I went to Britcon early August in Manchester. It was the first time I had played Sharp Practice properly and over the weekend I completed 5 full games. Only the first 2 I considered learning games.
To be fair, I knew about the game before Britcon, had watched some lets plays and spoken with one of my brothers about it; it was this brother that convinced me to take part at Britcon.
Before Britcon I had been wanting to get back into tabletop gaming, as I have remarked a few times in the past on this very blog. I had a craving even for Warhammer 40k. I was playing the odd game of Bolt Action at a local club and really wanting to play more Chain of Command. But since Britcon I can't think of anything I would rather play than Sharp Practice.
It was the best table top gaming I have ever experienced as an adult.
I have now signed up for another event taking place in Bristol early next year and have bought models especially for it! This is madness! I am panicking about painting them, but the pressure will be a good thing. Maybe?
I should probably talk about Sharp Practice a little. The game does not require large numbers of models, but it scales up a bit if you want a big(-ish) game. It picks no bones about 1 man being 1 man (if you're a keen historical wargamer I think that will mean something to you). This means the game essential revolves around small skirmishes; a 20 to 50 men each side, squaring up in a small hamlet or across a field. Despite being based around a small skirmish it gives a satisfying feeling of volley fire, bayonet charges, cannon and heroics!
The main focus of the game are each force's characters. These are the individuals you command the units. rally them when they are taking too much shock, have their men perform special actions to achieve their objective or fight a duel against another officer in the midst of battle!
The mechanics of the game allow for a lot of variation for decisions, but uncertainty in how that may happen. For example, if you tell a line of men to advance you can tell them vaguely how fast you want them to advance, but you don't know how far they will go exactly as you throw dice for movement. How crazy is that for an idea?! If someone told me a game makes you roll a six sided dice to see how far your troops move I would say it sounds like a childs game, but it works so well!
The game fights against making you feel comfortable in any decision you make, but the consequences are rarely drastic enough to make 1 or 2 bad decisions decisive. Musket fire is quite ineffective at killing your enemy, but if you can concentrate enough fire or the dice gods smile a little at you, maybe they will suffer so much 'shock' they'll start to withdraw.
Shock is the games way of modelling morale in the game. It builds up on units as they are fired upon and will negatively effect their movement towards the enemy and shooting. It's significantly easier to cause shock than it is to kill. In fact, I think you can only ever cause a casualty on the roll of a 6.
One of the defining aspects of the game, for me, is the pulpy feel. Mechanics in the game can cause random effects to troops or characters depending on the run of events. I won't go into details here, but it works simply and can see a body of troops have their musket barrels fouled, so they can no longer shoot as effectively. These events are just common enough to give a little extra flavour to every battle, but never overwhelming enough to define it. Add in a simple scenario and it's like playing out a battle from a Sharpe film.
To gives comparisons to other games: it has the random activation like Bolt Action, but better, if I'm honest; the shooting, shock and core dice rolling mechanics from Chain of Command; and the random events from a role playing game.
If this is a game that sounds interesting, Beasts of War have some great lets plays on their website!
