Gunfight at Alamogordo – A Much Piddling in the Marsh Production
Looking from the west, the small town of Alamogordo basks under the hot Arizona sun. The Taberna is in the far right hand side, This Taberna is the objective of two desperate gangs of cutthroats. Sheriff Saveloy Ruben ‘Rooster’ Snapcase, brother of Barmy Bertram Snapcase is going to try and burn it down, you might ask why, but this man needs no reasons to do such a thing.
Oliver Steadfast Standish is going to prevent him carrying out this dastardly deed and Jack Daniels doesn’t give an owl’s hoot in hell either way, he’s just going to drink the Taberna dry and forget what he’s going to forget….. although he can’t remember what that is now.
Oh and then he’s going to kill a Snapcase, any one will do.
The town from the East, the Taberna is now in the far left of the picture. Note the fence line running along the dusty roadway, it’s going to become famous as Dynamite Alley or Lucky Ollie’s Hat Place, but that’s for later.
The Good Guys consist of an elite band of gunfighters, feared and respected throughout the West and from left to right they are, The Honourable Horace Boris Spooner or as he became known in the gunfight Old Pink Shirt. The man in black isn’t Johnny Cash it’s Oliver Standish, sometimes known as Crazy Ollie, Sensible Standish or, as I shall refer to him, Steadfast Standish for reasons that will become apparent if you continue reading. Wearing a black eye patch is Jack Daniels, known to his enemies as that Mescal Fiend, Raving Jack Daniels, Jack does like a tipple now and then, but Mescal Fiend is an unwarranted calumny spread by lowlifes and riffraff. Finally, there is his only daughter, Molly Daniels, whom he lovingly refers to as The Kid, she might once have been a little girl with blonde pigtails but she’s grown a little since then.
Pawns of big business and infamous cattle barons are The Snapcase Posse, a squinty eyed group of lowlifes and riffraff, or so rumour has it. Again from left to right we start with Granville Arkwright a saloon keeper and owner of the gambling den the Grumpy Goat. Old Blue Hat herself is Misty Meaner, no she’s not pleased to see you, that is a stick of dynamite in her pants. On her left is Hawkeye leNoo and he doesn’t wear any….pants that is. Finally the big man himself, Saveloy Ruben ‘Rooster’ Snapcase, the big sausage, a gun toting rascal and the only person in the gunfight who could move slower than molasses in wintertime. He’s not standing on that rock, he’s anchored to it.
The good guy’s, Steadfast Standish, Pink Shirt Spooner, Mescal Jack and Molly Daniels have been staying in the less than salubrious Los Pollos Hermanos Taberna in Alamogordo. Steadfast and Spooner like the cheap food, Jack likes the cheap Mescal and Molly doesn’t like any of it but she needs to keep and eye on Jack.
Steadfast and Jack will be located close to the Taberna, Pink Shirt and Molly will be over behind the big butte on the right, and we had all the big butte jokes.
Snapcase and his male friend in a skirt will arrive on the left hand side as we look at the town. They will dither around for quite a long time before either being shot, or running away, or any combination of the three options.
As the gunfight opens, Jack takes a commanding position on the left hand side of the Taberna’s roof. He gazes longingly down at the big barrels of Mescal and curses himself for not bringing one of the large ones up onto the roof. The small 5 gallon barrel he did bring isn’t going too last long in this heat.
He’s only half way through it, when that low down law man Saveloy ‘the Sausage’ Snapcase enters the game and immediately hides behind the fence. Slow as molasses in wintertime the leader of the lawmen dithers and havers behind all the cover he can find, anything rather than marching boldly towards his nemesis.
There was a lot of hiding going on throughout the gun fight and I suspect there will be even more in future games.
Molly Daniels moves forward and takes cover behind the brick built well, that’s the grey roofed structure, front and centre. Pink Shirt Spooner is hiding behind the whitewashed building to the lower right of the picture. Granville is hiding behind the wooden barrel next to the hen house and if you can see a blue hat behind the fence line, well that’s Miss Demeanour who’s also hiding.
I’ve had strong words with Snapcase over the quality of his photography and he said it’s no worse than my prose, which explains why the pictures suck.
Steadfast Standish ain’t afraid of no man and so he moves forward towards the lawmen, gun in hand. The man in black, closes on the same fence line that some of the desperado’s from the losing side are using for cover. He didn’t take into account that this bold move placed him squarely between Jack Daniels and the Hawkeye leNoo over on the left and out of sight.
Jack has a commanding position on the roof, but leNoo is very short, Jack has taken on board copious quantities of Mescal, what can possibly go wrong.
It’s hard to see, but that figure in the distance is the afore mentioned leNoo. Yes the one by the cactus, to the right of the white building. I think I mentioned having words about the quality of the photo’s.
And the reply.
Well Jack saw him too, admittedly through an alcoholic haze and he knew it was the skirt wearing leNoo and that leNoo was a close companion of Sausage Snapcase. Without a second thought he brought Daisy to his shoulder.
Wait, what are you thinking…..Daisy is his trusty Winchester repeating rifle not some floozy from the Frog and Bucket, anyway without further thought he fired, cocked the rifle and fired again, and again and again.
Missing his target four times.
Damn and damn again.
That’s what drinking under the hot Arizona sun will do for a mans aim…..he doesn’t aim.
Steadfast Standish will agree with that because one of the stray bullets that Jack loosed off in the general direction of leNoo found a mark. That’s right, Jack shot Steadfast in the back. Steadfast was knocked to the ground but like the hero he is, the man just got up, dusted off his coat and carried on……Steadfastly. Not even a cross word or a slight cuss passed his lips.
At some point Daniels finally shot the Scot dead. It took maybe 20 or 30 bullets but the Scot went down and didn’t rise again.
It looks like he was carrying his own coffin with him……defeatist.
Arkright had already met his maker, finished off by Mollie Daniels. It later transpired that his maker didn’t want him and he managed to crawl away from his ignominious shooting and will join up with Sausage Snapcase guarding some railway encampment at a future date. Tomorrow at 13:00.
Miss Demeanour was slowly moving along the fence line towards Steadfast. He was trying to hide behind a cactus, but that’s Steadfast for you, as thin and slippery as a racing snake but Demeanour had something up her sleeve, and it wasn’t the Ace of Spades.
It was a $20 stick of dynamite that had been kept very quiet, until Snapcase announced triumphantly, “she’s got a stick of Dynamite, Jack Daniels didn’t care, too far away and too well lubricated but Steadfast went a whiter shade of pale. She lit the fuse and surprised everyone, including herself by throwing the sizzling stick accurately onto the brim of Steadfasts hat.
BOOM, the explosion sounded loud in the quiet of the gunfight. It blew poor Steadfast off his feet, blew his hat off as well, but where there’s no brain there’s no sense, or is the saying, where there’s no hat there’s no sense, oh damn, I can’t remember the saying, if anyone else can, please let me know.
Anyway it knocked him down but almost immediately the brave chap was back on his feet and levelling his 6 shooter he fired at the hell cat Demeanour.
After killing the weasel Arkwright and filing a notch on her revolver, Molly Daniels has moved forward and she’s just behind the hen house, outflanking Demeanour. In the distance is Old Pink Shirt himself, he’s hiding behind the fence and almost out of focus……yes we’ve discussed the photos!
Miss Demeanour took one look at the odds against her and realised the chap controlling the Snapcase posse wasn’t such a tactical genius after all. Having advanced her into a position where she was surrounded by three enemy figures she lost all confidence in his direction of the fight and so without further ado she ran for the hills.
Somewhere in the middle of all this Daniels had taken a few more considered shots at his arch enemy and laid him low, but as they say, a Snapcase has 9 lives, plus a couple in his back pocket and so the villain of the piece was able to slink away without having to pay for his crimes.
Jack remained triumphantly on the roof of the Taberna, but by this time there was something wrong with his legs, I think he spent too long in the sun. Anyway he called to the pretty young barmaid and asked her to bring up one of the larger barrels of mescal. He wasn’t able to come down, something about the fact that he couldn’t manage the steps at his age, and that the 5 gallon barrel must have leaked or maybe evaporated in the sun.
It wasn’t very clear or coherent but what do you expect from a one eyed fat man – bold talk!
This was the first game in a projected 6 game campaign using the What a Cowboy rules, and was obviously a famous victory for the good guys.
Doug was Pink Shirt Spooner and his main man was Steadfast Standish. What a chap, first to get shot down by his own side (Me) and then blown up by some slip of a girl (Snapcase), but to get up each time and carry on takes some character, a Steadfast character.
I played as the Daniels duo and thoroughly enjoyed the shoot out.
The Mad Lord was good enough to play the bad guys but you probably guessed that. The Snapcase character had an amazing run of low movement dice which must have been a little frustrating for the old chap, especially when he went to ground in the pigsty but I’ll make no further comment on that, ‘Sausage’.
All the scenery and figures are from the vast Snapcase collection and the game was run in the dungeon of Snapcase Hall. We made use of technology developed by the Mad Lord himself, with a little help from Google and something called the internet. Doug and I were in our respective homes and so didn’t have the distraction of the debtors to the Snapcase estate undergoing ritual torture until they came up with the readies. Something we’ve had to witness in the past, it does spoil the appetite if you’re not used to it.
We hadn’t thought to write up the games which is why the photos weren’t really taken for display, so my apologies to Snapcase for making fun of them. Similarly no one made any notes of the action so my account might be a little biased, although I don’t really think so, but I'm sure I'll be told differently.
We’re playing a second game tomorrow and if there’s any interest I could add an account of the game onto this thread, maybe without so much prose. The scenery looks gorgeous, let me know.
Welcome, Guest. Please 
April 28, 2024, 11:25:11 PM
January 09, 2011, 09:13:30 PM
