Daylight Robbery

We played a three-player game of What A Cowboy last night. Stuart surprised us with a pile of terrain and table clutter he'd printed and painted, so we filled the board with as much of it as possible.  With Caesar's flat-roofed buildings what we ended up with was something that looked like a town on the New Mexico/Virginia border. But we went with it.

The large building in the centre of the table was a railway station and in the railway station was a bag of money ripe for the stealing. Four desperados led by the infamous 'Scar' Johnson strolled into town to collect it. From left to right they were Tom English (Greenhorn), 'Scar' Johnson (Gunslinger), The Orinoco Kid (Shootist) and Mario Gonzales (Shootist, with a rifle).

The law was waiting for them in the person of Sheriff Collins, a gunslinger with a shotgun.

And running from the other side of town was hid daughter Betsy, the town deputy and a Legend.

I set up the game to try, once again, forces with disparate numbers but also to have a Legend on the table and a rifle. Spoiler: the rifle never got used.

Initial moves by the robbers; in the foreground you can see The Orinoco Kid, in the middle is 'Scar' Johnson and barely visible in teh enclosure at the top of the picture is Tom English.

The animals were just for show and had no effect on the game.

The station. The bag of money is inside the big building, on the first floor.

Sheriff Collins popped out of hiding and blasted Tom English with his shotgun, inflicting a nasty wound.

A second shot saw the robber out of action, with a face full of buckshot.

Mario Gonzalez moved up with The Orinoco Kid. They would operate as a close pair for the rest of the gunfight.

In blasting Tom English the Sheriff now found himself caught in the open. 'Scar' Johnson punished this mistake with two shots which down the lawman with a fatal gut-shot.

However Betsy Collins had come up from behind the station and drew a bead on The Orinoco Kid and Mario Gonzalez, forcing them to duck for cover.

But all it did was pin them; she couldn't inflict any real damage on them.

Meanwhile Scar had made it into the station and had grabbed the money.

Betsy was obliged to use up her legendary supply of Bonanza tokens to zip past The Kid and Mario to try and catch Scar before he escaped.

She chased him down, and pinned him. But now she was out of ammo and had to spend critical amounts of time reloading.

Mario Gonzalez caught up with her and shot her in the back, seriously wounding her.

The Orinoco Kid finished her off.

So a convincing win for the bad guys who were able to bring their numbers to bear against the two officers of the law. No matter how high a grade a gunfighter is, they are as easy to shoot down as a novice, with only the ability to get the jump on your opponents a couple of times each game able to save them. 

Here's some photos Caesar took. He ran Scar and Tom English, whilst Stuart ran The Orinoco Kid and Mario Gonzalez. I ran the law.

Tom English pinned by Sheriff Collins.

Gonzalez and The Orinoco Kid

The station, with some civilians idling outside it.

Scar shoots the Sheriff (but he didn't shoot the deputy).

Betsy Collins stalks Scar.

Thanks to Caesar and Stuart for a fun game, and especially to Stuart for the lovely additions to our Wild West terrain and figure collection.

Boardgames

For one reason or another I haven't had much chance to do much miniatures gaming at home recently, which has obviously impacted the number of posts here. That said, Mrs Kobold and I are still generally playing boardgames of some kind on a Wednesday evening. Bananagrams has been a popular choice, but not really worth blogging about (aside from my propensity for winning it). 

However last night I had a yearning to play Memoir '44 (I've read a couple of WWII-related books recently) so we got that on the table for teh first time in a while.

I dug out a starter scenario I'd got off the 'net and hadn't played before - the June 1940 capture of Fort Capuzzo on the Libya/Egypt border.

The scenario doesn't have too many special rules - the British have a heavy tank unit, whilst the Italians get a heroic leader. However we added in the British and Italian nationality rules and also the Western Desert overrun combat change as well.

Anyway we played it through twice, swapping sides after the first game. I played teh British in the first game and managed a strong attack on my left which pushed the Italians off the hills, and chewed up Catherine's attempts to reinforce them. However she managed a counter-attack on her laft that saw me lose a couple of units, so I only won 4-3.

We swapped sides ...

I consolidated my defence and managed to get plenty of retreat results in combats to throw Catherine's British back. I also got eth heroic leader into action as quickly as possible. However despite managing to inflict more losses in terms of actual figures on the British than Catherine had, I spread them across too many units and wasn't destroying enough to get medals. Catherine attacked strongly in the centre and picked up a 4-2 win, to win 7-6 on aggregate. 

A fun scenario.

We have also been playing Fire & Stone, an interesting boardgame about the 1683 siege of Vienna. 

It's heavily card-driven, and very much a race against time for the Ottomans who have a number of objectives to capture before teh Polish relief-force turns up. I don't think we've quite got the tactics sorted yet; in the two games we've played the Ottomans have pretty much failed to break through the first line of defences thanks to an extremely aggressive Austrian defence.

As you can see, it's a lovely looking game.