russia 1812 list coming out? I've started one but if there's an official one due I'll focus on something else.  Thanks.

[Lowtardog]

I picked them up this week, a fantastic set of rules, as said it continues the coc high production values and with the cards and counters is superb. Loving the rules and have them already building a list for the flagstaff war. Only thing I notice was but may have missed it, was bows for native forces, easy to adapt but may have missed it.

Top notch and now after coc having having played with a mate fighting season playtest version, I am a lardie fan boy. Well done Rich

[Marine0846]

My copy came in this week.
Been looking at the rules.
Like what I see so far.
Been watching the U Tube stuff they have put out in support.
Am going to a gaming convention in about 3 weeks.
Have signed up to play a game or two.

[Lardy Rich]

Elk.  We hope to start putting out the additional lists this week.  Napoleonics will be high on our priority list.

Lowtardog:  We plan to produce a colonial supplement which will cover in much greater detail weapons of that ilk.  Sadly we had to draw the line somewhere.

Marine:  We plan to make video 5 ASAP.  When the rules were delivered they completely blocked access to the table and we couldn't shoot.  On Tuesday I am delivering the trade orders so that should make some space to allow us a path through to the table. 

Thanks again for the positive comments.

Rich 

[Elk101]

Great stuff, thanks for the reply.

[axabrax]

Rich,

The rules are organized perfectly for reading the rules. They just aren't well-organized for referral during play, thus the need for a QRS. I spent about 45 minutes the first time we played trying to dig through to find various tables even with bookmarks.  I am sorry if I didn't interpret your comment correctly. It really gave me the impression that you weren't going to be doing a QRS at all and that you didn't think there was any point in doing one. It's hard to read dead pan humor on the Internet without some sort of clue that's it's humor  

I seem to recall saying that thought these were an excellent set of rules. There are some bad typos in the second section like the dates for the FIW British regulars waffling between 1755 and 1775 which could really confuse someone who didn't know the period The OP is a review and reviews point out what's good and what's bad so people can get an impartial description.

Cheers

Rob,  thanks for your very kind words about Sharp Practice.  I do hope that they live up to your expectations.

Axabrax.  Actually, the rules author said, (and I am he) tongue firmly in cheek, that he wasn't gong to produce a QRS because whatever he did people then superseded with a huge document with almost every rule in the book included. This was a joke. I will be producing a QRS next week.  It will contain what I consider to be essential to have to hand during play. What is not a joke is that people will then produce their own with far more information than is generally required.  

As to the rules being well organised or not, The rules for firing are in the firing section, the rules for moving in the movement section and so on.  If they do not fit perfectly with the particular pattern you prefer then I can only apologise. We put offer a thousand man hours into proofing and layout. Meeting people at Legionary in Exeter today I've a dozen people made the point of congratulating me on what they thought was the best laid out and presented set of rules we have ever produced.  I'm sorry we couldn't persuade you of the same.

Rich

[axabrax]

Whatever happened with the QRS for SP2?

[Lardy Rich]

It is being developed and tested.  I have it drawn up and am trying to get several games played using it to make sure everything essential is in there.

Rich

[Rob_bresnen]

I played my first game of SP2- it was great. everyone loved it enough to want a rematch next time we meet up.

Here is a link to the battle report...

http://fourcoloursupers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/peninsular-war-first-game-of-sharp.html