Head West for a Western Game

Mike's MDF buildings that were our town we had to defend from claim jumpers

One of our regular Sunday night gamers, Mike S, drives over from Springfield, OH, pretty much every weekend. So, we thought it was time to return the favor and headed west out to his place this past Sunday. I think most having Memorial Day off the next day convinced them that the extra drive time to get home was okay, but we started early to be on the safe side.

My leader Dakota (spitting image and grandfather of the Pulp character in our games) peeks around a building

Mike has been wanting to do Westerns for awhile, and has been collecting and painting 28mm characters. Still he asked Keith and I to bring along some of ours, so we had plenty. Each player had two gunfighters -- one was the leader type who had two action cards in the deck, and the other was the follower type, with only one. Mike was using Gunfighters Ball -- the intro version being a free download from Knuckleduster Miniatures. We had played games with it the previous weekend at Drums at the Rapids in the Toledo area. Mike adopted the rules modifications that two GMs there recommended. In hindsight, we decided to back off the modifications next time and play the rules "as is."

Joel's man in black also peeks around a building to take a shot at Steve's claim jumpers taking cover in the trees

There were eight players, three of which (Joel, Allen, and myself) were the townies -- defending our settlement from claim jumpers, who accused us of cheating them out of their proceeds. Things looked bleak for us when a couple random deadeye "head shots" from Steve V and Jason S took out one each of Allen and my characters. At that point, the other five must have felt sorry for us and began shooting at each other. This turned it into a free-for-all on their side, while us three never took a pot shot at each other. In the end, with bodies laying all over the table, the claim jumpers skulked off into the woods and we had held onto our (ill-gotten or otherwise) gains.