Shootist at BGG

In our gaming group, we have been playing Wild West games since the mid-90s. Sometimes in 25/28mm, sometimes in 54mm. See our page on Wild West games for a full overview.

Our rules were originally based on a little ruleset called Shootist. We have adapted the rules over the years, but the core is still recognizable.

Some time ago, I noticed that the game was also listed on Boardgamegeek.com. But apart from a general description, there were no files, no images, no review. I felt a little sad about this, since Shootist has served us so well over the years, and didn't deserve to be orphaned in this way.

So I uploaded some of our photo's, some our materials, and worte a short review. So you should all go to the relevant BGG page and give all that uploaded stuff some thumbs-up!!!

Crisis 2016 (2)

Some more pictures from our Crisis 2016 game.

Crisis 2016

Pictures of our 54mm Wild West game we staged at CRISIS in cooperation with fellow wargaming club PMCD, can be seen here:

https://pmcd-mobilisatie.blogspot.be/2016/11/crisis-antwerp-2016-our-participation.html

Rules etc. can be found here.

Wild West at CRISIS 2016 (2)

Our friends at PMCD have organized a test game for our joined CRISIS game this coming November. We are going to run a 54mm Wild West game, using toy scenery elements that was available during the 70s, and which many wargamers remember fondly.

We are going to use our house rules.

A few pictures here, but more pictures to be seen on their blog.

Wild West at CRISIS 2016

This year for CRISIS 2016, we will be joining forces with PMCD, running a 54mm wild west shootist game, using our house rules. Dirk D. has been busy painting figures. Some pictures below, but more pictures can be seen in this blogpost.

Wild West in 54mm

Chances are we will run a 54mm  Wild West shootist game during Crisis 2016, together with our friends from PMCD.

To "test the visuals", I brought out all relevant 54mm stuff, and made a little diorama. The wooden fort has been in my collection for over 40 years, dating back to my childhood days (update: apparantly from a DDR company Oehme & Sohne). All figures are Britains from the 70s (and 80s?), except for the wagon. The shootists in front of the shiriff building have been repainted several years ago.

Wild West house rules

Back in the nineties, we ran quite a lot of Wild West games, both in 54mm and 28mm. We used a little ruleset called "Shootist" (Bunblebee games), and adapted the rules over the years. Everything is now collected on the Wild West House Rules page.

54mm gunslingers in action.

Wild West Shootout in Denderleeuw

This weekend I ran a Wild West game using our house rules, at the invitation of Dirk D. of the wargaming group PMC Denderleeuw. Dirk invited me over to show our approach towards Wild West gaming. I think it's always nice to have some good discussions across different wargaming groups, to inject some new ideas into each other's playing styles, and also to see firsthand where and how others are organizing their games. In this case, Dirk's garage!

I loaded up all my Wild West scenery and figures in the car, and once I arrived, I let the "locals" set up the terrain the way they wanted. Not all terrain and scenery was used, but the idea in such skirmish games is always to mix dense terrain with some open areas.

5 players were present, with me taking up the role of umpire. We managed 3 games, each player controlling one shootist each. As is usually the case in Wild West games, emotions ran high, especially when shootists are killed with headshots ;-)

I had a stack of pregenerated characters ready. Every player draws a random shootist, as well as a random weapons card.

The first game was a little test game to explain the mechanics. For the second and third games, each player had a secret mission ("Kill 3 shootists", "Free your friend from jail", "Dug up a sack of gold on spot X", etc.) Such missions give some flavour to the game, instead of having a "last man standing" game, which can really drag out the proceedings.

Pictures shown below, courtesy of Dirk D. Figures and scenery all painted by the Schild & Vriend wargaming group, in some cases over 20 years ago! Most houses are from Hovels, figures mostly from (Guernsey) Foundry.

Overview of the table.

Hangman stand from 4Ground

Shootist in action. Two blue cats from Black Cat Bases.

Indian Village

Barn. Plastic ducks from a toy animal set.

The not-so-historical OK Corral

Umpire in action

Shootist in action

Dead shootist. Using red cardboard templates is a nice way to visualize fallen figures.

Shootout in front of the church

Another overview of the table

Cactus from Grand Manner

Plastic toy sheep

Indian village

Another overview of town

Bandit shot dead before the jailhouse

Shootist hiding behind stack of wood

Another farm

Teepees

I finished painting 2 teepees yesterday.

These teepees were part of the Old West collection of wargaming buddy and co-author of this blog, Bart V. But a few years ago, our entire Old West collection was consolidated as part of my collection, hence the teepees are now in my possession. Bart only managed to paint one teepee, back in 1997 (the leftmost one), and because I am running an Old West game this weekend, this was the perefect incentive to finally paint up the last two. The paintjob is not as steady as Bart's, but it will do :-)

I must confess I didn't look up painting schemes for actual teepees, but rather on some photographs of wargaming scenery in the magazines. So probably these teepees are closer to what we think they should look like rather than what they actually looked like.

 

A few finished miniatures

I have to admit wargaming activity has been on the slow side lately. I barely managed to do any painting, and due to a variety of reasons, actual number of games also has suffered.

Anyway, here are some finished miniatures.

First, some old Runequest miniatures which I identified earlier in this blogpost. From left to right: Smitten Broo, Broo with Mace and Orlanth Adventurer. The Broo with Mace required a small repair, since the mace was broken off.

Second, a large siege engine from Games Workshop, published several years ago as part of their Lord of the Rings range. I originally bought this set in 2005 or 2006, for the Lowenheim game, but I only got around painting it now.

Third, not really a paintjob, but a hangman stand put together. This set is produced by 4Ground. The figure is one I had lying around, and was (is?) part of Foundry's Old West range. Time to play some more Shootist games!

Shootist in 54mm

I recently tried my painting skills at some old 54mm Britains Deetails Old West cowboys. These figures have been in my collection for almost 40 years - I got them when I was a kid aged 5 or 6 as a ‘Sinterklaas’ gift (Belgians and Dutch wargamers will know what this means, and for all the others: it’s the original Santa Claus in the low countries). The original Britains figures are very crudely painted; they are toy soldiers after all. I completely repainted the figures, maintaining the original color schemes, but applied some layering to give the figure more depth. Since I also wanted to maintain the toy soldier look, I didn’t go overboard with painting too much detail. The sculpting of the figures don't really allow it either.

I couldn’t resist setting up some scenes using my old wooden fort (same Sinterklaas gift), adding some scenery items from my wargaming collection.

Shootout at the Oklahoma - Minneapolis crossroads. The roadsign is also over 40 years old and is part of my wooden fort set.

Two gunmen defending their hideout. The 'Dead Man's Gulch' sign is also from the Britains Deetail range.

Shootout in front of Fort Delaware.

Just for comparison, below you see a picture (ripped from the internet somewhere) showing original Britains Deetail figures - but in different color schemes. Apparently, there was a lot of variation to be found in the painting style when they were sold. Britains Deetail figures were apparantly sold mostly during the seventies.

A complete overview of the Britains Deetail range (Wild West figures) can be found here: http://www.angelfire.com/biz/toysoldierhq/Britwestd.html

I still have some Indians and US Infantry figures lying around as well, but I think I'll return to painting 28mm figures for now.

Update: In the mean time I discovered that the oval-shaped bases date from a later period, and that the square-based bases are the original early-seventies ones. So somehow, some 'newer' figures have entered the box in which everything was kept in the attic during all those years. Perhaps my younger brother acquired some figures during later years, and they were all tossed together. I also don't exclude the possibility I bought some additional figures myself when I already started wargaming, but I have no recollection of that. Fact remains, I did receive a wooden fort with some cowboys and indian figures when I was a 6-year old kid :-)

US Cavalry

These are some of my last unpainted Old West type figures (they're Foundry figures if you hadn't guessed). They were half (well, a quarter) painted what must have been almost 10 years ago and then abandoned. They ended up in a shoebox that made it through about 4 house moves before I rediscovered them when rearranging storage in my attic last week.



Anyway, they've been painted over the last few days. Three of these figures were three quarters done 10 years ago, when I still painstakingly mixed my own colours and used upwards of 4-5 layers on each colour. The rest of them are painted in my current army level 2-layer style. If you can spot which is which, feel free to comment with your guesses :)

Next up on the painting table is a battalion of 24 Bavarian light infantry (Napoleonic). They'll make up the 1st Light Battalion.

Nostalgia: Shootist game 11/11/2008

(yes, I still update this blog :) )

Last week, we had a blast of a Shootist game, using our hexified version of the old Shootist rules. As these are probably long out of print, I don't think there's a problem in putting the quick record sheet (from which a group of adult wargamers can pretty much play the game) online [here](http://www.nirya.be/documents/shootist_rulesheet.pdf "Shootist QRS"). There's also a [character record sheet](http://www.nirya.be/documents/shootist_record_sheet.pdf "Shootist character record sheet") available for download.

Pictures of the game can be found in [this set](http://www.flickr.com/photos/robartes/sets/72157609376550405/ "Shootist game photo set on Flickr") on [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/robartes "My photostream on Flickr"), as well as (currently, until they rotate out) in the sidebar on this blog.

We played three (very) loosely linked scenarios.

1. Free the safe cracker

An expert safe cracker was taken into custody by the sherriff and needed to be freed and escorted safely off the table. Two teams of two shootists each opposed each other in this: Koen and Eddy versus Graham and myself. The game resulted in a victory for the Koen / Eddy team. Eddy's shootists was killed in a gunfight, but Koen managed to snatch the prisoner and run off with him in a narrow escape.

2. Rob the bank (or in this case, the Whiskey Bar and Hotel)

With the knowledge on how to crack the safe now safely in their hands, three shootists (Koen, Graham and myself) had to get into town and get the gold, opposed by lone gunman (Winchester rifle) Eddy. Eddy was killed after a protracted gunfight with Koen and Graham, after which Graham shot Koen in the back (boo, hiss). While all this was going on, I (slowly, going through a stream) walked up to the safe, calmly took out the gold and then shot Graham who sought to contest my claim to the gold.

3. Get the gold out of town, under attack from Indians

In this game, Koen, Eddy and myself needed to get the gold (generously shared :) ) out of town on a wagon (which could only cross the river at one bridge), while Graham played a bunch of Indians trying to prevent this. This was a very closely contested game, with Graham, Koen and all Indians except for the rifleman dying in various fun and gruesome ways, and me speeding the wagon past the last remaining Indian who was taking potshots at me all the while.

I think fun was had by all, so definitely up for repitition, I'd say.

Straight from the hip

Yup amigos, last night featured a game of “Shootists” – Old Western style action in the quiet city appropriately called Tombstone.

The following shootists had answered the call for a final showdown :

Phil “Doc Savage“ Dutré
Koen “Brawl Bait” Devroey
Frank “Eagle Wings” Vleugels
Eddy “Crap Shooter” Sterckx

First scenario : Last Gringo Standing – a straight shoot-out, everyone starting in a corner

Koen and Frank immediately started shooting at each other while Phil used his usual subtle tactic of charging straight ahead at full speed to join the fight while Eddy was using the cover provided by the town houses for a sideways approach.

As soon as Phil was in range, Frank suddenly noticed he left his spare pants or bullets or whatever behind a tree somewhere and “advanced to the rear”, while Koen circled the stable, not trusting the moves Eddy was making. But the one who should have been more careful was Phil : while making sure he remained in cover for both Frank and Koen he didn’t watch his back too carefully and Eddy got the first kill of the night : a headshot. It wasn’t going to be the last : of the 7 player killed in the course of the evening, 5 were headshots. Our tactics may be lousy, but our aim is straight.

Of course this move to kill Phil had left Eddy totally exposed so Koen who had circled the stable managed to first immobilize him by putting bullets in both his legs and then finish him of with a headshot. Meanwhile Frank had found his courage and some spare bullets and the final showdown between Koen and Frank was decided in the latter’s advantage.

Second scenario : 2 versus 2 - Eddy and Koen defending the town, Frank and Phil trying to take it over

As Koen was starting at the other end of town, Frank and Phil’s tactic was to both concentrate their movement & fire on Eddy. Frank got in range first, but Eddy kept dodging every incoming bullet and in return kept hitting Frank in non-vital parts. What exactly constitutes non-vital parts with Frank is still open for debate. When Phil got into range their firepower was even doubled, but still no hits on Eddy. Finally the cavalry arrived in the form of Koen who got into Phil’s rear. Suddenly things happened very quickly : Phil shot at Koen : straight headshot, Phil shot at Eddy : straight headshot – game over in the blink of an eye. Against the odds and all that – “it’s a dice game”

Third scenario – Sheriff versus 3 lousy bandidos trying to blow-up the prison – aka : Let’s kill Koen

Eddy’s legendary lousy playing style dictated the tactics of the 3 bandidos : he would go straight through the middle attracting Koen’s fire while Frank would move to the right and Phil to the left. Sure enough the plan worked : Koen got pretty preoccupied with shooting long range at Eddy, scoring a leg hit, but nothing more. Meanwhile Frank and Phil had closed in fast and trapped the hapless Sheriff in the alley behind the prison. With no way out the Sheriff took 3 bullets in the chest before finally succumbing to the endless barrage of brawls and shots.

Fourth scenario – Stagecoach – Frank commanding 3 bands of outlaws versus 2 wagons full of gold that had to move across the table and exit at the other end.

As one band of outlaws started in the town on our right and another across the river on our left, the only viable tactic was : get out from between them as fast as possible, keep hugging the river so the town gang may not get there in time to stop us. Eddy with the Winchester and Phil with the shotgun on the first wagon, Koen with his Colt on the second. Firepower up front to confront the bands – it looked good in theory.

The tactic brought the wagons close to the band across the river but there was nothing we could do about that. Sure enough it worked : the town band got in a couple of long range shots but proved ineffectual at stopping the wagon train but the outlaws across the river were another thing as they refused to stay on their side of the river. Phil and Eddy both took out a couple of bandidos but by sheer numerical superiority (and keen positioning) they managed to drag Koen from the second wagon and into a brawl. It looked bad for a while but good dice allowed Koen to get back on the wagon and continue the epic journey. But the river outlaws weren’t about to give up as they knew our wagons would slow down while crossing the river and sure enough they managed to drag Koen a second time from his wagon, this time fatally wounding him with Phil helpless because he needed to reload and Eddy’s Winchester not effective at such a close range.

With Koen dead and the second wagon needing a driver there was just one available option for us : Eddy would have to kill the remaining outlaw while Phil would jump from the first to the second wagon. Amazingly the plan worked and we got across the river into safety. Well, relative safety because a third band confronted us : Indians who had all won the Lottery and bought themselves Winchester rifles. Our plan remained : full speed ahead and get through them as fast as possible. Not knowing where we would hit their line the Indians had spread-out a little so we didn’t have to confront all 5 of them at close range and in hand-to-hand combat which together with the protection of the wagons (read : good dice rolling) proved enough to get us through. We had tragically lost Koen on the way, but the gold got through and we would receive a nice bonus.

Four games in under 3 hours – a fast and fun evening