Mid-week oddments

Introduction

Once again, it's mid-week and I'm in danger of missing my deadline for a blog update.  That's becoming a regular failing these days, though I'm really not sure why it's more of a problem now than it used to be.

I had been planning to write something about the making of my decals for tee shirts (as displayed on some of my recent models), but today has been a bit of a mess.  I had to fetch my wife from the eye clinic at the local hospital after an emergency appointment for another painful bout of iritis.  This involved leaving my job early, so I'll have to make up a couple of hours by working late sometime soon.  At least we didn't need to worry about collecting my daughter from school - she's off with chickenpox this week!  It's just as well that her granny was able to assist us - thanks, mum!

Right, enough of that.  I haven't got much time and so this posting will just be a display of some recently-completed models.  Not zombies or survivors though, since I'm saving them for my Sunday Zomtober post.

Knights

Here are a couple of 28mm knights from Black Tree Design.  They're probably destined to become part of the Sheriff of Nottingham's forces in my occasional Robin Hood games, though I might just about be able to use them as Crusaders if I were to start such a force for Cross and Crescent (the latest set in the SAGA stable of rules).  Very tempting, though technically their armour is slightly too late, I think.

Old West Bystander

This gentleman is the last (I think!) of a set of bystanders that I've painted up for my Old West setting.  He'll be used as a well-off civilian in games of The Rules with No Name or similar.  Of course, he could equally be used in pretty much any later-19th century urban game.

Nazi Agent

Finally, Herr Stengel is a sinister Nazi agent from Artizan Design's "Thrilling Tales" range.  I've got only a few such "pulp" figures, but a recent purchase of the Pulp Alley rules has made me want to paint up and use this small collection.  Here's a start, at least...

Finally

Got to go.  The daughter is in bed, my wife has returned downstairs from having a shower and there's a cup of tea waiting for me.  Oh, am I tired...

TRWNN: The Old Hangin' Tree

Introduction

It's not often that I'm completely torn between 2 alternate titles for one of my battle reports.  However, yesterday's club game is one such, where the action went completely against my predictions and left me wondering how to write it up.

Originally I was going to call this battle "A Game of Two Halves", alluding to the infamous soccer cliché, for an obvious reason.  The setup is this: the small New Mexico town of San Fidel is divided between 2 rival, ruthless families and their employees.  To the north of the main road, the Delgados have control, whilst south of the road is under the sway of the Maxwells.  This is an unstable situation anyway, but the recent arrival of a Mysterious Stranger in town has upset the delicate balance.  People are on edge; even the most trivial incident could lead to a conflagration...

Scenario

This is a game for 3 players.  Each of the 3 forces is potentially hostile to both the others, though there are reasons why they might forge temporary alliances.

 Forces:

• Delgados, Maxwells: Each family has 6 models with a range of capabilities from Legend down to Citizen.  4 of these start the game in play; the other 2 are potential reinforcements.
• Mysterious Stranger: 1 Legend.  My version also had the Fast Draw and Luck skills.

Setup: 

Dice to see which family sets up first.  The loser places 1 model anywhere they like as long as it's within their half of the town.  The families alternate in placing the remaining figures, again within their own territory.  Once all of the families' models have been positioned, the Mysterious Stranger player then places his/her figure anywhere desired.

Reinforcements

Each family has 2 reinforcement figures.  One of these will come into play when/if one of the figures already in play is lost.  When that happens, choose a reinforcement model at random and shuffle the appropriate action card into the deck.  On their next activation, the reinforcement may be placed at the front door of any desired building within their own family's territory.  The second reinforcement is placed in a similar manner when the family takes a second loss.  After that, you're on your own!

Victory

Each of the families scores points for members of the other family who are dead, captured or have lost their nerve by the end of the game as follows.  Note that it doesn't matter which force incapacitates their enemies, just that the hated rivals are cut down to size!  In order to claim a victory, a family must score at least 4 points more than the other family:

• Legend: +4 victory points
• Shootist: +3 victory points
• Gunman: +2 victory points
• Citizen: +1 victory point
• Mysterious Stranger: -4 victory points!

(Yes, that's right.  If either family KOs the Mysterious Stranger then they lose points.  It might still be worth their while, though...)

The Mysterious Stranger is trying to play one side off against the other.  He/she wins if the scores of both families are less than 4 points different.  In other words, the stranger wins if neither family can claim an outright victory!

Our Game

A number of lesser gunmen had already been placed hiding well within their own territories, when the Delgados put the rifleman Emilio provocatively behind the old hangin' tree.  The other family responded by placing Black Bart immediately on the other size of the trunk.  Tit-for-tat led to Tuco supporting Emilio and Jebediah behind a nearby cactus.  It would be interesting to see who drew the first action card from this lot!

Even as Juan, the rookie, ran up to support his boss, Black Bart's action card was turned over.  He snarled at Tuco: "You yellow-bellied skunk!  I saw you eyeing up my sister yesterday.  If you know what's good for you then you'll leave town immediately!"
Tuco went for his gun, but Black Bart was faster: his shot caused a flesh wound and forced the Mexican to duck back out of sight.  Jebediah joined in from behind his cactus and emptied his pistol firing at Juan, but only managed to graze his target.

This was about as good as things got for the Maxwells, though.  Tuco recovered from the shock and popped round the tree stump.

He shot Black Bart, twice.

 

Meanwhile, Emilio used his rifle to prevent help from reaching the embattled Black Bart.  With an improbable series of action card draws, Emilio aimed and fired repeatedly at anyone who approached.

Between them, Tuco and Juan finally incapacitated Black Bart...

...while Emilio gunned down anyone else who approached.

A Saviour?

The Maxwells were pretty despondent by now.  They'd lost 2 of their better men for not much gain and hadn't received any reinforcements yet.  Then we drew an "Old Friend" bystander card.

Cole had just ridden into town and was unwittingly behind the Delgado lines.  Perhaps this would even things up a little?

Nope, not a chance.  Tuco spun round and gunned the newcomer down.

Mysterious Stranger Decides to Act

So far, Blondie had just been sauntering up the street.  He was now dealt a whole fistful of action cards at once and decided to join in before matters got too far out of hand.  The loner ran towards the tree, firing as he came.  Emilio took a flesh wound, but that was all.  Juan, his gun empty, decided to charge the tall stranger in desperation, but Blondie had saved an action card especially for such a situation.  He blazed away at the Mexican, hoping to use his luck to negate any possible ill effects.  This plan went horribly wrong, as he threw 3 '1's out of 8 dice and promptly realised his gun was empty.  Oops!

The citizen Juan did well to hold his own against the legend Blondie, until Emilio joined in the melee.  Even then, the outcome should have been anything but certain, but Emilio gave the mysterious stranger an incredibly solid punch that knocked him out cold.  Blondie still hadn't recovered by the end of the game!

Maxwell reinforcements were beginning to arrive, but Tuco wasn't going to wait for that.  He turned his gun on the citizen Jebediah, who had been taking pot shots from behind his cactus all game.

Tuco's shot may not have been the most accurate, but the bullet went straight through the cactus and struck his target in the belly.  Although Jebediah wasn't seriously hurt, he decided to cower in the dust and wait for help, rather than continuing to fight.

Whilst the Delgado family was clustering around the tree, Injun Joe ran up onto the gallows and opened fire.  Despite the large number of bullets, he narrowly missed all his targets [this is the first time in playing "The Rules with No Name" that I've felt it worthwhile to look up the page on "stray shots".  The Mexicans were clustered very tightly together!]

Injun Joe wouldn't get another chance, for Emilio raised his rifle and fired.

In true Hollywood fashion, the injured Injun Joe then fell backwards, through the trapdoor in the gallows, and ended up unconscious in the dirt below.

In an act of brutal revenge, Tuco then approached the badly injured Black Bart and executed him [this was only possible because of his evil attribute].

This act had no consequence on game-play, other than to cause horror in those who saw the deed. The rest of the Delgados felt somewhat uneasy, but said nothing.  The last remaining Maxwell (Emmett) was appalled at the despicable act; he approached with the intention of gunning Tuco down - though the bad guy had other ideas!

Conclusion

At this point, we ran out of time and had to pack the game away.  However it's hard to see how playing on would have altered the result in any significant way.  So, final scores:

• Delgados: +11 VPs.  Incapacitated 2 shootists, 2 gunmen and 1 citizen.  Also +2 VPs extra if the "Old Friend" is counted - I hadn't made a ruling on this.
• Maxwells: 0 VPs.  Some of the Mexicans had flesh wounds, but nothing serious.

I was debating whether to penalise the Delgados for incapacitating the Mysterious Stranger as well, though technically Blondie was only unconscious and could have recovered.  The odds of this happening and him then being able to take effective action seemed extremely slim, though.  He'd better hope that there's a friendly innkeeper and/or coffin-maker to hide him while he recovers and plots his revenge, I think!

As it stands, it's completely academic whether the Delgados have this penalty or not.  Their score is so high that they have clearly won a very major victory with or without the -4 VPs!

I cannot think of another game I've played, of any genre, where an arbitrary piece of terrain has played so prominent a role as in this one.  I'm not counting the only bridge over a river, the one pillbox that is holding up an advance or a similar "designed" focal point.  Rather, when I set the town out, I imagined that the old hangin' tree was just 1 terrain feature of many, yet as far as the game play was concerned it might as well have been the only thing on the board!

The Rules With No Name: High Noon

Introduction

One of my favourite Westerns (indeed, one of my favourite movies) is "High Noon".  In this, Gary Cooper won an Oscar for his portrayal of an about-to-retire marshal who is forced to confront a gang of 4 gunmen on his own, the leader of whom has sworn to kill him.

So, can I create a scenario for The Rules with No Name which captures some of the tension and leads to an epic finale?  Let's see...

The Forces

So, the numbers on each side are easy enough: 1 marshal against 4 gunslingers.  However, it's going to be tricky to balance this.  Also note that I've had to alter the appearance and names of the characters, if only to fit the models I have in my collection:

• Marshal: This is straightforward. He's a legend and an upright citizen, so I'll use my Sheriff Roberts model.  Indeed, the skills he has are just fine, too: Tough should make him harder to hurt and True Grit will stop him from running away.  The only real difference is that I'll take away his shotgun.  Just one pistol should be enough, right?
  .
• Miller's Gang: Hmm, I don't really have the right models for this, I think.  How about I use my other generic baddies (Banditos) instead?  The leader is then Tuco, though he's possibly a bit too tough.  Maybe he should be a Shootist instead of a Legend (i.e. level-3 rather than level-4)?  I'll leave him as is for now.
  The gang is simpler: it consists of 3 Gunmen (level-2).  To keep them from being boringly identical, there's a rifleman, a bland pistol guy and a drunk.  It's not quite the same as the movie, but the drunk might help to even the odds a little by handicapping his own side - you never know!
  

Scenario Rules

• Setup: The battle takes place in a town.  The gang sets up on one edge of the table, then the marshal places his figure anywhere desired, as long as it isn't in line of sight of any of the other figures.
• Victory: When all the figures on one side are dead then the other side wins.  Simple!
• Desperation: The marshal is heavily outnumbered and desperate.  He may take a free action at any point in the game, just as if he had been dealt an Action Card for the turn.  This free action may interrupt any other action; it will even trump the Legend Action Card.  However, the marshal may only take this free action once in the entire game.
• Familiarity: The marshal knows the town very well but the gang are relative strangers to it.  If the marshal is completely out of sight of all gang members then he may use a Move action to move to anywhere else on the board, so long as he doesn't come into sight of any opposing figure at any point during this extended move.
• Bystanders: If you wish to play with Bystanders then the Get Back Inside and Old Friend cards would be quite appropriate, I think.

We ran the game a couple of times to see how this scenario would work.  Here's what happened:

Game 1

Tuco's gang approach the town - but where is their enemy?

The villain and his 3 henchmen

Straight away, Rico (the drunk) activated.  He failed his "drunk dice" and passed out before anyone else had even moved.  For most of the rest of the game, Rico lay unconscious in the dust.  1 down, 3 to go!

The remaining bandits spread out as they ran up the road.  A passing loafer wandered out of the saloon and staggered drunkenly across the road, but this didn't inconvenience the gang at all.  Then, the marshal appeared across the street...

...and shot Tuco, who was in the lead.  The villain took a serious chest wound; he spent quite a while getting back to his feet while his 2 associates scattered and the marshal ran for cover.

As the bandits advanced, the marshal retreated, afraid of being outflanked.  He kept moving in order to disrupt the aim of the rifleman, Cesar, though this restricted the useful actions that he could take himself.

While Cesar kept the marshal's head down (mostly), Santiago ran along the road to the cabin.  He didn't manage this unscathed, though: the marshal managed to inflict a minor wound on him as the bandit ran past.  Meanwhile, Tuco crept round the back of the Trading Post.

Despite his wound, Tuco managed to take an aimed shot at the marshal.  He rolled 5 dice for this and due to his Deadeye ability he would only need a 5 or 6 on any one of them to hit his target.  Of course, he missed...

The near miss rattled the marshal, however.  When Santiago began aiming at him from the other side, he decided to use his once-per-game free action.  Rather than remain in what was now a somewhat exposed position, he chose to charge Santiago, intending to beat him up in hand-to-hand combat and relying on his superior class and Santiago's wound to give him the edge.

The marshal was about 8" away from the bandit, so he rolled 3d6 for his charge move - and came up with 6".  Oops!  Santiago then took his shot at close range and killed the marshal with a single bullet.  Game over!

Game 2

Once again, Rico (the drunk) activated first.  However, he immediately sobered up and therefore could act as normal for the rest of the game.  Since I was playing the marshal, this was bad news!

The minions ran up the street looking for the marshal, while Tuco was a bit slower.

As Santiago reached the junction, the marshal stepped round the corner of the Dry Goods store, aimed and fired.  Santiago took a serious wound and fell to the ground.

Rico ran up to his injured comrade, but the marshal then aimed at him and shot him dead.  So far, so good.

The injured Santiago pulled himself up and staggered round the side of the Bank, while Tuco attempted to flank the marshal.  Meanwhile, Cesar traded shots with the lawman from behind the limited cover of a hitching rail.  This eventually resulted in minor injuries or grazes to both of them.

Tuco seized his chance when he was dealt 3 action cards in a single turn.  He leaped out into the street (1st action) and aimed at the marshal (2nd action).  Before he could use the 3rd one to shoot, the marshal used his once-per-game Desperate action to interrupt.  Quickly raising his revolver, the marshal fired once and shot the villain dead!  [note: we realised later that the marshal was Ducked Back at the time and therefore should have needed to spend an action recovering from this before being able to shoot.  That would have changed things somewhat!  Oops.]

With his boss dead, Cesar decided to move off the street and seek more cover.  However, he hadn't gone very far when the marshal drew a full hand of 5 action cards (i.e. his own character card and all 4 of the Legend, Shootist, Gunman and Citizen cards).  Looks like Cesar is in trouble!

The marshal aimed and fired, aimed and fired, then fired again.  He expected to kill Cesar straight away and then to use the remaining actions to deal with the pesky Santiago (who was creeping up behind him).  However, an angel must have been watching over Cesar that day: although he took one serious wound, the rest of the shots were just grazes that didn't really inconvenience him.

The injured Santiago then managed to catch the marshal from behind.  The bandit's lucky shot hit the lawman's gun arm, thus rendering him unable to use his weapon.

Seeing this, Cesar dragged himself round the corner and shot the marshal again.  Although he didn't kill him outright, he did hit him in the legs.  Since the marshal could neither shoot nor move any more, we called the game at this point; the 2 injured villains could have finished him off without difficulty (and playing it out would be more reminiscent of an 1980's 18-rated torture movie than of a classic Western...)

Conclusion

In hindsight, the marshal didn't really stand much of a chance in either game, I think.

The Familiarity special rule was fairly useless as there were too many lines of sight in my town.  Even if the marshal had gone out of sight round a corner, the best he might have achieved with this rule would be to move 2 sides around a building.  I was hoping that he'd be able to disengage completely and pop up somewhere else unexpected (thus forcing the killers to separate to search for him!).

The Desperate rule worked nicely, but didn't give the marshal enough of an edge on its own.

Perhaps the most obvious rebalancing change would be to alter the victory conditions, so that the marshal wins if Tuco is killed (rather than Tuco and all his gang).  This would make the bandits exercise some caution with their most powerful character and might allow the marshal to even the odds a bit before the final confrontation.  I think I'd also downgrade Tuco to shootist after all - and probably replace his Deadeye skill with something less combat-oriented.

Hmm.

Gamer's Gold: I'm a winner!

Back in January this year, a competition was announced on the Dice of Legends blog.  The rules were quite simple; to enter all you had to do was to submit an article related to Old West gaming.  Prizes (and there were quite a few) were then drawn randomly from the entrants.  Well, to cut a long story short - I won a blister of figures and it arrived yesterday!  The full list of prizewinners is here: prize winners.

I'd always thought of Rebel Minis as a maker of 15mm models, so it was somewhat of a surprise to discover that they also make a few 28mm figures.  However, I cannot find any mention of this Old West pack, either on Rebel Minis own website or elsewhere on the Internet.

I'm somewhat curious about these miniatures, so if anyone can fill me in then I'd appreciate it.  Are they a limited edition, given away with Rebel Minis' rules?  Were they a failed entry into the market, since withdrawn from the catalogue?  Perhaps they are the start of a new range, too new to be known on the web?  Or maybe the data is out there and I've just missed it?

Anyway, here are the 3 cowboys from the blister.  One holds a rifle, the second has twin pistols and the third is firing a revolver.  The sculpting is decent, but not outstanding.  There were a few mould lines on 2 of the miniatures, but these weren't too hard to clean up and I haven't spotted any other issues with the casting.

Here's a comparison shot with a partly-painted Artizan figure.  This clearly shows that the Rebel Minis models are a bit smaller and slimmer.  My Artizan, Foundry and Dixon cowboys are similar in size to each other, so the new models will probably end up as adolescents or just as smaller than average men.  After all, not everyone was as tall as John Wayne!  Or Gary Cooper.  Or James Stewart.  Or Clint Eastwood...


It might take me a little while to paint these up and get them ready for action.  However, I will certainly do so and they'll appear in future games of "The Rules With No Name".  Many thanks, Dice of Legends!