Saturday, April 30, 2016

Revenge Is A Buffet Served Hot

What's the point having a cowboy bride if I can't play a left-at-the-altar revenge scenario...

Thar's a weddin' in Stromburg today.
 The Church and Boot Hill
 'The Lucky Dog' the grandest saloon in town
 The Bridal Party, L to R: The Preacher, Ma, Pa, The Bride Beckie and Sue the bridesmaid
 The Groom's party, L to R: Paw, Little Jeb, the Groom (Big Pete), Lucky Joe and Uncle Hugh
 The Bride's party spill out of the church after being cruelly jilted at the altar
 The dastardly scofflaws of the Groom's party spill out of the Lucky Dog.  Having had way too good a time in 'The Dog', Big Pete has changed his mind on marrying Beckie.  Pity he didn't tell her first...
 Little Jeb also had a good time, too good a time and ended up needing to see the Doc
 The Preacher moves out and appeals to calm
 Uncle Hugh ignores him, he dashes for cover and blasts Pa with his winchester
 Sue moves to cover and fires ineffectually
  Big Pete runs for it
 Beckie tracks him down and appeals to his 'good' nature.  As she rolls aa 10, she unloads a heck of a guilt-trip on Big Pete
 Guilt-ridden Big Pete is regretting his mistakes, he is frozen in place,
 Lucky Joe dashes to rescue Big Pete, he fires wildly
 Paw moves in to cover his son
 Ma moves to aid her daughter, her trusty six-shooter barks and Paw is hurt
 Little Jeb runs to help.
 Beckie moves to 'have a word' with Big Pete (close combat)
 Beckie (blue) is successful in her 'word'
 Beckie lays out Big Peter with a vicious tongue and a smart right-hook
 Little Jeb shoots wildly (perhaps a few less drinks last night would have been wiser?)
 Ma tackles Paw (close assault)
 Yup, Ma tackles Paw
 In his addled state Paw didn't stand a chance.  Ma lays him out cold.  Little Jeb watches stupefied
 The Preacher again appeals for calm - it goes unheeded
 So the Preacher decided to go all Biblical on them
 Lucky Joe is not so lucky this time
 However, with no medial attention, Pa bleeds out
 Uncle Hugh scores hits on The Preacher
 Little Jeb seeks his revenge
 Little Jeb attacks Beckie
 Mercilessly gunning her down
 The Preacher shrugs off Uncle Hugh's shots and moves to attack
 Uncle Hugh shoots and kills the Preacher
 Sue is not a happy woman, she's surrounded by corpses
 Ma is furious, she flys at Little Jeb in a killin'-Rage
And, oh yes, no other result would have been right...
Sue has had enough, no more nice-Sue.  She unloads her Henry-repeater at Uncle Hugh, cutting him down like the mangy cur he is
 Ma rounds on the injured Lucky Joe, she forces him to surrender.  Perhaps he is lucky after all?
The end-result, Paw and Big Pete out cold, Lucky Joe hurt and many, many bodies.  I guess there's no wedding today in Stromburg.

What a fun game, I'm really enjoying these FFoL Reloaded rules.  They play a fast, cinematic game that feels like playing the game, not the rules.  This was played using the base rules plus 'special' action cards.  Perhaps next time I start using personal traits to flesh-out the characters.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

The Waldrop-Hartmann Feud, or, Fill Yer Hand Partner, Its Dyin' Time

I like Cowboys and the Old-West, at least the movie versions of it anyway.  I grew up with a Dad who loved John Wayne movies, me I preferred Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood, of course...

Once I was settle in a real job (after a LOOONG time in acedemia) I decided to splurge on a new gaming period, I bought a whole buch of prepainted HO-scale old-west buildings and I built a small-ish skirmish set, in the now hard-to-find scale of 20mm.  There weren't many manufacturers then, but I slowly expanded it using old railway kits and plastic figs.  I ended up building a small town and an eclectic group of gunfighters from a mix of metal and plastic figs.  My girlfriend liked them a bunch (even going so far as playing a couple of games with me), so she asked me to use some of them as a grooms-cake topper when we got married.

She insisted...   ...so I made it a shotgun wedding

In my first version the maid of honour had a baby, but that was deemed too much.  This is a mix of plastic (IMEX and HaT?), Raventhorpe and Qualitycast figs.  The Bride featured heavily in a game I ran that the GZG ECC a few years back.

While I have a playable collection, I have struggled to find a set of rules that I felt 'fit' the style of games I wanted to play.  However, that may have changed,  I just recently got a (digital) copy of Fistfull Of Lead Reloaded (https://www.facebook.com/FistfulofLead) and after a read through I think I like them a lot.  To test them out I set up a small game to play the basic rules.

Enough chat!   On to the game!  Its a simple grudge-match between cattle folk and gunmen, each side trying to take the other down.  The gunfight takes place in a corner of the small town of Stromburg
 A quiet part of town, for now
 The stagecoach dropping off
 The Waldrops, Boss Waldrop, his daughter Maisy, Cletus and Cleton, the twins
The Hartmanns, Jim, Jerry, Jake and Bob
The Waldrops start near the Livery
Waldrops fan out looking for the Hartmanns
The Hartmanns appear behind the Bank
Jerry sneaks round back
Boss Waldrop spots him and blasts him with buckshot, pinning him
Jim moves to support Jerry
Cleton blazes away, can't hit the side of a barn and uses up all his ammo, time to reload
Cletus advances on Jerry, keeeping him pinned down
Bob, always the loner,  does a sneak aroud while Jake goes more direct
Jake lines up his rifle on Maisy, and...
...its a tough shot
KABLAM, Maisy is down.
Boss Waldrop is MAD, he goes gunning for Jake, blasting him with both barrels and pinning him
Jim dashes out to battle Cletus
Not his best move, Jim blazes away to no effect.  Cletus guns him down like a rabid dog
Bob does a runner
Boss Waldrop lines up another shot
And blows Jake away with both barrels
Bob shoots, and flubs, time to actually put bullets in the gun Bob.
After Jim ,Cletus rounds on Jerry, keeping him pinned down
Cleton twils, raises his trusty Winchester and...
...BLAM, down goes Bob, with his unloaded gun in his hand
Jerry sees Bob go down, tests his nerve
And fails.  Jerry flees fron Stromberg.  The Waldrops won, but Maisy is down.  They paid a heavy price for the win.
My skirmish set.  Enough for moderate games.  I'm thinking of running a cowboy game at GZG ECC 20 next year so I'll be painting a few more figs and terrain peices for that game. I've also just bought and the new gunfighter figs from Newline Designs.  They look great and should be a nice addition to the set.

As for the rules, I played the basic game, it was very quick and easy to pick up.  I felt that it did a good job of capturing Peckinpah/Leone-style Westerns, so for me its a Winner!.  I'll definitely be playing them more.