Gunfight At La Bonita

I've been on holiday for the past few days, so this report is somewhat delayed. It also means that I will have almost certainly forgotten a load of key details. For that I apologise.

Last Thursday five of us played a game of What A Cowboy. This was quite ambitious since some of the players had never played before and the rest of us are still learning the game. However we kept it fairly simple and it actually rattled along OK.

I set up two nominally equal forces. 

On one side were 'Scar' Johnson's outlaws:

'Scar' Johnson - Gunslinger - Revolver
Angel Eyes - Gunslinger - Two Revolvers
Clem Vernon - Shootist - Shotgun, Revolver
Tuco - Greenhorn - Revolver

Against them were the ladies of Mayor's Income, NM

'Calamity' Anne - Gunslinger - Revolver
Miss Daisy - Shootist - Two Revolvers
Belle Starr - Shootist - Shotgun, Revolver
Miss Peach - Greenhorn - Revolver
Daisy Jane - Greenhorn - Revolver
Pearl Hart - Greenhorn - Revolver

So one side had experience and the other had numbers.

The ladies of Mayor's Income were raiding the Hacienda La Bonita looking for stolen jewels that Scar's gang had stolen from the town the previous week. What were the men of Mayor's Income doing? Who knows. Not raiding La Bonita, that's for sure.

Here's the setup. The ladies would be entering from the top of the picture. A couple of Scar's gang were deployed in the town; Angel Eyes on the roof of the building in the foreground and Tuco on the roof of the right-hand building. The rest of the gang would enter at the bottom. We tried townsfolk in this game and you can see several of them scattered around.

On the roofs of four of the buildings you can see coloured counters. These marked the buildings where the jewels might be. Caesar and I were playing the gang and chose which one of the four represented the real jewels; the others were dummies. The ladies would have to enter each building with a counter and search to determine if they were there or not.

A closeup of the setup.

The first group of ladies entered along the right edge (from the point of view of my pictures). Daisy Jane (in the yellow skirt) moved up quickly and took cover next to one of the buildings. Calamity Anne lived up to her name; she was further back but took a shot at Tuco on the roof and missed. The shot went wild and hit one of the locals. Not a great start for the ladies.

Tuco was now spotted by three of the ladies - I made some numbered counters to put next to whoever a character was currently spotting.

There was a reasonable amount of gunfire coming his away but he escaped with nothing more than a little shock.

Calamity Anne moved up boldly and inflicted a light wound on Tuco.

Sensibly Tuco backed off out of sight. Below him Clem Vernon popped out from behind the building and popped off two full shotgun loads as Calamity Anne, causing her some shock and a light wound.

Unfortunately Clem also accidentally hit another bystander. Neither group was endearing themselves to the locals.

A wider view of the action. 'Scar' Johnson was now in position by the shacks bottom-right. Angel Eyes had boldly moved to the plaza (centre of the picture). Tuco was still skulking on the roof. 

Daisy Jane had entered the building at the top right and discovered that the jewels weren't there. To the right of the building is Belle Starr with her shotgun and chicken. Two more ladies - Miss Daisy and Miss Peach were tucked behind the central building (with the yellow counter).

Angle Eyes scooted to the right and downed Pearl Hart. 

Miss Peach appeared from behind a building ...

... and Scar shot her stone-dead.

Things were going rapidly downhill for the ladies - Angel Eyes killed Calamity Anne with a single shot.

Clem got into a shotgun shootout with Belle Starr. Lots of shooting saw no damage on either side, but a certain amount of diving for cover.

Miss Daisy entered a building and found the jewels!

Scar rushed up to the window looking to shoot her, but she got the jump on him and did a runner out of the door and down the other side of the building. Scar clambered through the window and chased her, getting in a shot but missing.

However at that point the ladies had to take a morale test, and ran for the hills, abandoning their loot.

The ladies were unlucky that two of their group were taken down by instant kills rather than simply being wounded. Their third loss - Pearl Hart - was wounded and simply ran out of action dice, which puts them out of the game.

This writeup is brief; I'm sure I missed several incidents. Everyone felt they'd had a good time and the game ran pretty smoothly in a couple of hours of play. We had around 45 minutes of setup and explanation as well. 

As for the names - I've learned that after putting together a list of figures people are going to use that it's best to name them as well.