A bit of SP 2

Well, had our first game of SP 2 (Sharp Practice 2) the other day and although we had a good day, that was down to the company rather than the rules.

I'm not going to be too harsh, as it's a first outing, but there seemed an awful lot of 'stuff' to remember as the game went on. Apparently it's called 'friction' and that to me does not a smooth game make. I think the biggest thing in my mind was the fact the rules didn't know whether they wanted to be skirmish or larger scale, or cinematic or historical.

When I play skirmish games of this nature then it's pretty much a 1:1 figure scale but there were certain elements in the rules that seemed to suggest that a 1:20 game (or thereabouts) was being played.

Deployment points were interesting but a lot of faf for such little gain. The command cards were a good addition, specially when the tiffin card comes up and there were a lot of similarities between this version and the previous.

I also don't like 'lists' for games but that's just a personal preference, not specifically aimed at this particular rules set. I would like to play it without a list and just have some stats and see what happens.

As mentioned, this was a first outing and I' sure that when we play it again it'll run more smoothly  :-)

Here are a couple of pictures of the game, as we were playtesting for our group there's only a few but I'm sure that as we progress I'll get some decent battle reports.

Terrain was a mix of my own and another lads, figures from all our collections (albeit very small for me lol) and were primarily a mix of Front Rank, Warlord and Brigade Games.

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Small Sanada force

I've started rebasing all my Japanese figures onto pennies and have the first proper force ready to go.

Sanada has been my favourite clan for a long time so it's fitting that these should get done first.

I'm also going to have another look at the Sharp Practise mod I'm doing as I've had a couple of new ideas that will hopefully help to give more of a feel for the period.

One of which is having a number of retainers for each Big Man in relation to his status, so a Big Man three would have three retainers and these can be chosen from banner men, taiko drummers, conch blowers and some others that I've yet to finalise. Each type of retainer confers a bonus to the Big Man or the units he's activated, not too much of a bonus but enough that it might make a difference if used at the right time.

A possible name for the mod is Kankei but it doesn't quite have the ring to it that I'm after :-/

First of all, the group shot

Then we have a Big Man level three, Sanada Akihito

Then his Big Man level two younger brother Sanada Yoritomi

Then a small group of Sanada samurai

And two small teppogumi led by a teppo-taisho on the right (possibly a Big Man level one)

With two larger yarigumi each with its own yari-taisho (again, possibly Big Men one)

More to follow in the form of the Murakami and Miyoshi clans. I also have a unit of Shimazu and a few Ikko-Ikki/wako/rabble to base up and then there's the couple of hundred unpainted figures to get through...

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