Spelunking we will go

The following is the third scene from my Six Gun Sound Campaign.  The Diltons have holed up in a cave and a Posse has been dispatched to exact justice and return Silus’ money.

                              Rep         Toughness        Sand

Ben Dilton                 5                 4                   5

James Dilton             4                 4                   5

Zach Dilton                4                 4                   3

Emma                       3                 4                  3

Howard                     5                 4                   5

Frank                        4                 5                   4

Henry                        3                 3                   5

Jim-Bob, Edward, Chun-ho & Jonathon     3           3           3

Inside cave

“This sure is a spooky feeling cave, Ben”, Dylan stated nervously.  “The rocks seem to be giving off a slight glow.”

“Find your spine and get ready as we don’t know if we lost the Posse or not!  Without the glow we wouldn’t be able to see nothing in here would we?”, Ben replied harshly, as he made his way outside to look over the horses. 

“I’ll come with you and see what I can find in the stagecoach" Zack quipped.

Paradice Saloon

“Boss, we have the Diltons holed up in a cave west from here.  What do you want us to do now?” asked James.  As Silus opened a drawer in his desk he replied “Form a mob and go hunt them down.  Here take this, it might help.  If you need to, throw this and it will help.” He then proceeded to hand over something wrapped in rags.

James then left the Saloon and started to organise the Posse.  After 15 minutes all he could raise were 4 of the townsfolk, one of which was Henry, the brother of the man who was killed by the Diltons during their first foray into town.  Thoughts of revenge filled his every waking moment and he jumped at the chance to get revenge.  As the group were about to leave, Silus approached, “James, inform the group where the Diltons have gone to ground so they can meet up with Howard and Frank.  I need you to do something special like for me.”  With this he led James back into the Saloon and the townsfolk rode off west.

An hour later the Posse arrives at the cave and after giving Howard the parcel, they split up into two groups, with each hiding behind a large rock formation.  Outside Ben and Zack can be seen tending the horses and stagecoach.

Turn 1. (3,2)

Frank’s group move up to take cover at the edge of the formation his group is behind.  He spies Ben, draws his pistol and takes a snap shot at Ben.  Ben looks up, and with a blur of motion draws his gun and fires back hitting Frank in the gun-hand, causing a wound.  After a brief fire-fight, Ben drops to the ground with a nasty chest wound.

Howard’s group also take cover in their rock formation.

Zach, having heard the gunshots, keeps low and runs to his brother and drags him back in to the cave.

Turn 2 (2,1)

Cautiously the two groups move towards the cave, weary of being shot at by unseen Diltons.  Henry decides that it is taking too long, now that revenge is so close, so moves faster than his group.

Zach places Ben just inside the cave and moves further in and takes up a defensive position.

Turn 3 (4, 6)

Due to Frank’s hand wound, his group stop and wait for him to bandage it as best as possible while, Howard’s group moves closer.

Turn 4 (2,1)

Henry moves as fast as he can and rushes into the cave while Frank and Edward move forward.  As Henry’s eyes adjust to the darkness, he cannot see a thing when suddenly a deafening BOOM!! is heard and Henry falls to the ground with buckshot in his chest and head.  As his limp body drops to the ground, a low, barely audible moaning and screaming emits from the very walls and all in the cave, go white with fear (as a result of this, while in the cave all characters have a –1 to their sand).

The remaining Diltons shiver and look at each other with worried expressions.

Turn 5 (3,5)

“Everyone, wait until I give the word, then proceed to enter the cave.”  As Howard says this, he steps forward , unwraps the parcel Henry gave him and throws the object into the cave entrance.  Edward catches a glimpse of it just before it enters the cave and wonders why Howard threw a bottle.

Howard counts to three and yells, “GO!”  As the remaining Posse members make their way through the cave entrance, the mouth is starting to fill up with smoke.

Dylan is the only Dilton that has a chance of responding to this but due to the smoke, he cough and wheezes and misses his opportunity.

Turn 6 (5,2)

As the entrance is stilled filled with smoke, the Posse wait as they don’t want to rush in to God-knows-what, except for Howard who puts another bullet into Ben Dilton.  As he does this the glow in the cave grows slightly brighter.

The Diltons move further away from the smoke and now the smoke dissipates enough to where LOS can be drawn but makes it still hard to shoot.

 

Turn 7 (1,2)

Dylan can see vague targets in the smoke haze but is now out of range with his shotgun while Zach cannot see anyone at all.

As Howard orders Jim-bob to go deeper in to the cave, he places his hand on his pistol to give more ‘weight’ to the order.  With a quick glance at Howard’s hip, Jim-Bob rushes throw the haze and goes deeper inwards.  A wicked smile forms on Dylan’s mouth as he sees Jim-Bob come closer and as he raises his shotgun to fire, he clasps at his head as the moaning starts to reverberate through his skull.  Jim-Bob fires at Dylan and misses.  The fear of being shot at pulls Dylan from his agony and he engages Jim-Bob in a brief fire-fight which results in Dylan ducking back for cover.

Edward advances further in and engages Zach in a fire-fight with the final result being Edward dead as a bullet hits an artery in his left leg.

Mere seconds after Edward’s death, the rocks start emitting a brighter, yet somehow deathly glow and the temperature within the cave drops dramatically (giving each character a –1 T)

Jonathon starts to panic but instead of flight, he decides fighting is the better option and charges at Dylan, screaming and frothing at the mouth.  Dylan seeing this, decides that flight is the better option and throws his weapons on the ground and surrenders.  Chun-ho is sent to look after him.  Emma has also had enough and decides that this cave is just way to spooky and runs out of the cave.  Howard lets her go, as her punishment can wait. 

“Zach Dilton, this is you last chance, throw down your ‘irons’ and surrender, otherwise the only way you will be leavin’ here is feet first.”
”Come and make me”, Zack screams and shoots blindly in to the cave.

Howard and Frank move forward and Howard moves in to Zacks line of sight.  Zach raises his pistol, but Howard is quicker and fires 3 shots and Zach is hit in the hand and chest and slumps to the ground with his life blood spilling to the cave floor.  The wind picks up suddenly, and almost rips Howard and Frank off their feet then just as suddenly stops.

Howard moves towards Dylan and demands”Where is the money?  If you tell me I will spare you.” 

“It is over there in the boxes”, Dylan whimpers.  Frank moves over and checks the boxes.

“It’s all here,” Frank yells after a quick glance.

As Howards raises his gun, Dylan sobs “I thought I was going to be spared?”

“Yes, you are being spared a slow death!” Howard states and then repeatedly pulls the trigger and filling Zach’s chest with lead. 

As Frank and Howard leave the cave, a blindingly bright flash emanates from the walls and Zach’s body seems to move in the gloom.

Cthulhu is summoned to Paradice

Some sneaky cultists have managed to summon Cthulhu (well at least the horrorclix version anyway).

Gutshot - GenCon Oz practice run

Last week , when back in Bundaberg, I ran a Gutshot game as a practice run for when I run my Gutshot event at GenCon Oz this year in September.  The events I am running are demo games of the rules, with all those who participate entered in to a raffle drawn after the second session on both the Saturday and Sunday.  Currently I have two rule books and 2 Arnica buildings as prizes (Thanks to Mike at Hawgleg Publishing, the authors of Gutshot and the owners of Arnica Real Estate)

I was happy with the way the game ran and it did show me a couple of things that I need to be aware of when I run the actual events.  These are:  Paint up a couple more miniatures, have more copies of the 5-8 Target Number character types and the final and probably most important is that all characters will have a pistol, even if the model doesn’t have one.

Here are some photos of the night (Flickr seems to have changed the way do things and I cant seem to get the pictures to work properly, so here are some from my computer, apologies for them being small)

 

Here are the wanna-be gun fighters – evil lookin’ bunch if you ask me, a short rope and a long drop is too good for the lot of ‘em, if you ask me.

This came about as one player(Britt, second from the left in the above photo) chose two characters with shot guns only.  The sheriff ran down and unloaded both barrells into a bounty hunter and rolled double ones.  This meant that a fumble resulted and the worst result was rolled and the shotgun blew up in his hands, leaving him face the bounty hunter and cowboy, weaponless.  After these 2 had their next turn each, the sheriff was left with only 1 hit point left.  Britt’s next rolls were just as bad as his gambler (priest mini) then came down to assist his comrade and unloaded both barrels of his shot gun and then rolled double ones again, luckily he was ‘lucky’(he had the trait lucky) and rerolled, this resulted in the slaying of the bounty hunter and also the accidental killing of the sheriff as he was caught in the blast radius and took the final point of damage needed to kill him.

Set up of the four groups

 

The following pictures are at the end of turn 1

End of turn 2

The game only lasted about 3 hours and we only had the 2 turns.  All enjoyed the game.

A fast coach out of town

Apologies for the lack of activity lately but I have had prac and exams that have taken up a huge amount of time.  I have now managed to find some time for a quick game in the continuing story of Paradise and the Diltons (it helps that holidays have now started) using THW Six Gun Sound: Blaze of Glory.

Pursuit.

The Diltons have managed to get away with $13000 from their robbery of the bank in our last adventure. Currently they are on a stage coach and are fleeing the posse that is rapidly catching up to them. The sheriff and deputy were injured in the escape so are unable to pursue themselves but the posse has been formed by men under the employ of Silus Smith, owner of the Pairadice Saloon and power behind the town. He believes that the money stolen was his and so has taken this personally. As a result, he formed a quick posse and gave them orders to get back his money or at least report back as to where the Diltons have holed up.

The quality of the stagecoach is 5 (due to the team leader otherwise the rest of the horses are counted as quality 4, with horsemanship of 3. This 3 may seem low but the Diltons have very little experience handling a stage coach. This would be a HUGE learning experience for them)

The Posse stats : horses quality, horsemanship.

Howard:5, 5, James: 5,4, Frank: 4,4.

Under the rules of a chase, activations are rolled each turn but unless a double 1 is rolled this roll will play not part in the game. I have added a rule that if a double 2-6 is rolled, the Diltons have found a place to hole up and will hopefully either outpace their pursuers or have a good place for a last stand.

Each turn will be made up of four sets of rolls. One for each member of the posse and one for the stagecoach. This game is not played on a table but can be represented by 10 bands drawn up with the lead runner on band 1, while the posse start on band 6. I have used my village boards from WWG and miniatures.

Activation 1 roll 3:5

Stagecoach passes 1D6 on chase table which then means that they have to make a horsemanship roll. It then passes 2d6 on so counts as pass 2D6 on the chase table and so does not lose any ground.

Howard: Pass 2d6 so he keeps up but does not gain on the coach, James: passes 2D6 and he also keeps pace and Frank: passes 1d6 then 2d6 for horsemanship roll so counts 2d6 on chase as well so keeps pace also.

Activation 2 4:6

Stagecoach: pass 2d6 and keeps going at a steady pace.

Howard: passes 2d6 and keeps up with the stagecoach, James: passes 1d6 so rolls on the horsemanship table and passes 0d6 so his horse has stumbled and this means that he falls back one band and Frank passes 2d6 so he keeps up as well.

Activation 3 1:6

Stagecoach passes 1d6 on chase so rolls on horsemanship table and passes 0d6 so falls back 1 band and it careens out of control but then Zach Dilton manages to get control but as a result has allowed the posse to get closer.

Howard: passes 2d6 so is keeping pace and due to the stagecoach slowing has managed to close the gap by 1 band, James passes 1d6 then passes 2d6 on the table so counts as pass 2d6 on chase table and keeps pace while Frank passes 1d6 then passes 2d6 so no change.

Activation 4 6:5

Stagecoach passes 2d6 so no change.

Howard: passes 2d6 so again no change, James passes 1d6 then passes 0d6 on horsemanship so falls back 1 band and Frank passes 2d6 so no change for him as well.

Activation 5 5:6

Stagecoach passes 2d6 so has managed to keep pace but cannot seem to lose the posse.

Howard: passes 1d6 then 2d6 so no change, he cannot gain any more ground but at least is not losing it either, James: passes 2d6 and keeps up, James: also passes 2d6 so no change.

 

Act 6 2,5

Stagecoach passes 1d6 only and then passes 2d6 on the horsemanship table so counts as passing 2d6 on the chase table so maintains it pace.

Howard: passes 1d6 then 2d6, see above so manages to maintain his pace as well, James: passes 2d6 so maintain his pace while Frank: only passes 1d6 then 1d6 but as his horsemanship is equal to his horse quality so no change as he manages to control his trusty steed.

Activation 7 5:1

Stagecoach passes 0d6 then pass 0d6 as the horses are getting tired as they are not used to such a fast pace for an extended period of time and so it falls back 1 band.

Howard: passes 2d6 so maintains pace, James: passes 2d6 as well so no change also and Frank: passes 1d6 then passes only 1d6 but as his quality equals horsemanship there is no change .

Activation 8 4:4 (Doubles are rolled)

At this point in the chase the brothers decide that they had better start looking out for somewhere to make a stand (hopefully not their last, they hope), as the horses are starting to tire and the last thing they want right now is for the Stagecoach to crash. They manage to spot a cave and after disembarking, all 4 hurry themselves into the cave and quietly say a quick pray to which ever God is listening (they aren’t the religious types but feel that one of the different ones they have heard about may be listening).

The posse cautiously makes its way to a clump of trees and while James goes back to town to get extra men, the other two make sure that no one leaves the cave.

The next mission will be the posse trying to retrieve the money and the Diltons (dead or alive).

Paradise 1st National Bank robbed in broad daylight

This is my second battle report using Six Gun Sound and it features the Dilton Brothers as they attempt to rob the 1^st National Bank of Paradise. I was going to do a playtest of my Superhero rules but was inspired to paint up my bank during the week so ended up playing this instead. I was going to play using the robbery scenario in the rules but as my eldest kid (8yrs) wanted to play so I just made up my own little scenario around it.

The key players are as follows:

            Rep Toughness Sand

Sheriff Withers: 5     4     4

Deputy Jack:   4     4     4

Ben Dilton: 5 4 5

Zack Dilton: 4 4 5

Dylan Dilton: 4 4 3

Civilians: 3 3 3

 

As one of my sons was playing I have modified the reps to make things a bit more interesting for him. The civilians were given an activation dice and when activated, would move 2d6” in a random direction determined by a GW scatter dice with a hit meaning they would stand still.

Turn 1

Law (L) 6, Baddies (B) 2, Civilians (Civ) 5

Earlier in the week the Diltons met up with their younger brother, Dylan who had decided to seek his fortune out west. Happy to be together again, they made their plans over a few bottles of the barman’s finest. They would enter Paradise in broad daylight and make their way to the 1^st National Bank and would take as much as they could. Dylan had journeyed riding down with the last cattle drive and new that the Bank would be full of cash. They made their way to an alley just across from the bank and looked around. There were a few civilians walking around but no lawmen were in sight. Ben and Zach ran across to the middle of the road, while Dylan had noticed the stage coach was in town and who he would need to kill so he could steal it and use it as a getaway vehicle (This was my son’s idea as he was playing the Diltons and was quite intent on making a name forhimself in blood). As they were crossing the road, events took a turn for the worse as a civilian had come out of the bank and recognised the brothers. The cry went out “The Diltons are here, call the sheriff!”

Turn 2

L2, B4, C6

Sheriff Withers makes his way out of the rear of his office, but his deputy is far more gung-ho. As Jack runs out the front door he immediately gets involved in a fire-fight with Zack. Zack had seen the deputy leave and had waved a ‘friendly’ lead-filled good morning. The resulting gunfight, as Ben eagerly in, with Jack taking a leg wound and having his movement halved as a result and ducking for cover behind the water trough in front of the Saloon and Zach being hit in the Guts but only resulting in a scratch and Ben unharmed but ducking for cover behind some containers.

Turn 3

L1, B3, C2

Ben gets up from his cover and as he enters the bank, he yells “Give me all of your money or I will kill y’all.” Zack had taken umbrage at the civilian that had yelled out in fear, it must have been fear as he was rotted to the spot, and decided to make him pay. With a quick flick of his wrist and a pull on the trigger, the civilian fell dead with a bullet hole in the back of his head as Zach enters the bank.

Jack gets to his knees, and using the trough for cover, shoots at Dylan. The only thing that was hit was Dylan’s courage and he fled the town, with yells of “I’ll go ready the horses, fellas’.

By now, some of the civilians had managed to get over their initial hesitation and started to run for cover or in some case just blindly ran.

Turn 4

L3, B3, C6

Sheriff Withers moves over to the deputy just in case he needs help but Jack indicates he doesn’t even though Withers can see the leg wound. By now, the Diltons have the safe open and are starting to fill their bags with money.

Turn 5

L5, B6, C2

Withers makes his back over to the corner of a building while the stumbled forward. At this point the banker becomes unruly with assisting the brothers empty the safe while more civilians move around in a panic.

Turn 6

L4, B3, C3

Sheriff Withers moves up the hotel’s veranda, using the stage coach as cover. A brief discussion occurs within the bank and a quick blow to the face of the banker gets him assisting the Diltons again.

Even though the civilians are able to move they mostly stay put.

Turn 7

L5, B5, C4

Zack leaves the bank first, heading towards the stage coach. Withers opens fire but misses with a snap shot and then goes down and unconscious with a bad wound to his right arm. With a whoop, Ben exits the bank, runs to the stage coach, jumps up and grabs the reins and starts to move the coach.

Turn 8

L2, B2, C4

Jack move sup to the corner of the nearest building but tries to keeps out of sight. While Zack drives the stage coach, Ben notices Jack and after a short fire-fight, Jack moves further around the corner with a scratch to his right arm (by now my son has decided the girl on the corner is the girlfriend of Zack).

Turn 9

L1, B4, C4

Zach keeps the coach moving and calls out to his girl, who has been standing on the porch of the saloon, obviously on watch as she hasn’t moved all encounter. As the coach moves past the corner of the building, Jack raises his pistol but is dropped with a gut wound from Ben.

They stop briefly to pick up Abbey and they make their way out of Paradise with pistols firing. They manage to get away with $13000.