First Blackwater Gulch game

[Pictors Studio]

I played my first Blackwater Gulch game at Drums Along the Rapids in the Ft. Meiggs visitor center near Toledo, OH yesterday.  The game was thrown together pretty quickly after our Shockforce game ended early, so we didn't do a scenario, we just had about a half dozen gangs and they all started shooting each other up.



I had the Clay Gang (I think.)  They had mostly pistol fighting guys and one chick with a long ranged weapons.  Some of the ranges seemed odd and the power of the pistols was, in some cases, much greater than the rifles. The trouble for my gang was that they were not too many opportunities to get in close right away, before being shot at by gangs that had much longer ranged weapons. 

Also my specialty was to shoot people in the back and I wanted to take advantage of that. 



As it turns out we were running out of time before that was going to happen and I made an alliance with another gang to basically cover me while I went in.  It didn't pan out and that gang betrayed me and gunned down my leader and my rassler.  I fired on them, getting my own back and then some, they also took fire from the gang we were going to attack, losing all but one model and that model only had one HP left. 



On the other side of the table the lady gang was wiping out all opposition.  The Indian gang had noticed "Some squaws running loose" and were "going on the warpath" secondary to that.  That got shot up, blown up, healed and then shot up again for their troubles.  Starting with 5 models, they suffered 7 casualties before the end of the game, the lady gang's doctor healing one of them before shooting him in the back, saying "I was afraid they would double cross me," before the said back shooting.

The game itself as fine.  The shooting worked well.  We only had one instance of close combat and that worked pretty well.  the only mechanism I didn't like so much was running.  Every model has a quickness value and for running you roll a number of d6s equal to that and add the highest you roll to 6 to get the distance. 

It isn't a big complaint, it really wasn't much of an issue, it just seemed that it could be speeded up somehow.  Maybe even just adding the quickness value to 6 to get the run roll.  or d3 plus quick to 6.  It also might not have seemed so annoying if we weren't playing on teddy bear fur which made dice rolling a challenge. 

Overall it was still fun despite being a every man for himself shoot 'em up with no purpose, which I'm not fond of.  So using it for a scenario game or the way the game was probably intended with less than a half dozen players, would probably be really good.  I would play again.

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

Looks like a good game, plenty of treachery going on there!

[Necros]

Sounds like that was a fun game. Multiplayer games can be a lot of fun even with all the backstabbing going on If you're planning to be at Origins next month there are going to be a lot of demo events going on there.

About the running issue, that is actually going to be addressed in the next version of the game.. but that probably won’t be finished for quite a while, maybe early next year? But in a nutshell, your stamina will be how many actions you get per turn, and your quickness is how many inches you can move for 1 action, and you can move as many times as you have actions available. So for example if your stamina and quickness are both 3, you could move a total of 9 inches and then do nothing, or you could move 3 inches, shoot someone, then move 3 more inches to duck behind some cover. Or you can stand still and shoot 3 times.

Our first step is to get these new rules together in our new open ended ruleset that you can use with any genre, the playtest rules are on our new site at SkirmishGames.com. Then once those rules are more finalized and stable we’ll put together the new BWG rulebook based on them as a 2nd edition release next year.

[oabee]

I played my first Blackwater Gulch game at Drums Along the Rapids in the Ft. Meiggs visitor center near Toledo, OH yesterday. 

Dang, sorry I missed you. Would have liked to have the opportunity to meet ya. I was GMing the Pulp Alley scenarios at Drums just inside the front entrance from 9-2 on Saturday, and on the table were a few minis that Pictors painted! I had the pleasure of meeting Jaime in her studio on a visit to Ligonier a couple of years back, when I took the occasion to drop off those figures--and others!--for commission. I'll be putting up an AAR fairly soon, so you'll see the figures in question.

For the record, when folks ask if I painted all the minis in my games, I always give you guys the credit for your work. I even tell them where to find you, because Ligonier is a beautiful little gem of a town well worth a visit!

Mike

[Pictors Studio]

I'm sorry I missed you too. 

I was pretty busy the whole time I was there.  We played a shock force game first thing, then squeezed this Blackwater Gulch game in before I put on my Carlist War game ( http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=90633.0 )  I had to split right after that because I had to get back to run an Age of Sigmar game at a local store at noon on Sunday. 

I saw your game and it looked like fun. I would love to have spent more time watching it but that was one commodity I had in short supply that day. 

Overall there were a lot of convention games that looked great and people seemed to be having fun playing.  I've been to two other events there, one when I lived there in 2008, and both were lots of fun.