"Murdoch's Niagara" or "Sharp Practice on the Six Mile Creek"

Recently I've been reluctant to do any blog posts because I'd rather spend the time painting, but tonight Dave and I started a game of Sharp Practice that's been such rip roaring jolly good fun that I thought that I needed to record it. No real narrative, just some slightly out of focus pics.

It's 1814 and Major Rockford of the nth American Infantry is leading a rag tag bunch of rebel ingrates on a  mission with various loosely defined random objectives in keeping with United States policy into His Majesty's loyal province of Upper Canada. He is  assisted in the command of his three infantry groups by Sergeant Columbo, whilst a small group of Regular Riflemen is led by Captain Monk and another group of frontier militia skirmishers is commanded by Captain Castle.

In command of a hastily put together force hoping to keep this particular small patch of the "True North" strong and free  is Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brackenreid, assisted by the brilliant young Captain William Murdoch. He also has three groups of infantry from the ?th foot, together with a detachment from the regiment's light company led by Sergeant Henry Higgins and some very lost Voltigeurs Canadiens commanded by Sergeant George Crabtree. Brackenreid also has a light artillery piece crewed by militia gunners.

Where we left it tonight: 

The ungrateful colonist infantry has deployed in column and headed to take up position by the fence near the centre of the picture. Cousin Jonathon also made good use of his mobile deployment point to deploy his militia skirmishers and riflemen forwards to the wood at the top of the picture and the rail fence at the road junction. The militia have already caused some discomfort to Brackenreid's infantry with the proud Yorkshireman almost coming to grief as musket balls whizzed past his head causing casualties in the ranks. Fortunately Captain Murdoch's unflappable demeanour steadied the men as the Colonel's attentions had to turn elsewhere when Sergeant Crabtree was wounded by the American Rifles, reducing his command ability to zero!

The light company and the militia trade shots from the cover of some small woods. 

Voltigeurs Canadiens and American Rifles exchange quite effective shots near the road junction. The incapacitated Sergeant Crabtree points in a random direction through the musket smoke as he  tries to maintain an air of authority whilst his head aches worse than after a night out at Murphy's pub.

Brackenreid leads from the front whilst the gallant Captain Murdoch steadies the troops. The Militia Artillery moves up in support.

Ungrateful colonials rely on bizarrely painted haversacks to help keep in order as they deploy from the road.

To be continued..........................................

Yanks Advance Over The Niagara Frontier In A Bid To Stop The Blue Jays Winning The ALCS

Well they will be on Monday night (Cleveland have a 2 game advantage unfortunately). Until then here's the starting line up for my 1814 U.S. line infantry: some grey jackets from Scott's brigade. The pitcher needs his base finishing.

I have another 2 groups and an officer to do and I can then start to get to grips with Sharp Practice 2. These are Blue moon figures and I hope I can get the next 16 painted up faster than these which were a bit of a pain. I don't know if it's just  my eyesight going, but there were areas of flash and "burriness" that only became evident after priming (especially under the cartridge pouch). I still like them though.

For those who would expect black cross belts, I came across an eyewitness account quoted in Donald E Graves "Where Right And Glory Lead" that mentions the Americans advancing at Lundy's Lane in grey coats with  white cross belts, so that's what I've given them. I've left their backpack straps black though.

Back to reality.............

So we've just got back from

Where we mainly watched

(we're on here somewhere - 10feet from a Josh Donaldson Home Run ball!)

And drank...

But we also visited Fort York

Note the blockhouses inside the fort aren't the shape of most wargame model blockhouses. You can judge the height of them from the extremely good looking bloke in the picture below:

I've forgotten what this is, but it's also from 1813 so a mix of materials within the fort.

[Edit: It's the magazine of course, which is why it's made of brick and not wood. Sorry!!!! Still trying to deal with making up 5 hrs!!]

I just took this because it seems like it appears in every book on the War of 1812 ever published!

This is a model of an 18th century fort

And these had to be bought!

At the Canadian National Exhibition (which is bloody brilliant!)  there was a display of sand sculptures. This is "Jose and the Dragon"by Peter Vogelaar.

It celebrates the "Bat Flip" episode from the decider in the Jays/Rangers Divisional Series last year. It caused some angst in baseball circles (especially in Texas!)  but for those who know about what happened in the game it is totally understandable (well it is if you're a Jays fan) and it has become iconic.

So that's all folks..............

Paragraph from Toronto

Went to Fort York yesterday - very impressed with the staff and those who did the music and musket drills. The blockhouses and buildings date from 1813 and have some great exhibits. I'm posting this from my phone and cant access the pics.
Current haul consists of 3 of Donald Graves books on the war of   1812 which probs takes us over our baggage allowance 😄

To The Strongest - Middle Imperial Romans

With only a few days left before we go on holiday, I was looking around for something to finish quickly so I decided to finish the bases of my Romans. Whilst I was on I made some labels for the units which can either be attached to the back or put underneath and some pilum and lance tokens. I found a couple of pictures of pila and lances on the internet and used Micosoft Paint and LibreOffice Draw to reduce them to 1 1/4" x 1/2". Thes were then printed out and stuck onto some mdf bases of the same size - I can't remember what I bought the bases for so they've found a use after all.

American Rifles 1812 Blue Moon

Really easy to paint - they have to be now! An oficer to finish these next and then a choise of either American militia or regulars.

Stuff

Here's some recently completed stuff:

Sharp Practice V2 (so far)

For the War of 1812: Two groups of 8 regular infantry, one group of 6 Voltigeurs Canadiens, two officer and a drummer

Another shot of the regular infantry and command

When we were playing the last campaign game with LaSalle, I thought that the British infantry brigade should probably have one battalion that could be deployed in an irregular fashion due to their skirmish  factor. I didn't really want to add to the painting pile, but then I realised that I already had some Brunswick Oels skirmishers painted and I could use the flank companies from some British battalions and all I would have to do would be to paint some plumes green and rebase them - so here they are:-

I don't really see the need for flank companies with Lasalle, and in truth if you are using scaled down actual orbats for General de Brigade you don't really need them either.