Sharp Practice Card ?

[sjwalker51]

Brigadier Gerard or The Seven Men of Gascony spring to mind, albeit still the products of an English author.

[bandrsntch]

Alain Lausard of Bonaparte's Horsemen series by Richard Howard is the only French equivalent of the Richard Sharpe series I know of, but sadly it is not of the same quality as Bernard Cornwell's writing. You would think some enterprising writer would want to emulate the success of the Sharpe series and there would be a plethora of Napoleonic heroes of different nationalities. There is certainly no lack of subject matter to choose from. I myself have thought about doing a series on a Officer in one of the Polish Regiments in French service(4th, 7th, 9th or Vistula Legion), all of which served in Spain.

[maerk]

"
(...) including a certain Richard Sharpe and a chap called Hornblower. (...)"

... and Hamish Williams and Jack Aubrey...

There is a historical novel on Andreas Hofer, the leader of the Tyrolian uprising in 1809, written by Luise Mühlbach a german writer of the 19th century. Its english version is available online and it might give inspiration for SP scenarios.

Maerk

[Archdukek]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.
How could I have forgotten Brigadier Gerard!! One of my favourite historical novels. Doh!
I agree that the Lausard series isn't a match for Sharpe. Meantime I keep Aubrey for games of Kiss me Hardy! Never heard of Hamish Williams I must look that up
John

[jondxs]

for Hamish Williams - http://www.amazon.co.uk/True-Soldier-Ge ... 0753828367

[sjwalker51]

There's rather a lot more of these military historical novels than I originally thought. Some are truly awful, full of purple prose, implausible plot lines and language or social behaviour that is completely inappropriate for the period.

Those translated from other languages are always the worst for this but maybe excusable - I remember one in which Ramesses The Great utters the immortal line "hey guys, let's get down to the mighty Nile and check out the chicks in the reeds".

The Fonthill saga is especially bad (well, the first 2-3 in the series, I gave up after that) with caricature central characters (including a Welshman called Jones that has to say 'look 'ew' every other page to remind you of his nationality) and real clumsy plots.

On the other hand, the somewhat older 'Dando' and 'Sheridan' series are excellent historical romps with plenty of ideas for 19th century SP scenarios.

The mother-lode remains the Flashman series, of course, but most of the recent 'tribute acts' are poor copies of the original with the honourable exception of those by Bob Brightwell, which are coming closer to the standards that McDonald Fraser achieved.

[bandrsntch]

I've looked everywhere on this Forum and others but can't seem to find a specific ruling on the following Sharp Practice card question. Once played, does the group using the SP card also get another fire or reload if they are activated later in the turn. Or alternatively can a group that had fired and reloaded after being activated by a Big Man, fire again on the SP card? Seem to recall this being answered before, but darn if I can find it.

[JimLeCat]

The SP card is a bonus fire (or reload) card, so the group (or formation) you give it to can have (or have had) a normal activation in the same turn (which could be fire and reload, for instance).

Cheers,
Jim

[sjwalker51]

Yes, the "Sharp Practice" gives an extra free fire action ( fire OR reload) to a Group/Formation, and can be used in addition to the usual 2 actions allowed to an activated Group.