All the nice girls love - oh hold on.............. Sharp Practice Napoleonic Landing Party

I think I used that as a title before when rambling about the Fleet Air Arm. Oh well.

Hornblower et al for Sharp Practice. As I mentioned a couple of post ago, I was having a rethink about the composition of my Royal Navy Landing Party. I'm still doing that, but it's firming up. Mr Parkes has delivered the Marine detachment. This means all I need to do is base and organise, and provide Deployment Points etc. I'm painting the leaders and gunners myself, as much to give me a feeling that I have contributing rather than just piggybacking on Andy's work.

I have answered one question, which was "Do the Marines skirmish?" and reading one of the Hornblower novels (it counts as research!) it does mention a Marine skirmish line, so I'm going with that as almost primary source material. Actual primary source material I suppose as the list is based on what The Lardies would call a "Literary Detachment".  

So the force will be:

Leader Status II

2 Groups of 8 Marines 

Leader Status I

1 Group of 6 Marines skirmishing 

Leader Status III

Leader Status I

2 Groups of Sailors with mixed weapons

2 Groups of Sailors with muskets skirmishing

1 ships cannon landed and crew

I can see some problems with this lot. Firstly I will probably have to peel some off to give some Support options. Possibly more concerning is the Sailors are probably all not going to be able form together as Formations, which will make them hard to keep them doing coordinated "stuff". I can't see a solution there. Also I am very scared about the idea of having two groups armed only with melee weapons - that is counter to my usual playstyle to say the least. 

Sharp Practice Napoleonic Naval Landing Party - Progress report

It's been a while but here we go.

Andy Parkes has agreed to paint the Marines (Cheers!) and I'm working on getting the sailors etc based up.

I've got the bases textured and painted, I'm not sure if I'm going to use tufts or flock \ static grass but they will need something.

Midshipman Frederickson

The landing party

Speaking of bases I have decided to rebase the naval gun party to match the rest of the force.

That leaves a need for some Leaders painting up, and a deployment point or two and then I think I can call them done - at least until the Marines arrive. I still need to get the movement trays sorted out - order has gone in to Warbases, and some 3mm magnets. 

So some progress :-)