De Lancy's Reckoning - May 1869

For the purposes of this test scenario all you need to know is that Colonel De Lancy (the old Southern money in the county and founder of the town which bears his name) is at odds with two Yankee Carpetbaggers who have broken his store monopoly in town.  For various reasons the good Colonel feels that an example must be made to preserve both his honour and more importantly his profits.  He has hired a trio of ne'er do wells to remove the problem with what will be known in the future as 'Extreme prejudice'.

To achieve this, the would be assassins enter the store owned by Messrs Butler and O'Keefe (the Yankees) with the intention of calling them out.  It is important that they provide an excuse, no matter how flimsy, for their intended actions as this part of Texas has a quaint notion that whoever goes to draw a gun first is the instigator of events and likely guilty of premeditated murder.  Also in the store at the time is one Davis 'Doc' Travis, passing through on his way west.  He has stopped to buy supplies and becomes caught up in events.

The characters in this drama are:

The Targets

Randolf (Randy) Butler.  Novice, unarmed, slow reactions, slow draw.  Skills Pistol 2, Rifle 4, Hand to Hand 2.

Jim O'Keefe.   Average, unarmed (but a scattergun is under the store counter), average reactions, slow draw.  Skills Pistol 2, Rifle 5, Hand to Hand 3.

The Assassins

Little Ned Tice.   Average, Breech loading Sharp's Carbine, Colt 36 Navy revolver, Bowie knife.  Average reactions, slow draw.  Skills Pistol 5, Rifle 6, Hand to Hand 6.

Jake Hartley.  Average, Colt 44 Army, Knife.  slow reactions (he has been drinking  but isn't drunk), Average draw.  Skills Pistol 5, Rifle 1, Hand to Hand 3, Throwing 6.

Roscoe Penny.  Professional, Smith and Wesson Model 1 .22 (7 shot, low impact), Bowie knife.  Slow reactions (more Dutch courage), average draw, Skills Pistol 6, Rifle 4, Hand to Hand 4. 

The Passing Stranger

Davis 'Doc' Travis.  Professional, 1856 Le Mat .42 (9 shot plus .60 shotgun barrel), Knife.  Fast reactions, Fast draw.  Skills Pistol 9, Rifle 6, Hand to Hand 5, Throwing 3.

Civilians

There may or may not be any non combatants involved if there are they will have slow reactions and skills of zero.

Set up

Doc is stood inside the store.  His pistols are holstered.  The assassins are on the sidewalk outside.  Jake and Roscoe have holstered pistols, Little Ned has his Sharps in his hands with a round loaded but the hammer isn’t cocked.  Ned will be posted outside the store while the other two go in to ‘do the deed’

When the assassins enter they will initially be focussed on their target and will have to react to any others in the store. They will have to trigger some sort of argument with the store owners to provide an excuse for gunning them down.  The owners will only start to react on a threat being made or weapons being drawn. 

The fight

Roscoe and Jake enter the store and Jake approaches the counter.  (Each phase of action is about 1 to 1.5 seconds, so far 15 seconds have elapsed).  Jake looks over at Jim O'Keefe and snaps "Gimme some of that rollin' tobacco" and slaps a dollar bill on the counter (This takes a further 2 seconds as the rules allow three words to be spoken a phase).  Looking down O'Keefe realises that the money is worthless Confederate script.  "Hey, this is Confederate money, it's no good".  Jake snarls a reply " Damn  ya Yankee, take the money".  At this point things start to move real fast.  Both Jake and Roscoe go for their pistols.  They are both average draw speed so this will take two phases before they can shoot, longer if they aim.  Unfortunately for them Doc standing in the corner has already turned towards them after hearing the raised voices.  As he sees hands dropping to holsters he reacts   A reaction is a response to any act seen by the character which may require a change in their current orders or state.  For example to draw a weapon on seeing someone going for a gun.  Professional characters react faster than average or novice characters.)  He shouts "Drop those pistols" and starts to draw his Le Mat. (Only needing one phase as he is a professional and has fast reactions and draw speed).

Positions as the shooting starts

The next phase he adopts a firing stance and continues his shout with "or I shoot".  The sudden interruption forces Jake and Roscoe to have to react (A reaction is forced by being shot at unexpectedly, after shooting, seeing a comrade fall wounded or sight of a seriously wounded or dead comrade or any unexpected or sudden event).  They decide to continue to attack the storekeeper.  Meanwhile O'Keefe is moving closer to the counter in an attempt to grab the scattergun hidden beneath it.  At this point Doc fires a snap shot at Jake who has his pistol clear of the holster.  He inflicts a serious body wound on him knocking him to the floor.  (The rules calculate a chance of scoring a hit with a possible range of 1-99%.   There are adjustments for skill, time spent aiming and other factors. Percentage dice are then rolled and if the score is below the adjusted total a table cross referencing the to hit and dice roll is checked to see what the wound is.  Serious wounds always knock the target to the ground and leave them stunned for  up to 10 phases.  The location of the wound has other effects to.)  Jake is unable to act for 10 phases and after that can only crawl or stagger and all actions take twice as long.  Realistically he is out of the fight.  While all this is going on Randy Butler is heading unseen for the store's back door.

Everyone takes a phase to react to this first shot and Doc also shouts "I said Drop em" while switching his aim to Roscoe.  Outside the store Little Ned has been standing unnoticed by everyone.  After the first shot rang out he reacted to events as he was cocking the hammer on his Sharps carbine.  He decides to go for O'Keefe as he can't get a clear shot at Doc.  Three shots now ring out as Roscoe also opens fire at O'Keefe while Doc fires at Roscoe.  O'Keefe staggers, hit in the body by Ned but it is only a light wound and he doesn't fall although he is stunned for four phases.  Roscoe isn't so lucky he misses O'Keefe before suffering a serious leg wound from Doc which knocks him to the floor and stuns him for five phases.

Little Ned watching with horror through the broken window realises that he has an empty carbine and a holstered pistol making him effectively unarmed against a lethal opponent who has a gun in hand and decides to run.  (reloading a breech loader like a Sharps would take six phases and dropping the carbine to draw his pistol is going to take two phases to draw with a shot being fired on the third phase).  Doc can't get to the door before Ned ducks down an ally and is gone.  This fight is over after only twenty four seconds!

The Aftermath

The town Sherriff is called and initially thinks to arrest everyone, but both O'Keefe and Butler support Doc's account of events and passer's by heard his warning shout and vouch for the fact that he gave Roscoe and Jake every chance to stand down.  Despite being a De Lancy lackey there is little the Sherriff can do other than take the two wounded men into custody once they have been treated.  Ned has gotten away and reported events to the Colonel who has to decide what to do next.  With O'Keefe wounded a message has been sent just not as forcefully as desired.  However Jake and Roscoe are going to be a problem.

Next up

If Jake and Roscoe survive their wounds they are now a liability to Colonel De Lancy.  As long as they are in the Sherriff's custody it can be assumed that they are not going to be questioned but should a US Marshall get wind of events and take an interest things could become awkward.  De Lancy needs to get them out of jail before he is implicated.  I guess I'm going to need some buildings soon.  You can't have a jail break without a jail!

The Rules

I used the Old West Skirmish Wargames rules for this and they played fine.  The reprinted rules have been commented upon by Amazon purchasers saying they are slow and overly detailed.  I didn't find this to be the case.  This game revolved around reaction times, skill levels and draw speeds which seems fair for a fight in a tight space.  This shoot ot was played in under an hour including checking rules and writing out the sequence of actions to ensure I didn't miss things like delays due to reaction.  In a multi player game written orders are required but those are pretty basic and several phases orders can be written in one go any way.  I don't need a lot of the rules such as machine guns or artillery any way so I can play with the core rules alone.  The rules on misfires are the only thing I needed to look up and these are only triggered on a roll of a double.  At that point I'd just look up the effect.  To be honest in a game where revolvers are the norm most players ignore it and simply cock and fire again anyway.

I have added a couple of house rules one is to make reaction times separate to the experience status the other is for the longer term effects of wounds.  For example while a serious body wound might be survivable in a pre-antibiotic world as likely as not it will prove fatal and if not will require a long period of recovery and will create some reduction in capability.  A serious arm wound is probably going to require amputation and so on.  So things are not looking great for Jake and Roscoe.

By the way I misremembered the need to roll high in these rules.  You need to roll low to get under the 'to hit' value and increase the severity of resulting wounds.  So Deadshot Karen had a genius for low rolls not high.  Either way it was better to have her with you rather then 'agin' you. 

De Lancy - A nice place to live?

The North West Texas town of De Lancy was founded in the aftermath of the Texican- Mexican War of 1836 by a returning veteran, the New Orleans born Major Joshua De Lancy.  He saw the potential in what was an isolated trading post on one of the western bound trails, and decided to expand it into a ranching community.  

He had seen money being made by supplying beef to the army and by dint of connections to Sam Houston gathered some small contracts to provide beef on the hoof to settlers, and military outposts.  However it wasn't until the US-Mexican War of 1846 that business really picked up and the town really started to grow.  The next decade saw steady growth in De Lancy's business but it wasn't until the outbreak of hostilities between North and South that the town really found it's feet.  Contracts to deliver beef to Confederate forces were paid in gold, at least to start with and times were good.   However, by 1862 the Confederate States had switched to paying in paper money.  De Lancy wasn't concerned though the money was good and the South was going to win, wasn't it.  This all came crashing down in 1865 when following the Southern defeat Confederate dollars became worthless and the small stock of gold De Lancy had left was dwindling fast.

Old De Lancy now styling himself Colonel (he had held a militia commission in that rank) looked around for a way out of his and the town's problems.  Most of the decent folk had moved on and the town was becoming a haven for the worse sorts.  These were a mix ex-confederate soldiers, Yankee draft dodgers and Tejano rustlers who made a living by rounding up wild longhorns and driving them North, when not committing more traditional crimes.  So De Lancy simply joined in, turning a blind eye to the sourcing of the cattle they sold north.  

The town became an assembly point for herds from the region as well as some stolen from farther afield ready for the drive north.  The town gained a kind of prosperity from gambling and prostitution as well as the income from cattle.  It also gained a reputation as a wide open town despite US occupation forces and carpet baggers attempts to impose a basic level of law and order.  The sad fact was that there were simply too few Federal troops available and they were only occasional visitors to town. 

By 1869 the Colonel had a decent herd and good grazing land but the lawless element are not above rustling his cattle which bit into his profits.  He owned the main mercantile store in town but is facing competition from a new saloon and store financed by a pair of Yankee Carpet Baggers.  What is worse is the cattle herders were no longer all working for him, some had set up in business against him.  A citizen's committee was starting to make noises about electing a sheriff  to clean up the town.  Colonel De Lancy was broadly in favour of this so long as it was on his terms.  Records show that the Colonel tried to bypass the citizens and and those damned Yankees by bringing in some independent contractors to impose his version of law and order.  This is the town that Doc Travis rode into in the spring of '69.

Why 1869?

Historically during reconstruction Texas was wide open with no real federal occupation force as the occupying Federal army was being stripped back.  The old agrarian economy dependant on slaves was being reshaped by the Freedmen's Bureau.  Old Confederate politicians were precluded from running for office until Texas was readmitted to the Union in 1870.  There was no state police until 1870 ,and even then they only numbered about 200 men, and were dissolved a couple of years later. The only other state law enforcement body was the Texas Rangers but until 1874 they effectively did not exist as there was no funding made available.  That leaves local law officers who were a mixed bag.  Some were effective others more interested in lining their own pockets and some were no better than those they were meant to protect their jurisdictions from.  In short in the period 1869 to the late 1870's there is a lot of scope for scenarios.

I also have an eye on the situation in New Mexico and Arizona from around 1870 onwards so the location of games (assuming there is more than one) may well drift west.

The return of Doc Travis

Doc was one of my western skirmish characters from back in my student days.  He was, in the terms of the rules we used, a Professional.  That meant he was someone who earned a living by the gun and had the skills and reactions to do so. He stayed on the right side of the law, mostly.  All our games were played with 54mm Britain's 'Deetail' Cowboy figures with the occasional cheaper figure thrown in.  The setting was always a town made up of the plastic Timpo wild west buildings.  Doc was usually to be found in the saloon sipping a root beer mainly because the rules penalties for being drunk were lethal!

Britain's Deetail Figures.  Doc is on the left of the rear row

I had the three figures on the left of the image.  They looked much better after a quick repaint, Doc acquired a red-brown hat, green shirt and blue trousers.  The Mexican was in dark colours with red trimmings and the one in buckskins firing a rifle from the hip just got a brown coat.

There were numerous other characters to be found in town beside Doc.  Dangerous Dave Le Mat, Bowie Pete and Deadshot Karen to name but a few.  Tales about them stick in my memory even though it was almost 50 years ago.  

Bowie Pete for example was so called not because of his prowess with said knife, but because that's how he normally ended up in Boot Hill,  lying wounded in main street when his opponent would simply write the order 'Bowie Pete' which we all knew meant that a bullet wasn't going to be wasted on him when a slashed throat would be as deadly!

Deadshot Karen was the long suffering (real life) girlfriend of one the players who would be roped in to make up numbers.  She had an unnerving ability to roll a natural 100 with her rifle skill which meant she usually killed you from the other side of town with a Winchester.  It didn't matter whose dice she rolled she seemed incapable of rolling less than 90 on a set of percentage dice, that in a set of rules where rolling high was a good thing.  You stayed off Main Street when Karen was in town.

Dangerous Dave Le Mat was one of my characters.  So called because on his weapon of choice was a nine shot Le Mat revolver (as used by Jeb Stuart) which had the bonus of a selectable 20 gauge shotgun barrel under the normal one.  I was playing in a winner takes all type game where it was everyman for himself.  Names had not been divulged and weapons were secret until used.  Dangerous Dave was sat playing poker in the saloon with three of the other players, unknown to them he had used one phase to draw his pistol under the table which no one had reacted to and a second phase to select the shotgun option, when the then (and still current) Mrs E looked over my shoulder and innocently asked 'why is your man called Dangerous Dave Le Mat?'  At which point all three opponents hurled themselves out of the cone of fire of the Le Mat and then shot me down like a dog!  Moral of the story don't name yourself after your weapon of choice if you don't want anyone to know about it.

My Britain's figures are long gone now but I recreated Doc in 25mm a few years ago and he is getting a run out so I can refresh my memory about the rules.  So welcome to 1869 and the town of De Lancy, Texas, Population variable.  De Lancy has a detailed back story which I will unfold in some future post. 

The scenario I'm going to play is a straight shootout inside a dry goods store.  I don't have any buildings as yet so for test purposes a floor plan will have to do.  There will be Doc v two or possibly three greenhorns plus for interest a couple of innocent bystanders  these may or may not represent the Daughter's of the Confederacy Temperance League.

Didn't we have a lovely time. The day we went to Berwick

Mrs E, the dogs and I have just returned from a short break on the Northumberland coast.  We stayed in Berwick upon Tweed, a place I have never been to before.  The loss is entirely mine as it is a great place to visit in it's own right and a good location for visits out.  There are stunning beaches and castles within easy reach and a number of nationally important battlefields and historical sites within an hour's drive. 

Berwick itself has the only set of fully complete town walls in the country.  These were started during the reign of Queen Mary and completed by her half-sister Elizabeth I.  They replaced earlier medieval walls, traces of which can still be seen beyond the Tudor works.  The are in what was then the latest renaissance style intended to give all round fields of fire and to be resistant to artillery.  There were additions later to add barracks, powder stores and the like.  It takes about 30 minutes to walk the entire circuit.  There are also regimental museums in the barracks and and a good visitors centre.

The line of the Tudor walls can be seen in this diorama of the town

The town also boasts a thriving arts and crafts community and plenty of small independent shops.  It also has a decent array of pubs.  The artist L S Lowry (He of the matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs) considered buying a house within the town walls but was dissuaded as it was in a poor state.  He painted scenes from around the town and is commemorated by a trail around the town showing copies of his work in the places where he painted them.

Beyond the town are wide open beaches with fine golden sand (looked like it would make great basing sand too) which are popular but not crowded.  Bamburgh castle, Bebbanburgh in Bernard Cornwall's 'Last Kingdom stories, is about 30 minutes drive down the coast. Lindisfarne even closer and the Battlefield's of Flodden and Dunbar are within range of a day trip.

The harbour on Lindisfarne

We spent a pleasant morning on Lindisfarne but it wore the dogs out and they didn't want to move the following day!  As you can see from the above picture the harbour and beaches of the island have very  shallow slopes, perfect for beaching long ships.  In fact it's easy to see why the first Viking raid occurred here.  Easy access, good landing sites, a wealthy priory and best of all on an island that can't be reached by the local Fyrd until low tide!

English Heritage information board (well you didn't think I researched everything did you)

The gates of the Barracks now an English Heritage site

Badges on the Barrack's gates show whose museum is within

This gives some idea of the height of Berwick's walls

Pano shot (hence the distortion) clearly showing the stone facing of the walls

We only had four days and with the dogs with us we couldn't do everything we wanted but we will be returning before very much longer.  It's a part of the UK I hadn't been to before and I aim to play catch up as soon as possible.