Ambush at Longhorn creek

AWESOME image done by bob @ http://blog.truewestmagazine.com/ on his AWESOME blog.

Last night i played the first game of Black West (a game i have written) i have played in a long long time!  i Love this game even if it is a bit crunchy and needs some work. But we had a lot of fun and the battle report is a treat. :) 

THE SETTUP

7th Cavalry
1 General 
3 Captains
1 Private

Bandidos
1 Crazy Fool
3 Accomplices 
2 Hombres

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The Bandidos have heard that the new developing town of Barronville has established their general store and have located it at the bottom of the cliffs, of course giving it the perfect ambush position!

The first delivery of the store came in yesterday with a wagon load of ammunition and arms, as well as food and supplies!  The Bandidos plan to attack in the middle of the night and harass the currently sentry 7th cavalry who have elected themselves to stand guard of the load while it is inventoried in exchange for their free fill of ammunition. 


The Board has one building, the cliff edges, some loot and packages, a small field with cart and three flaming torches. 

Victory Conditions

We had three torches set up with a radius of "fog of war light" around each.
 we used an old pizza disk for this and we measured approximately the radius of the torch light. Each sentry guarding his light couldn't move more than 6" away from it without it effectively going out.
No one could shoot without line of sight and you could only shoot from dark to light and not light to dark, although there is nothing to say you can't try!

7th Cavalry
- Protect the store at all costs
- keep two of three torches lit until sunrise (turn 6) 

Bandidos

 - herd the longhorn to the wagon
- Ride the wagon out of the valley before turn 6

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Deployment 

As is usual in western games the deployment is probably the most tactical element of the game. luckily in this game  the enemies l.o.s was generally reduced to 6"  unless they where throwing pot shot of dynamite into the dark, which they did on occasion! Due to the darkness the Bandido's deployed in the open ground on the short side of the bard and the 7th cavalry put their 3 captains on the torch positions and the private and general as support characters. 

7th cav on the first position, the Private (right) armed with polearm, sword and cavalry pistol and the Captain (1 of 3) (left) Armed with Cav pistol and Winchester.

2nd captain on the East torch

General by the front door. Armed with Peacemaker, Saber

Captain three by the West Torch

With the 7th Cav in position The Bandidos began their advance. starting on the West side of the board with the intention to spread and flank while pinning down the captain and general at the front!

(left to right) 3 x winchesters and six guns, one double peacemaker and one six gun, one sinper (back)

THE GAME

The Bandidos spread out to flank the base.

The Bandidos plan to ambush went quickly apples up as the Sniper and one of the Accomplices began to pepper the first captain with fire giving away their presence immediately.
 Awkwardly the captain dove behind the longhorn, although precious to the Bandido's in this scenario the animal is worthless to the 7th cavalryman so instead it became dependable cover. Consequently the Bandidos  continued to fire anyway. as is their nature having to roll to see who they hit and luckily hitting the captain, causing no wounds! 
Seen at the bottom of the image above is the Crazy fool and Hombre running into ambush position and at the far back is the two remaining Accomplices in suppressing fire position! 

The General and the First Captain take aim from cover into the darkness but fail to hit anything!

Taking a big risk the General decides to throw his dynamite into the dark and see if he can A. hit someone and B. illuminate the area for even a second!
 Succesfuly passing his checks and measuring the distance for the throw (in this case 11") he found he was one inch short of the Bandido closest (and from which the shots came) and instead just managed to light up the area for a second.
 As the night is pierced with light the 7th cavalry make a series of checks to see who is aware of which enemies! Gladly the 7th Cav pass all of their checks revealing the positions of all but one of the mexicans, the lowly Hombre!

The Bandidos make their advance, sneaking around the building.

Following this explosion of action the Bandidos now knew they needed to get into cover or out of sight and fast. Keeping their structure on the left flank the Crazy Fool and the Hombre begin to move in (pictured above) behind the building. The Crazy Fool climbs into the garden but fails his climb test to go further and must stop in the flowerbed leaving him massively exposed, as the Hombre sneaks toward the stairs! 

With all the craziness going on the a fore mentioned Accomplice (first shooter) charges through the longhorn to save them from fire and enters combat with the first captain taking him completely by surprise as he charges from within the darkness! (seen pictured above back and below)
 meanwhile the Crazy Fool lays down some lead toward the direction of the General, causing him to pivot around the table and putting him in a very compromising postion as per the other two (suppressing) Accomplices! 

As they continue to shower the longhorn with fire one of the Accomplices dives in to save their hides!

The pesky riflemen who persisted to law down fire throughout the game causing no ends trouble for the 7th!

Throughout the game the sniper armed Hombre stayed at deployment zone for the Bandidos and sadly failed to hit a lot! even with his insane range and covered position he served to be little more than a  nuisance, albeit a tactful one. (below)

The Well dressed Hombre takes pot shots at the enemy.

Soon the Hombre who was cheeky enough to try his luck sneaking around was discovered and fire ensued, with the advantage of height and cover there was little else he could do but take it!  On the roof of the store the second Captain and the Private stand guard and it is the Captain who takes charge here, leading the assault. 

sneaky hombre soon to be dead hombre surely!

As the Crazy Fool and his gang lay fire on the general and try to eradicate their biggest threat the Private takes it upon himself to provide some support fire for the ground troops. 

As the next turn begins things are beginning to look sour for the 7th, as The general takes a wound in the shooting phase and the Hombre from behind the building runs out of cover to sling a few shots at the third guard.
With this three point attack now in force the Bandidios have victory in their sights, now all they have to do is overpower guard one and herd the Longhorn to the wagon! 

This turn the Bandidos took a different approach, using the darkness to their advantage the Accomplices split up, one of them stayed in the suppressing position and the other moved into the field of vision. This turn the remaining Accomplice (suppressing fire) also managed ot land a wound on the General even with his cover! 

With the chaos on the field the Crazy Fool decided it was time to try the makeshift ladder the property owner had left in his garden and try to get a height advantage. he was of course met with resistance from Captain 2 who managed to not only enter combat that turn but knock the Crazy Fool off the roof and stun him. Luckily no wound was caused due to the fall!

Things began to get very quickly dangerous then as the 7th decided they had enough of the tom-foolery of the Mexicans and engaged in close combat. The Private bounded from the roof and down the stairs into the field of battle and the third captain charged into combat with our Hombre causing a wound in the first fight!

Captain 3 charges Hombre 2

All hell breaks loose

The Accomplice who charged off the mound runs straight into the line of sight of the 7th private and engages straight away! Much to his surprise the polearm of the 7th cavalry member gives him such a bonus that he cannot handle it and runs almost as soon as he charges! 

Simultaneously the General had taken one bullet to many and his cover falls apart, he takes his final wound and is the first tragedy of the battle falling in a gust of dust and sand!

With their General down but the Captains holding strong the Bandidos begin to get pushed back! With the first accomplice now taking cover in the garden and the Crazy Fool Dazed in the mud things begin to look bad for the Mexicans! 

As the battle drew to a close wounds where being collected every-where as tends to be the way once the seal is broken so to speak! 
As the game ended the 7th Cavalry had sustained two fatalities and many wounds and the Mexicans just one fatality! Although they managed to push back the Mexicans and protect the loot they lost some important people and the unit will never be the same again! 


VICTORY: 7th Cavalry

The sun rises and brings with it a moments peace before the days business!

SUMMARY

An awesome game and a fun write up. i Definitely need to re-jig the charging rules, the combat rules (or just re word them) and some other bits but the game runs pretty smoothly and took us just over an hour! And that was with teaching mechanics etc as we went along. Great stuff, great game, great fun. 


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