Diamond Annie and the shootout at the OK Corral.

[Silbuster]

Diamond Annie here. In the Wild West of America. Yes, I’d like to know how we got here as well. I’d swear I told that cabbie to take us to Croydon.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we was rumbled. By the Black Tong and the Turkish Secret Service.  Nasty! And they’d decided to put my lights out. No fear! As we came into the small ghost town, I had a plan. Good old Gerty had gone ahead and planted a bomb in the building nearest the Turks; or their most obvious “sniping at a safe distance” station; not that I’m sniping… Given their reputation for incredible bravery, I was pretty sure that they would go all around the houses rather than risk the direct route. Which should leave us the time to sort out the kitchen staff before the Turks stick their noses in.

We didn’t have to go looking for them. I got off one shot and then, while the rest of his courageous chums hid behind a house, some Dragon idiot shot forward and tried to chop Gerty’s head off . He missed. You can see this in the first piccy. You can also just make out some courageous Turks crawling around the scenery in the far distance. You cannot see Mollie drawing a bead on the choppy chappies behind the house with her poisoned crossbow(***). She smacked one straight in the kisser. Stone dead. And then he got back up again….  Eh?

Suddenly all the Dragon idiot’s friends joined in and the world was full of side orders of lemon chicken and chop chop suey. They were using a cunning plan the cunning curs (I nearly said something else then!). Their mesmerists had convinced their faithful nutters that bullets would pass through without harming them and had backed this up with some mystic murk which obscured everything and did little for our aiming(*). Worse still, the venomous vermin were using virtual venom on their blades. It’s a scandal! Never mind. We were holding our own and dishing out almost as much as we were taking. A big problem was that, even when we bashed them to the floor, they got back up again. It was a bit like fighting a spring. Fortunately, one of them took a bullet of a calibre sufficiently large to convince them they weren’t invulnerable after all. True, the murderous Manchus still seemed to need several pistol bullets, a severe stabbing and a determined push to convince them that getting back up again was a bad idea; but we were making inroads into their idiocy.

We were fighting them behind the houses, in the houses and in the ruins of houses. 

And then it all went horribly wrong(**). The ambivalent Anatolians had finally ambled around the back of us. As we were all a bit busy at the time, it was like shooting rats in a barrel as far as they were concerned. Luckily, we saved our new foreign friends by catching the vast majority of the bullets. Including me. I am going to need a new magneto-static bodice. This one is a bit bashed up.

Once again, I’m left with the distinct feeling that we are missing some heavy hurting hardware. Not to worry. I’ve got the Argonaut catalogue in front of me and I’m just reading through the “Serious shooters for the lady” section. I think we can afford a few upgrades.

Diamond Annie,
Crime Queen of London (USA)
Current Address: Never mind you nosy nark!

(*) Though it should not have been as effective as all that. Might we remind ourselves, gentlemen, that dense terrain, which this mystic murk is equivalent to, has no effect in hand-to-hand combat? Including shooting at targets near enough to touch! How many times have we played these blasted rules?
(**) I had, in fact, bought a brand new dice especially for the game. Marked in Roman numerals. Very cool. It was also crap. Rarely have so many ones and twos been rolled in a single evening by a single player. Binwards bound.
(***) Mollie should have a carbine but there’s a shortage of suitable figures. I do have one with a crossbow though… Same price. Very nice.