The Mayor of Newcastle

After playtesting the High Plains Drifter PKowboys variant the other night we played a follow-up game. There were a good number of tweaks and changes we made to it, and they all seemed to work out rather well. The point of HPD is to speed of PKowboys while still keeping the essence of what makes PKowboys a great game to begin with. The point of our changes were to streamline this even more.


For this game we tried a bit more of a storyline scenario; the bad guys had the mayor of the town of Newcastle holed up in the jail. The good guys, who had been run out of town, have returned with reinforcements to save the mayor, liberate the town, and cut down the bad guys.


There's a new livery in town...and fences!

The good guys were able to get in there, smoke out the bad guys, and rescue the mayor. It was touch and go for a while, but after a couple of foes went down, the good guys were able to assault the sheriff's office en masse.

The rules went a lot smoother this time around, with the only discussion points or hiccups revolved around Piquet-specific terms and items that still linger in the rules for no other reason than "they've always been in there". Not being a dedicated-Piquet rules group however, these don't hold much water.

The High Plains Drifter (now double) modified rules work great and drive the game faster than before while losing none of the charm of the game itself. The downfall being that one-shot games are about all the mileage you'll be getting with them. Sure, in the works are extended rules for campaign play, and experience tracking, and what-not but why reinvent the wheel when games like Rules With No Name and Legends of the Old West already have those in spades?

Speaking of Legends of the Old West, my order of cowboy figs is in (six mounted, six foot) and hopefully we'll be getting some games under our belts with these. I do foresee lots of Cowboy content showing their hide 'round these parts.

PKowboys Variant Playtest

Tuco and Rafael emerged from two days in the desert upon the unsuspecting town of [insert clever western town name here]. Between the two of them a machete, a lever-action rifle, and a terrible thirst were all they owned.

Little did the duo know that a pair of cow-hands had just arrived as well on the other side of town. A herd the two brothers had just spent their life savings on had died of Blackleg and the bank refused to refund their money. They would have what's rightfully theirs, one way or another.


During my "pre-blog" period we played a lot PKowboys, the Piquet rules variant that covers the wild west. We managed to get in one weekend of it a couple years ago, reported here. It's a good game, I don't need to go on about here suffice it say you use random action cards and it creates an unpredictable, but extremely fun game where cowboys, outlaws, and townsfolk are shooting each other up and painting the town red.

About four years ago a set of rules were written up as a "highly modified" variant of PKowboys called High Plains Drifter. They provide greater detail where needed, speed up some of the action as needed, and have a neat little "action counter" component where you pre-decide what your character intends to do and then hope they can still do it after the dust settles. I should point out that High Plains Drifter is not intended to be published or distributed. Here's a direct quote from the author that sums up what they're all about:

"There are huge differences between PKowboys and HPD. Actually there
is nothing similar about them except for some of the card names.

HPD is my attempt at writing skirmish rules the way I envision
skirmish, 1 on 1, combat. The requirements for my skirmish rules are
as follows.

1. Must play very fast compared to rules on the market today.
2. Little or no down-time for players. Skirmish games need to be high
[octane] and players need to be always thinking about their next
tactics.
3. Game rewards folks that can think on their feet.
4. Has to be Fun!
5. Can lend itself to a campaign.
6. High drama.

I think HPD fits these criteria. HPD was intended for my club's
personal use, but after Historicon Jeff (PK Skirmish author) thought
he could use some of the ideas from HPD in PK Skirmish. So HPD is
still for personal use, but I will give it to PK Inc to take whatever
ideas they like and put them into PK Skirmish." -E. Burgess

We've had a lot of fun with Gutshot in the past, and sort of recently I picked up the Rules With No Name (which good a lot of good reviews). Andy has the Warhammer historicals lineup, and we always have the original PKowboys to fall back on...so we're not hurting on cowboy rules at all. It is nice to try something a little new and different at the same time.

The game we played here, three players running two characters each, was a run-through for a larger follow-up game two days later. That next game is in the future as I write this, but in the past as this is posted...confusing, I know, but it means I should have the follow-up game written up and ready to post for you very soon.

HPD was fun, but as to being "hugely" different from PKowboys, I didn't see it. Then again I'm usually not big on details. It was solid, but seems exactly like what it was; a modified PKowboy game, nothing wrong with that. For long term cowboy shoot 'em ups I'd like to spend some serious time with Rules With No Name (hey, they're free!) and Gutshot (hey, it's cheap!) only because I feel they give a great variety of cowboy-ness between the two of them on the tabletop and each one deserves its legitimate shot at longevity. Really, having read through the Warhammer Historical Legends of the Old West, I'm sold, I just can't find a copy anywhere!

Looks like my "minis bought" stat is about to increase... [EDIT: Actually it just did, by twelve. I picked up three Cowboy Wars packs, more on those later!]

PKowboys Trio

The town of Whitewash, just outside Crater Lake

We played three games of PKowboys last week over at Andy's and had a great time, you can see his pre-post here, in fact I lifted these pics from his Flikr account, haha). If you haven't heard of PKowboys, it's not too surprising, it's a genre that's still got plenty of uncharted territory to claim, and the game itself (came out in 2004) wasn't widely distributed. Now, on the other hand, if you've ever heard of, played, etc. about Piquet, then you most certainly have heard of PKowboys. The latter was written as a skirmish level supplement to the widely (wildly?) popular Piquet system which is used from anything from ancients, through historicals, and up to the modern era. It's main draw is that is uses cards to represent actions that simulate the unpredictable nature of war, fog of battle, and all of that good stuff. You're not guaranteed to move every turn (or even in five turns), and things you take for granted like reloading your guns are also luck of the draw. In the end, a game takes on a cinematic feel and battles have brilliant narratives once the smoke has cleared.


Apaches in the midst!

There's not any factions or armies, it's just all "cowboys", what you do with the stats is up to you. Quality of figs on the table pretty much determine what they are. Low fighting ability but high morale might represent the townfolk; they're no gunfighters but they have heart and are defending their home. High skill and low morale on the other hand might be grizzled hired guns who might run off if the fighting gets too dangerous, not being paid quite enough to put their actual lives on the line. There's a ton of companies out there producing cowboys of all types and in all sizes. I'd like to paint up a troupe of Mexicanos myself.


Gunfight!

My rolls were laughably abysmal. Although I'm not plagued too often by this malady, it can make a fun night quite frustrating. Throw in the fact that simple mechanics like moving and reloading are kind of random, well the night can quickly spiral out of control. Rolls aren't everything though (but they help). The game moves in "bullet time", where three hours around the tabletop might only represent three and half minutes in game. The placement of the figs is almost abstract too, you might only be two inches from your adversary, wanting to close the distance and brawl with them, but it could take you a while to actually engage. This might take a while standing around the table, but in game it could represent the two circling one another, waiting for the other to strike and see who would give advantage first.


Action inside and outside the saloon

For the buildings Andy used .PDF templates that constructed easily enough into a great looking town. The neat thing is that each building came with its own floor plan too. If your guys take refuge in the saloon (or general store, etc.) just lift up the building and reveal the detailed floor plan underneath. There's a lot of variety in what you can build as well.


Man down!

You can get wounded easily enough, and each time you take a hit, there's a scary 1-in-6 chance that your wound will be the death of you! Like with the other stats of your characters, health (or wound) boxes vary from the puny to the very tough. Morale is another stat to track as well as leadership, and your fighting skills. Like I said, we had a fun time with it. We used to play a lot more in the past, but cowboys haven't been on the agenda the last few years. PKowboys did show its age just a tad however, and there's numerous things we talked about afterwards (we played over the course of two days) about what could improve, if nothing else, the speed of the overall game play. It's a good game if you like a unique system and are looking for a fun cowboy game played with as little as two or three figs per player.