Wading Through Lard

My good mate Matt has turned away from Chain of Command but enjoys Sharp Practice 2 and has recently put together some lovely troops and terrain for the game, it can't be all bad then thought I. So when Julian asked what was happening this Tuesday I asked him to put on a SP2 game for me, Julian also has some nice forces and terrain for the game.

On arrival at the club I found that instead of the Peninsular game I was expecting we had French and Indian Wars with Stuart's excellent figures and terrain, Stuart played in a recent SP2 tournament so knows what he is doing, although it cured him of tournament style gaming. For a change I took the 'baddies', the French along with Stuart, we had to rescue a Monsieur Le Clerk from the clutches of some British settlers who had captured him, Simon and Julian with the British had to stop us.

My guys.

We tentatively advance.

Stuart had to attack the house with his vanguard and get Le Clerk, while I would keep the escape corridor open. The house proved too strong to take and within a short time the forward elements of the British relief had turned up and were giving his men a distinctly hard time, so much so that he had to fall back, Le Clerk was on his own. My men shuffled on to the table and managed a couple of half hearted, long range volleys at the British regulars, I did manage to push my Indians up to support Stuart but they too fell foul to the British van and they in their turn fell back.

The enemy, lovely wee sojers.

Just before the blue bonnets ran.

As we hit time Stuart's force was spent while mine had achieved nothing, the British were maneuvering to throw even more troops against our forward forces and it looked decidedly dodgy for them as the bell rang, a British victory.

A big thanks to Stuart and Julian for taking me through a game of SP2, but it did not change my mind re the whole Two Fat Lardy wargaming style. The faff about with the 'jump off' points is the first hiccup for me, the placing of these is a game within a game and frankly I can't be bothered with it, maybe I am not clever enough, just give me a deployment area. Then there is the group/formation thing, the initiative system, you can do this this time but can't do it next time. Then of course there is the 'Tiffin' token, the same thing I think applies in other games where the turn simply ends, sometimes before it even starts, why? What does this achieve, I don't get it, maybe it is just me. Every time I have played a TFL game, and I have tried, I just find it needlessly complex simply for the sake of it.

Now let's face it, you might have expected this report to go the way it has, but I did try and the lads put on a good table, but I am done wading through Lard.