Draw, Pard

I went over to the Game Parlor last night, and played in a game Harry Morris from the TNGG was running called LEGENDS OF THE OLD WEST. This is the layout below.



We played a modfied HANG 'EM HIGH scenario straight out of the book.

The arrow points at the scaffolding. In this game you either played pro-capital punishment townies or anti-capital punishment crusaders who want to rescue the unforunate wretch being hanged. The nifty part of the scenario was that the people playing the anti-capital punishment folks (trying to rescue the guy being hung) get to hide in the crowd for a while and move around like they were part of the crowd.. players took turns manipulating the crowd so you revealed yourself after a while and you hope you weren't moved too far from the action after you activate. I ran the Lady's Temperance Society.. my iron jawed angels really mixed it up with the local lynch mob. My pistol specialist, Two-Gunned Annie, mixed it up with a deputy in the street (not the best place to be, as it turned out), because she got moved right behind him when she was randomly moved there disguised as a town drunk. She ended up getting killed in a point blank gun battle. My shotgun toting "Buckshot Mary" did some serious damage AT LAST! taking on the sherrif several times and missing each time (shooting a Mexican at one point). Just as the Sherrif ran after the fleeing prisoner, she caught him in the back with a barrel full of lead, and he went down, ensuring victory. My "posse leader" who had taken a position up on a balcony right above the scaffold, took on the trail boss (one of the opposition leaders). She had something called a "Saturday night special" (derringer) which she missed with, so she decided to get into a melee using her giant bible as a weapon. She knocked him senseless, using her "fame" points to get the hit, but that only lightly wounded him. Melee plays very fast in these rules.



The game was a lot of fun.. like every GW game it boils down to a couple pages that explain just about everthing, and forty pages of high-priced fluff. The game plays in a 1D6 centric system that is VERY similar to regular Warhammer (or more accurately, their Lord of the Rings game), they just added some semi-period lingo to give the game some theme.

Typical stats:
S F St G A W P
5+ 3 3 3 1 1 3

That is, left to right, "Shootin", "Fightin'", "Strength", "Grit", "Attack", "Wounds", and "Pluck".

It's all six sider based, like the parent game. Movement is by standard distances of six and two inches. Firing is checking your gun score against Grit. This gives you a threshhold number that you have to meet or beat, rolling the eponymous six-sider. Consider that an "aimed shot". For something analagous to "blazing away" you can "fan your gun" .. roll 1D6 for the number of shots and then roll a 1D6 again for each shot. If you get a six you get a hit.

You roll again for wounds (and it's possible to not get anything bigger than a scratch, by the way). If the target isn't wounded, it checks for "diving for cover" or "duck back" in TRWNN terms. If the target DOES get wounded, it can be far more lethal than in some western skirmish games. You have a set number of Wound Points and that's it. Exceed the wound points and you're taking a dirt nap.

LEGENDS gives you a nice little "last chance" option akin to a saving throw, called "Fame" and "Fortune." Fame is like a chit you turn in to reroll, Fortune is a threshold where you have to roll 4 or better to add points to a roll-- both can only be done once per game.

The game comes with a decent variety of weapons to play with, and there's just enough difference between a single shot rifle and a repeater (for example!) to have an effect on the game mechanics. There's about a dozen or so flavors of sidearms and rifles (everthing from pistols to buffalo guns) to plug sidewinders with. Some of the guns are rather prosaic.. one of the choices is "a Saturday Night special" which is meant to be a derringer. I suspect an Englishman wrote that.

LEGEND is about the same level of difficulty and "cinematic feel" as TRWNN, with just about as much wristage. Surprisingly, I consider them comparable in terms of enjoyment. When you get right down to it, at a skirmish level, all this stuff is pretty much the same— Activation, Reaction, Fire Combat, Movement and Melee. If it plays fast and easy and I don't spend HOURS trying to replicate the actions of SECONDS, I'm generally pleased and will like the rules I'm using. In the case of LotOW, that was certainly true.

There is a lot of material in LotOW that I have referred to as "useless fluff", as I don't play RPGs or play in continuing campaigns much. Nor am I much concerned about character advancement. Skirmish games tend to be one-offs and single sessions for me and my gaming group, and that means a new gunslinger is created every time. That's just my opinion and my experience, it shouldn't be construed as overt criticism of Games Workshop.

BTW, we achieved our objective and rescued the hanged guy. Sorry, no pictures this time, but pictures wouldnt' really show you how the game works anyway.