Returning to Old West gaming with a bang

[Elenderil]

Well several bangs in fact.  I haven't played a western shootout style game for several dog's ages but as I was working through the lead pile I came across my old figures.  This got me to thinking about what to do with them and of course the obvious answer is to play a game.  I dusted down the original rule set "The Old West Skirmish Wargames" and printed off a couple of home made building floor plans and it was time to play.  The rules are vintage 1970's but I liked them then and I found that I still do. 

I created a fictional back story for a town called De Lancy somewhere in West Texas and started out in 1869.  There is a post on my blog with an after AAR and a couple of earlier posts on the setting and figures.

You can find it here.  https://elenderilsblog.blogspot.com/2022/08/de-lancys-reckoning-may-1869.html

BTW the blog isn't monetarised I'm not driving traffic to advertisers I just thought it might be of interest.

[CapnJim]

Well, that was quick. Sounds like Jake and Roscoe shoulda dropped their shootin' irons when Doc told 'em too...will they learn from their mistake?  If they survive, that is...

[Inkpaduta]

It is good you like the rules.
I have tried for years to find a set of
Old West rules that I like. I am still
looking.

[Vagabond]

An interesting game although I'm not sure why Doc got involved, but without him it would have been very one-sided.

I like the idea of the time to draw and shoot as well as the fact that if you draw first you are potentially a murderer. That didn't seem to worry the bad guys because after a couple of insults they drew first. Although I suppose Doc actually did that. 

I'm planning a game "The Gunfight at Big Jim's Corral" very loosely based on the OK Corral. I want to incorporate some mechanism's so that you go to jail if you draw first but you die if you draw second.
Cheers

[Metternich]

Mastermind, the concept of "self-defense" was a bit idiosyncratic in the Old West.  Plenty of stories of cases where a man was armed and shot in the front and it was deemed "self-defense."  (But if the victim was not armed after all ....).  The law of self-defense was that an individual had a right to it if he had a reasonable belief that it was necessary for him to shoot to save himself from great bodily harm - didn't necessarily mean he had to wait for the other guy to draw first.  If circumstances were such that his belief was reasonable (e.g. being threatened with violence by an armed individual), plenty of cases that he didn't have to wait till his assailant had pulled his firearm too.  That said, depending on the judge and jury it could go the other way too.

[Metternich]

Elenderil a question about the rules.  I've had them since the 1980's, but have never played a game with them (I started Wild West skirmishing with the old Boothill rules in the late 1970's, and my wargames group tends to use either Ruthless or Dead Man's Hand).  How many phases per cartridge does it take to load a metal cartridge breechloader rifle/carbine?  The rules seem unclear on this, having only a reference to "one shot breech loaders," the Trapdoor Springfield and Remington Rolling Block, without being clear as to how many phases they take to load.  Likewise, the same problem exists re the various breechloading derringers.

And how long does it take to play a game using The Old West Skirmish Wargames rules?  The time spent loading seems, while no doubt realistic, looooong in game play terms. 

[huevans]

Le Mat would be both exotic and cumbersome in a gunfight in the Old West. Wouldn't our hero have something more handy and more common?

S&W, Colt Navy or Remington all come to mind.

[Metternich]

LeMats were certainly uncommon, but weren't altogether unknown.  An estimate is that 2,500 made it past the Union blockade and into Confederate service, so it certainly is possible that a post-Civil War character might have one (either an ex-Confederate, or from someone who had picked it up as a war souvenir) instead of the ubiquitous Colt or Remington (or more uncommon Schofield)  As you noted, they were bulky and certainly inhibited either a "quick draw" or careful aiming (in fact it wasn't considered particularly accurate).  However that underslung shot gun barrel would be a nasty surprise at close range in a gunfight (see the gunfight scene inside the saloon in the movie Forsaken), not to mention that you got nine shots instead of the usual five or six.
  And, as the childhood friend of my son always says, "don't forget the Rule of Cool."

[Elenderil]

I chose a Le Mat as I was expecting to be able to try out the shotgun barrel, but the game didn't play out that way.   I was thinking about the earlier posts and am going to add a house rule where large pistols slow draw speeds by one phase.  Thinking primarily Le Mat, Walker Colt and possibly the Colt Dragoon.

As for the question about how fast are the rules to play?  I didn't find them especially slow but I was only using a small subset of the full rules.

[Metternich]

Slow Draw:  in the movie "Forsaken," after the fight in the saloon the hero (who had been armed with a LeMat) is confronted by the villain's professional "hired gun," who regretfully tells him that his code of professional ethics requires that the two of them now have a shootout.  The hero asks if he can go back into the saloon and retrieve a Colt, as he would be at a disadvantage trying to draw a LeMat (the "hired gun," as a matter of professional courtesy bows to the request).