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.