Who Shot the Sheriff, Nobody!

Miserable day and a miserable night to be abroad, I must confess I wanted to sit next to the fire but I had organised a game and being a man of my word off I went to the club. I failed to find anything interesting on the web so I adapted one of the scenarios in the Dead Man's Hand rule book, the Law had to get a prisoner from the jail to the Wells Fargo office and out of town on the noon stage. Wells Fargo took a modern outlook to the situation and refused to send their drivers to the jail which of course would have made sense. The Sheriff (Simon) knew that his prisoners gang were in town somewhere and were going to make an attempt at setting their man free, thus began the long walk along Main Street.

Lull before the storm.

Main Street.

Having learned from past games Simon kept his posse together with the prisoner in the middle, I on the other hand split my men on both sides of the street and hung back until the party got abreast of me, apart from a rifleman on the roof of the Doc's. To make things interesting I introduced a bunch of civilians who would be controlled at the beginning of each turn by a direction die, if they could get in a building they stayed there, if not they ran about obscuring the main protagonists.

The Lawmen surrounded by several civilians start their long walk.

I made some dodgy decisions during the game and sent one of my men on a wild goose chase to get around the rear of the posse, but in doing so he virtually had no influence on the game until it was too late. Simon relentlessly bore down on my Boss and hired gun, a round of shotgun shots accounted for a man each, it was then the hired gun decided to seek cover and left the boss man alone, wounded and in the open. I could do nothing to save him, down he went while the gunslinger cowered behind a thunderbox. I was losing out on the initiative cards and the gunfights, I had the Marshall dead to rights a couple of times but he managed to remain standing before I could finish him off.

Safety.

By the time the Lawmen got to the Wells Fargo office I had lost over half my men, although my morale held up it was obvious I was not going to save poor Jed from the trip to Yuma, we got out of Dodge or rather Carefree.

Simon had a good game, he always seemed to be a jump ahead of me with initiative, and the one time I did get an excellent draw he played that card where he got three of mine and swapped with three of his, damn! It was a simple scenario but the next time the officer watching the prisoner should only have two actions, Jed no doubt would not be compliant in his journey. I can't go without explaining why the gunslinger ran, he was badly wounded and just about to die so I played the card where he could run and get to cover, not dying but receiving one wound. But this left him with three and he was basically useless until I had recovered them, but by then the game was over.