Six Gun Sound Scenario 01 - Gunfight at Stillwater

Finally I present my first ever Wild West batrep. This has been a long time in the coming but is something I have been dying to do ever since I started blogging. It has taken me a long time to build up my collection of Wild West buildings, figures and scenery in 28-32mm scale. Now my collection is of such a size that this batrep is possible. I am using the Six Gun Sound: Blaze of Glory rulebook with a few changes and additions from the upgraded, simpler and faster to play sequel. I much prefer the original version because it is so much more detailed.

This is my town set up, primarily using buildings from 4Ground. Now I know they are expensive, but to me the price is worth it because they are incredibly detailed and best of all, they come pre-painted. This is a huge time saver, however, I do paint the edges to blend in with the appropriate colour and to hide the dark wood. This is a tip I learnt from making my card buildings - always paint your edges.

The town of Stillwater, New Mexico is close to the border with Mexico. It has a main street running from south at the bottom of this photo to north at the top. A side street runs east and west.
As I said, most of my buildings are from 4Ground, but the one exception is the sheriff's office and jail, which I purchased from TT Combat. It came unpainted. Painting it wasn't too hard but it was time consuming. It did help me in that I used coloured card on the interior walls and I stuck black, fine-grade sandpaper on the roof.

This view of the crossroads shows from left to right at the top of the photo, a two-storey building under construction, the undertakers and across the street, the hardware store. A chuck wagon stands outside the store. This was a plastic construction kit in 1/48th scale that I bought many years ago. I don't know which company made it, but I do recall it was a Japanese company. Sadly, it did not come with horses.

At the western side of the main street is the only two-storey house in the town, with its family of four standing outside. Next to it is the land office and at the corner of the crossroads is Miss Kitty's Hotel, run by Kitty Trent. The name hotel is a bit misleading as the establishment is actually a brothel.

At the other side of the crossroads is Rogan's Bar, run by the strong-willed and tough miss Cathie Rogan. The upper floor is a bunkhouse for travellers looking for a cheap place to stay overnight. Next to the bar is a single-storey building under construction. The town is expanding northwards.

Here is a view up the side street. The two buildings at the bottom of the picture are single-storey houses for some of the town's residents. Some residents live and sleep in their own establishments.

In the north-east corner of the town is a small lake, from which the town got its name of Stillwater. This wonderful terrain piece came from Wargames Terrain Workshop, and its owner, Dave Stone, kindly painted it for me. I did ask him to and I was thrilled with the result. Dave added a rattlesnake to it, which is such a cool touch! It is only just visible at the top of the lake and directly below the topmost cactus. Note that my glasses are visible to the left of the house. I never noticed that they were there until after I'd posted this picture. Silly me!

The outdoor toilets are card models. The smaller one to the left was produced by World Works Games as part of their TLX Deadfall range. The larger one behind the sheriff's office was produced by Stoelzel's Structures as part of their Fatal Frontier set. I built two of each for my town.

And so we come to the scenario itself. I played a simple Gunfight encounter (p.35 of Blaze of Glory) and this was GF-2 where one side is outnumbered by the other. Obviously the encounter took place in town. The two female bandidas are after the four man outlaw gang after they shot and killed a good friend of theirs.

In this encounter the characters face off at the shortest effective range of all the characters involved. That was 8" for two of the outlaws. Although technically this is outlaws verses outlaws I called it outlaws verses bandidas, because the two females are Mexican outlaws known as bandidas. Note that males are known as bandidos.

The two females are from left to right Sara Sandoval and Maria Alvarez and both are Rep:5 Gunman Bandida Stars. Yes, I know this goes against the rules that a gang can only have one Star leader but I'm using a house rule that allows me two Stars as leaders. Sara has the Attributes Marksman, Lucky and Knife Fighter and she is armed with two Colt .45 Pistols and four Throwing Knives. Maria has the Attributes  Marksman, Lucky and Resilient and is armed with two Colt .45 Pistols. These figures are from my Shadows of Brimstone collection. Maria is appropriately enough, a Mexican Bandida and Sara is actually a Bounty Hunter figure.

The four outlaws whom Maria and Sara are after are a mixed bunch. From left to right are Benito Zedilla, a Rep:4 Gunman Bandido Grunt, Andrew Calder, a Rep:4 Gunman Bounty Hunter Grunt, Thomas McKay, a Rep:4 Gunman Gunslinger Star and leader of this gang, and "Wild Willy" Wilkes, a Rep:4 Cowboy Mountain Man Grunt. Zedilla is armed with a 12 Gauge Scattergun and has the Attributes Marksman and Dumbass. Calder is armed with two Colt .45 Pistols and has the Attributes Marksman and Initiative. McKay is armed with a Colt .45 Pistol and a .44 Derringer Pistol and has the Attributes Marksman, Nerves of Steel and Tough. Wilkes is armed with a Springfield .58 Rifle and a Bowie Knife and has the Attributes Brawler and Marksman. All four figures were produced by EM4 Miniatures.

Before the combat begins both sides must roll 2d6 verses their Sand scores for the Flinch test. Stars can choose their results, so Maria, Sara and McKay automatically passed 2d6 and could draw as normal. Zedilla and Calder also passed 2d6 but Wilkes only passed 1d6 and Flinched, giving him a -1d6 penalty on the Draw table.
Next, everyone rolled a number of d6 equal to their Rep for the Draw and applied appropriate modifiers. All Gunmen (that's everyone except Wilkes) got a +1d6 bonus and counted passes on 1 to 4 instead of 1 to 3 (this rule appears in the new version of Six Gun Sound and I liked it so much that I used it. Cowboys pass on rolls of 1 to 3 and Townsfolk on rolls of 1 to 2.). Zedilla suffered a -1d6 penalty for drawing a weapon that wasn't a pistol, derringer, knife or tomahawk. The same rule applied to Wilkes who decided to use his Rifle instead of his Knife. Finally, Wilkes suffered another -1d6 penalty for Flinching. Wilkes would only count passes on a 1 to 3 because he was a Cowboy, not a Gunman. So the results were as follows from highest to lowest -
Maria rolled 6d6 and passed 5.
Sara rolled 6d6 and passed 4.
Calder rolled rolled 5d6 and passed 3.
McKay rolled 5d6 and passed 2.
Wilkes rolled 2d6, and passed 2.
Zedilla rolled 3d6 and passed 1.

Shooting was carried out from highest result to lowest with ties being resolved simultaneously. When a character fires, it targets an opponent. That opponent must return fire. Each character must be targetted once before another character can be targetted twice. Maria went first and using her Marksman Attribute which allowed her to roll twice on the Ranged Combat table, counting the best result, but only for single shots. She fired once at Calder rolling a 5 and a 2. The 5 gave her a score of 10 because you add the dice roll to the character's Rep score. A 10 counted as a hit. Rolling on the Shooting Damage table, she rolled a 9, which was a hit in the gut. If hit by a Pistol, Carbine, Scattergun at 3", Shotgun at 6", Rifle, Buffalo Gun or Tomahawk the character was Out Of Fight, otherwise, the character rolled on the I'm Hit table. So Calder measured his length on the ground and took no further part in the fight.

Next up Sara fired once at McKay and like Maria, she used her Marksman Attribute. She rolled a 6 and a 3. The 6 gave her a score of 11 - a hit and she got to choose the result on the Shooting Damage table for rolling so high. She chose result 5 - hit in the head and Obviously Dead. With McKay being a Star I rolled for his Star Power Advantage to reduce the damage he'd taken. He rolled 4d6 for his Rep score and needed results of 1 to 3. Unfortunately for him I rolled high with rolls of 6, 6, 5 and 4 - all misses and the two 6s reduced his Star Power Rep to 2. I could have used his Cheating Death Advantage, which would have allowed him to be removed from the table to a place of safety, but that would have reduced his Rep by one level to Rep:3. I decided not to bother because for narrative purposes it made sense that he got killed.

Next to fire was Wilkes. He fired his Rifle, which could only target one character per turn. He shot at Sara and using his Marksman Attribute rolled a 3 and a 3, giving him scores of 7 and 7 - both a miss.
Zedilla fired his Scattergun at Maria and it could hit three targets but Zedilla concentrated all three shots on Maria. He rolled 5,4 and 1, giving him results of 9, 8 and 5. The 9 was a hit, the 8 misses because it was the second or higher target, and the 5 was an obvious miss. When firing a Scattergun you roll twice on the Shooting Damage table and count both results. He rolled a 4 and a 7 on the Shooting Damage table scoring a hit in the leg and a hit in the gun arm (if this had been at range 3" or less, Maria would have been Out Of Fight but the range was 8") and forcing Maria to roll twice on the I'm Hit table to see what the extent of her injuries are. She rolled 2d6 verses her Toughness of 5 and passed 2d6 twice, scoring a just a scratch result. She remained standing but must take the Being Shot At test.
At this point with everyone still standing and having fired, Reaction Tests had to be taken. I used the Reaction Test tables from the second edition rules. Stars can choose their result so Maria and Sara therefore chose to pass 2d6 verses their Rep and could Return Fire. Zedilla and Wilkes had to roll for Being Shot At and Man Down. They only rolled once but applied the worst result of the two tables. They both passed 2d6 giving them a Return Fire result on the Being Shot At table and a Carry On result on the Man Down table. Therefore they took the Carry On result, which allowed them to act as normal. And yes, this would allow them to Return Fire if they wanted to and more importantly, if they were able to, because Maria and Sara were about to Return Fire.

Maria shot first and once again used her Marksman Attribute to fire once at Zedilla. I should point out that Marksman is a Class Ability that all Gunmen characters receive. She rolled a 5 and a 2, giving her scores of 10 and 7. Obviously, she took the 10, which was a hit. Rolling on the Shooting Damage table she scored a 9. Zedilla was hit in the gut and was Out Of Fight.

Next it was Sara's turn to shoot. She used her Marksman Attribute to fire once at Wilkes with her Colt .45 Pistol. She rolled a 6 and a 1, giving her scores of 11 and 6. The 11 was an excellent result as it allowed her to choose the result on the Damage table without having to roll for it. She chose result 12 - hit in the chest and Obviously Dead.

And so the Gunfight at Stillwater came to a bloody end with the four outlaws lying dead and dying in the dirt. Maria and Sara had avenged their friend and they left town for further adventures. Neither increased in Reputation.
Conclusion
I played this game on a 4' by 3' table and I didn't think the buildings I had would fill the table. Individually they don't have big footprints but when put together, I was surprised at how much space they took up. I may have to get a 6' by 4' battle mat for future games as there are still a lot more buildings I want to buy, some of which have much bigger footprints, such as the 4Ground livery stable and corral or the 4Ground bank or the 4Ground Sassy Gal saloon. Playing this certainly gave me food for thought. I also want more scatter terrain, fences and saddled horses with and without riders.
As for the rules, I'm fortunate in being very familiar with the Two Hour Games rule systems. However, Six Gun Sound: Blaze of Glory is different to many other THW games in that it is incredibly detailed. For example, it has rules for hitting various body parts on humans and horses and more detailed rules for cover, horses and wagons. I love this extra level of detail and so I'm a huge fan of this game.
To be honest the game went pretty much the way I thought it would. Maria and Sara had the advantage of higher Reps but the outlaws had the advantage of numbers. Unfortunately for them, they didn't make it count. When Calder and McKay went down, Zedilla and Wilkes could have turned the tide but Wilkes missed and although Zedilla scored a hit on Maria, she shrugged it off. Bad news for them!
I know that this batrep was very rules heavy and that was deliberate. After all, this was my first Six Gun Sound batrep, and I'm sure most of you are unfamiliar with the rules. I would hope that future batreps would be more narrative driven with fewer references to the rules. Now that I have played my first Wild West batrep, you can expect a lot more.

Now then, in my last post I asked you to name the film in which Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz played Sara Sandoval and Maria Alvarez respectively? The answer is Bandidas, a 2006 French/Mexican/American comedy/action Western film directed by Norwegian directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg and produced and written by Luc Besson. It tells the tale of two very different women in late 19th century Mexico who become a bank robbing duo in an effort to combat a ruthless enforcer terrorising their town. It is very much a popcorn movie, not to be taken seriously but it is a lot of fun and Salma and Penelope are so lovable and so beautiful you can't help but like them. Here's some photos of them.

Sara Sandoval and Maria Alvarez played by Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.

Maria teaches Sara how to shoot. She is not so good with a pistol but an expert at knife throwing.

Maria the feisty, poor peasant girl with her twin Colt .45 revolvers.

Sara, pampered daughter of a rich landowner, takes aim with her Colt.45 revolver.

A scene near the end of the film taken after a running battle on a train.

Maria and Sara looking so cute and adorable. Who couldn't fall in love with them?