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.