Ulster Wargames Society August meeting

UWS meeting on Saturday at which I played in an excellent game of Sharp Practice (2nd edition I think) umpired by Jeremy D which was set in 1796 in Italy with Austrians (yours truly) facing French (David S and the ‘other Jeremy’). 

Only played Sharp Practice couple of times but fairly easy to pick up with umpires help. 

Scenario had a wagon load of leather boots that Austrians had to protect and get off table and a French spy hiding in village that both sides were tasked with rescuing or capturing.

Believe this would be classed as a largeish game of Sharp practice with 9 Austrian leaders and 8 French but was manageable for a club outing. 

Austrian morale took numerous hits especially from a charge and melee by a French attack column formation and were soon in trouble (ie losing command cards) whilst French mostly unscathed and subsequently fled the field.

Standard Lardy ‘buckets of dice’ system which can give some narrative building results.

I fired 3 units of Line troops yielding some 28 dice which inflicted 20 hits but French column target managed to roll saves that resulted in only 2 kills and 5 shock (spread across 4 units) which was rather underwhelming from Austrian viewpoint but elicited much celebration in French ranks.

Similarly I had a unit of 8 Hussars that suffered a canister salvo from a French medium gun and other firing which generated a whooping 15 shock but no deaths !

Really fun stuff with very nice troops, ancillary items and terrain (all 28mm but no idea of manufacturers)

Also at club the ‘two Davids’ had a couple of FOGR games first was Milanese vs Florentines then Milanese vs French (no idea how these turned out)

Phil had another of his excellent 20mm games this time a WW2 Eastern Front late war bash with lots of T34s, JSIIs, PzIVs, Panthers, Tigers and lots of infantry and other kit. Again saw very little of what happened but did note that his rules for armour combat was firmly based on old 1973 WRG rules.