Friday, 31 January 2025

Shootout At Gongville

We played our first club game of What A Cowboy (WaC) last night. We tried to keep it simple and limit the number of players; we went with four people each running two gunfighters.

We'd been concerned about what terrain we had, but the loan of some suitable buildings from Darren, plus bits of terrain from Caesar's Bolt Action setup helped a lot and we had plenty of cover on the table.

Caesar and Graeme had the Outlaws:

Creed 'Scarecrow' Morrison - Gunslinger - 2 x Revolvers
Dorothy 'The Widow' Carson - Shootist - Sawn-Off Shotgun, Revolver
Lewis 'Scar' Simpson - Shootist - Revolver
The Orinoco Kid - Greenhorn - Revolver


June and I had the Law / Townsfolk:

Martha Bischoff - Gunslinger - 2 x Revolvers
Nan Goth - Shootist - Shotgun, Revolver
Agent Webster - Shootist - Revolver
Byron Goth - Greenhorn - Revolver

June rolled this spectacular set of action dice for Nan Goths first move; she was going places fast, but would be unable to do anything when she got there.


The buildings with flat roofs proved tempting. Byron Goth got himself a good position on one. As a greenhorn he wasn't very effective from up there, but he was able to keep up enough fire to occupy the outlaws' attention for a chunk of the game.


Nan joined him, although the effects of a shotgun meant that he took some peripheral damage from a miss when Nan fired.


Martha (out of shot on the main street) scored the first blood of the game with a well-aimed shot that wounded 'The Widow'.


From that point on everyone very much stayed in cover. We set up a straight fight for the scenario but, of course, that has the problem that whilst the aim is to take out the opposing side, keeping your own side safe and sound also becomes an objective. Both sides pretty much hunkered down in cover for a lot of the time. 

Creed took a rooftop position and took on Webster, the Pinkerton man.


Martha moved up to assist Webster.


And 'The Widow' came up to support Creed. She fired off both barrels of her sawn-off at Webster who dodged what would otherwise have been a nasty wound.


Despite being a complete novice, The Orinoco Kid made a flanking move and kept Nan and Byron Goth busy, even scoring a couple of hits.


After lots of firing but little in the way of damage we decided to call the current turn the last. This mean the everyone went a little wild. I sent Martha in a blood run across the street (using a Bonanza! token to get an extra turn) and gave Scar another scar or two with some enthusiastic close-range shooting as she went past.

(Yes, the grey buildings disappeared at this point - Darren, who had lent them to us, had to go home and took them, so we replaced them with more Middle-Eastern dwellings).


Final positions. 'The Widow' had got up close to Webster and added to some injury he had taken from Creed. Webster was badly hit and was down to his last action dice. A couple of others has lost a dice to wounds and a few to shock but overall the fight was inconclusive.


I think part of the issue with the lack of a decisive result was given above; neither side had much incentive to leave the safety of cover and in WaC cover is very useful; it makes you harder to spot and gives you a good chance of 'saving' against any shot directed at you, no matter how well aimed it is. It strikes me that scenarios where one, or both, sides are on the move are definitely the way to go.

That's not to say that the game wasn't fun. We got the rules pretty well-sorted, and that was really the aim of the game.

One rules query we had was to do with the sawn-off shotgun. The firing table gives it and a pistol a +1 at up to 4" range. But under weapons it's listed as having the Sawn-Off trait, which gives it a +1 at up to 4" range. We weren't sure if the firing chart modifier is simply stating that, or if the Sawn-Off trait is in addition to it. It seems irrelevant to have a modifier on the firing table that stacks with the trait; you may as well make the trait a +2 at 4" range if that's the intent. We decided that it just gets a +1 (it gets another +1 for being a shotgun at up to effective range anyway).

Overall we liked What A Cowboy.

1 comment:

  1. Loved the attention to detail: cards, poker chips and dressing up. And the minis were just gorgeous! You all deserved to have so much fun!

    ReplyDelete

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