Mandingo the Sheriff

It is Summer 1876, and our hero Mandingo is now Sheriff in the tiny town of Sick Dog's Paw in Wyoming. It's not quite clear why he has not returned to his Ranger duties - perhaps something to do with the ambush by Apaches of a patrol that he should have been with. Be that as it may, he is now the Law in the Paw.
In his first serious encounter, Mandingo had to intervene in a dispute between two Greenhorns, one of whom was threatening the other. Mandingo teamed up with the innocent party, and they went out to search the town. The bad guy jumped out and there was an exchange of shots, then he ran into Daffodil's Place and emerged on the balcony above the street. Mandingo ran into the corral opposite and fired, causing the opponent to duck back. However he emerged again and fired at the other greenhorn on the boardwalk below, causing him to retreat. Mandingo then used his Fast and Agile abilities to race up the rear stairs and into the building, firing out the window and putting his enemy out of the fight.

Mandingo about to fire out of the window and end the fight

 The next fight was a classic one on one shootout. A cowboy with a lot of experience (5-5-5) took on Mandingo. Neither man Flinched, so the draw went ahead - the cowboy rolling five dice and Mandingo six. He scored three successes to his opponent's one, so he rolled for shooting damage, causing a gut shot and winning the battle.

Mandingo shows his cool at High Noon

Mandingo had recruited five deputies, and they were involved for the first time when a group of seven drunken cowboys started causing trouble in Rogan's Bar. Two deputies (Deke and Ernie) were at the other end of town - Mandingo and the other three gathered outside the bar.

The lawmen prepare to break up the rowdy gang in Rogan's

Mandingo went in first and approached the nearest cowboy, asking him to leave quietly. On the Rep roll he passed only one out of two, so the cowboy started a fist fight. His Rep was 3 so he rolled that many dice against Mandingo's five. Mandingo won the first round by one, meaning a "Flurry of blows", depriving his opponent of one D6 in the next round. Down to two dice the cowboy again lost by one, another Flurry of Blows. Not surprisingly with only one dice left he lost by three in the next exchange, and that was that, he was carried out.

Mandingo tackles the first cowboy (in the blue shirt)

 Mandingo now approached another cowpoke, and this time when he invited him to leave quietly, the drunk complied, unwilling to risk a beating. This also caused two others close by to walk away quietly.

Mandingo approaches the last three drunks

While Abe escorted the three cowboys away, Bert and Charlie entered the bar, ready for trouble. Mandingo now tackled the most dangerous cowboy, with a 5 rep, with two others close by. However once more our hero passed both dice, and the leader left peacefully, followed by both his sidekicks. Mandingo had defused the situation without having to draw his gun

The leader of the cowboys decides not to risk the fight.

Proper Shootouts

As I hinted in the previous post, I decided that playing a battle against 28 Apaches was not what I wanted from my Wild West game, whatever the dice suggested. So it turned out that Mandingo was sick when that patrol set off to the isolated blockhouse in the Wyoming desert, and Spring 1876 instead found him in the tiny frontier town of Sick Dog's Paw.
The first encounter was a Gunfight type 1 (G-1) which means a one-on-one shootout in the classic High Noon fashion. Rolling my opponent and the location I found that Mandingo had been challenged by an Outlaw in the Saloon. The outlaw had taken more redeye bourbon than was good for him, I assume. Rolling on the NPC table I found that the outlaw had a rep of 4, one less than Mandingo.
The shootout starts with a Draw test - each side rolls a number of D6 equal to their Rep, trying to get 1,2,3 as successes. As a Gunfighter Mandingo gets an extra die, so he rolled 6, Jake (the outlaw) rolled 4. Jake rolled just one success, while Mandingo got 4 - so he had three more successes. This means that the victor has "Got the Drop", and normally that gives the slower party a roll to see if he surrenders, or tries to carry on with the draw at a disadvantage. However Gunfighters (and outlaws) are different - if they get the drop they don't mess around with anything as chivalrous as letting the other fellow surrender, they just shoot. Furthermore, if any of their dice have rolled 3, as was the case here, then the opponent is Obviously Dead (which means what it says). So Mandingo emptied his gun into the upstart (and now late) Jake, and returned to his drink.

Later, we had another gunfight, and again we rolled a G-1. This time it was outside in the street, and the opponent was another Gunfighter. Indeed this would be a tougher test - rolling for the NPC we found that Mandingo faced an opponent with the same Rep (5) and Toughness (4) and a higher Sand (5).
So both sides rolled six dice in the Draw Test (Rep of 5 plus one for being a Gunfighter), and both scored two successes. This meant that they had both drawn and fired with no effect, and the game now proceeds to "normal" turns. In addition anyone who rolled a 1 on any of their dice would have emptied their gun - and this applied to Mandingo.
In the first turn they rolled for initiative, and both scored 4. A tie means that neither side can fire or move, but they can reload. This of course was exactly what Mandingo needed, and he duly did so.
Now on even terms, they rolled again for initiative. Mandingo scored 6, his opponent (Clint) scored 2. So Mandingo had the initiative, but it was not as simple as that. The winner can only take actions with characters whose Rep is at least as high as the initiative roll. In this case, with a roll of 6 and Mandingo's Rep of 5, that meant he could not take action, and it passed to Clint.
Clint now fired, two shots with his pistol. Adding his Rep to a single D6 he needed to score at least 8 for a hit, but two 2's meant two misses. Mandingo now needed to take a "Been Shot At" test, and being a Star (i.e. a main character) he was allowed to choose his reaction - so he chose to fire back.
As before there were two shots, adding Mandingo's Rep of 5 to a single die roll - and in this case adding another one because Mandingo has the Crackshot ability. He rolled a 6, and the total of 11+ meant that he could choose the hit location. He picked the head, but Clint had a "Been Hit" test with two rolls against his Toughness and passed them both, so it was just a graze. Mandingo rolled again, and again scored 11+. This time he picked the gut as the hit location, and Clint only passed one of his two rolls. That meant that he was out of action, and Mandingo had won.
After the fight Mandingo rolled for possible stat advancement and by scoring a 6 hs added one to his Sand score (Sand is effectively Nerve, or Coolness - a combination of courage and quick decision making).
My verdict on these fights? - "now this is more like it". Both of these engagements felt as they should, as simulations of the somewhat cinematic scenarios. In the first a foolish outlaw challenged the gunslinger and it was all over in a second - one roll of the dice, literally. In the second fight it was closer, two evenly matched opponents exchanged rapid fire until someone found the killing shot. All quick and clean - this is the sweet spot for these rules.

Law of the Gun

At Salute in the spring I picked up a copy of the Dead Man's Hand rules for the Wild West, and also a couple of the very nice 4Ground buildings released to match the rule set. I played a few games with these rules, but I never quite felt happy with them. The card-driven play is very clever, but there are too many special cases, it feels as if it is all chrome; also there isn't a very strong campaign/career mode - the Schemes mechanism from Legends is again quite clever, but it just didn't do it for me.

The buildings, on the other hand, are excellent. They are the pre-coloured laser cut mdf style which is increasingly popular. 4Ground have a wide variety of ranges, different scales, periods and genres, and I have made a few 15mm WW2, but I think this material really works best with Wild West buildings. It is after all wood, which is exactly what these buildings are made of. The mdf isn't quite convincing for brick, concrete or steel structures, but for wooden planks it's perfect. I also very much enjoy the process of actually building the models - they are very detailed, and the way they have been designed to use the pre-coloured mdf is very ingenious. There are lots of little features - opening doors and windows, options to build models with or without damage (or even adaptable during a game), pictures, notices and posters. The instructions are very detailed and clear, and while it is PVA glue I was reminded very much of making Airfix models many decades ago.

I came back from Salute and bought a 3' x 2' board, and landscaped it to form the base of a small Western town - one rough road and a T junction, a small pool and various bits of scrub. It was nice to do some realistic terrain for a change - for most wargaming I tend towards the representational, since the terrain is never in scale with the figures. However for 1-1 skirmish games it is different, what you see on the table is what's actually there - a house is a house, a tree (or a cactus) is a tree or a cactus.

So I was looking for some rules to use for encounters in my small but growing hamlet (Sick Dog's Paw). At Fiasco in October I had bought Chris Peers' rules, Law of the Gun, and I decided to get them out and have a go. I have to say I wasn't terribly excited with the actual games - reading them through they seemed quite promising, but in play they didn't quite work. The key mechanism for activation, shooting and a number of other things is rolling a certain number of D6s and trying to score 6s. A group of up to four figures rolls 3 (Townsfolk) 4 (Fighters) or 5 (Gunfighters) dice, and they all get an action for every 6. One problem here is that nearly half the time, four D6s will produce no scores of 6. And then all the members of that group can do nothing except fire wildly. Even professionals with 5 D6 will fail to get an action 40% of the time. And having a whole group acting, or not acting, all at the same time seems a bit unnatural in a 1-1 skirmish game. Maybe this would work better with slightly larger sides, with several groups there would be less chance of several turns going by with nothing happening.

I ran a small test fight, with a gang of four fighters on each side. I made an error with one gang, leaving the rifleman back to shoot while the other three moved forward - that meant the gang lost one D6, and they found it even harder to take an action. The two sides shuffled forward and met on either side of a corral, where they blazed away for some time. Eventually two guys ran forward round a corner in the open, weren't hit, and then got a gut shot on an opponent, killing him. At this point the enemy gang broke morale, and fled.

Chris Peers is a very experienced rules writer, and I am sure that for the right sort of fight these would work well, but they did not give me the feel I was looking for. After a bit of reading around the forums, I lighted on Six Gun Sound: Blaze of Glory by Two Hour Wargames. I have heard a lot about these people - I guess Nuts is their best-known product - but I have never bought any of their rules. Thanks to the glory of the internet, $10 through Paypal meant that I had a pdf of the rules in my hand within minutes. They look very interesting - lots of content (well over 100 pages), a very different turn and initiative sequence, and plenty of opportunities for careers, character development and so on. I'm going to give them a go soon to see how they work for me.

The Green gang - Jed, Jake, Josh and Jim

The Reds - Tex, Ted, Tyrone and Tony

An overview of Sick Dog's Paw

View down the main street from the east...

And the west

The corral where most of the action took place

The Red gang strung out to keep within 6" of each other

The Greens have bunched up to have a better chance of rolling an Action

In the distance Tyrone lies dead, while the rest of the Reds head for the hills

The final scene at the corral