In the usual way we say down and discussed which period we would play, as SP2 covers just about everything in the black powder era, and we chose American War of Independence (AWI). Actually when I say we, what really happened is we let John pick as he has always valiantly gone along with our other choices so it seemed fair to let him choose.
I was pretty happy with AWI anyway as I figured I already had a fair chunk of toys painted for the French Indian Wars in 28mm that could do double duty. Thus emboldened I took the unusual step of choosing \ volunteering to do the Yankee side. I don't do Americans usually - nothing personal but their style never really appealed to me, but in this case I can always use the excuse that this is just the second English Civil War anyway :-)
Sharp Practice takes a "literary" view of action, being based on the type of battles represented in popular fiction, so I charged into my research by "box-setting" my way through "Turn - Washington's Spies" on Amazon, which has the advantage of being quite entertaining, good for scenario ideas but also full of nicely uniformed Rebels, Loyalists, Continentals and Redcoats - plus the added bonus of Billy Elliot playing the main character and a Welshman playing Benedict Arnold.
I bolstered this with a reading of Bernard Cornwell's "The Fort" - which I have to admit I liked a lot too - he writes a good historical yarn does old Bernie :-)
This emboldened I bought a box of Continental Infantry from Warlord Games and so it begins.....
