The Magnificent Five

We decided late on to do Dead Man's Hand last night, I told Simon that I was very busy and would not be able to give much thought to a scenario so it might just be a shoot-out, so he offered to put something together if he found the time.

He took inspiration from the Magnificent Seven movie and we chatted about it in the car on the way, we came up with a town which had sent for the hired guns to clean out the outlaws and desperado's who had made it their home. We thought seven gunslingers would be too much so the townsfolk came up with enough money for four including the young greenhorn who went to fetch them, he is the one who is left standing after all his new mates have died in a hail of lead, leaving him the hero of the hour, and of course he always gets the girl. I always wanted to be that guy.

Before the storm.

The Magnificent four+1.

The bad guys lounging around town were uninspiring and contained no one too handy with a gun, some were positively unhandy, but they had numbers on their side, almost three to one. The good guys decided to enter town near the Red Dog Saloon where they crept up to the rear and shot into the crowded bar, the first of the bad guys went down to be followed by another shortly after. Damn, these guys are good I thought and wondered if three to one was going to be enough. The shots alerted the rest of the gang and they began to make their way along Main Street towards the Red Dog, riflemen climbed on to nearby roofs, bullets flew.

 Two of the saviours with rifles took up a position outside the Red Dog behind some cover and started sniping, meanwhile a few of the more courageous baddies had rushed into the back room of the Red Dog and loosed off a shotgun blast at the enemy beside the window, down he went in a torrent of blood. The shouts of victory were short lived as the Rookie and the remaining gunslinger barged into the saloon and gunned down everyone inside, including Mexican Bob, a figure who is usually the butt of many jokes around the table. The body count was definitely in the gunfighters favour.
 

The baddies move on the Red Dog.

Wait for us Pedro!

We'll be back for you storekeep.

 The outlaw rifleman on the roof of Halloran's Place managed to gun down another gunfighter hiding behind his crates, his mate began to get nervous, a couple of desperado's had made it across the street to the Livery and were moving to get behind him, more of them were now within pistol shot of the Red Dog despite mounting casualties.

 

The game was almost up as the greenhorns friend dropped from a fusilade of shots from the back of the saloon leaving him alone inside, in true movie style he listened carefully and let loose through the thin wall of the building killing yet another desperado, but it was not enough, he was then rushed and gunned down without mercy, no girl for him. The last of the Magnificent bunch limped away from his hiding place behind the barrels but not fast enough, the town was once more under the thrall of the bad guys and they were going to get payback.

As an off the cuff game this turned out to be quite exciting, so much so that we missed a big nerve test for both sides which might have given the Rookie his chance to bathe in glory after all, or not. It needs further tweaking and I think we should have Seven, even if it means more baddies, but perhaps with a certain objective so that they cannot simply hunker down in a building. I look forward to trying this again. Simon had dearly wanted to play the card which allowed him his cinematic scene of blowing someone away behind a wall and it looked like I had trumped him, but in the end he did get to use it and spectacularly so.