Painting characters for Sharp Practice (Napoleonic French)
by Matt Varnish
Good morning everyone, hope all is well. While I have been slaving away the past few months with rebasing entire units of French and redoing every single officer, and painting WAY too much gold braiding, I have also taken some time to make up a few characters for Sharp Practice. Sharp practice is a semi skirmish ruleset for a variety of time periods, but is in the adventurous vein of Sharpe’s Rifles, the excellent show where the good guys always lose (the French)
In Sharp Practice, in addition to the usual infantry, horse and skirmishers that anyone with a Black Powder army already has, there are also leaders and heroes as well as some other characters on single bases. There are a great many charts to roll up for them and see what special abilities they had, and a LOT of them under the Cad section has them chasing after women.. I mean, this IS AFTER ALL based on Sharpe !
So I needed some female models as well. To this end, I decided to break out a few special models I had laying about, one is the ltd edition Ney in greatcoat who will be my overall high ranking officer, another is an ‘Exploration Officer’ who is literally Pierre Ducos from Sharpe’s Treasure, and then I had a few Vivanderes and Cantinieres, and of course a hussar officer mistress all decked out in his uniform. Added to this were some other random figures such as supply donkeys and a clergyman. They were a joy to paint.
The excellent Warlord Games Marechal Ney figure in greatcoat stepping on a wrecked wagon wheel. I painted him as just a regular high ranking officer with grey hair and dark blue greatcoat, still a great figure to lead the French. He was limited edition, not sure if he is still available now.
My second in command is this Captain with gold braided epaulettes. Metal officer, Perry I believe.
Another nice metal infantry officer, a lieutenant I believe, again Perry from their line infantry box set.
To lead my Fusilliers and Voltigeurs, I have these colourful models. One has Sgt’s stripes on his sleeve, so these round out my 5 leaders for most lists of Sharp Practice.
These are the ‘other characters’ .. I spent more time on these than I would a 24-man infantry battalion!
At left, the Hussar mistress in uniform, and at right the Nurse who will count as my Medical character. Model is Col. Bill’s ‘Marie Tete de Bois’
Clergyman and random female housewife.
Pierre Ducos model, picked this guy up at Historicon this year, perfect Exploration Officer. In Sharp Practice he lets you have the deployment zone further forward. In the Sharpe series, he was the master spy for the French and winds up framing Sharpe for stealing the treasury wagons.
Lastly I have a pair of Vivandieres, who were auxillaries in the rear echelons providing food and supplies. This one has 2 huge casks, a flour bag and she has some green onions…
.. while this one has a basket of goods and a more diverse offering of food on her donkey. These will be used as objectives in our games. Speaking of, I have a game scheduled this friday with Scott Roach’s Brits and Portugese, and he has cooked up some scenario for us. Should be good times!