Gunslinger - take 2

So New Year's been and gone and I've managed to fit in one game so far... another outing for the old Avalon Hill game Gunslinger which I played just before Xmas for the first time in ages.

This time we moved out of town to a scenario out in the country with John Wesley Hardin being hunted by some US cavalry troopers.  Unfortunately the 15 year old Hardin has managed to get the drop on them and has a shotgun!  One of the troopers quickly fell to a long range shotgun blast and spent most of the rest of the game slowly bleeding to death on the ground.  In Gunslinger wounds also cause delay points which limit your actions, so this poor trooper was never going to be able to get up again!

The other trooper put up a much more valiant long range fight against Hardin and his companion, trading rifle fire and managing to wounding Hardin in the leg and putting him on the ground... unfortunately he was still able to fire with his pistol from here and the trooper eventually fell to a bullseye result.

The game definitely holds up despite its age but it's a very different experience to, say, Fistful of Lead or Dead Mans Hand which are much more heroic and cinematic.  Each round in Gunslinger lasts 2 seconds and is divided into 5 0.4 second segments so we're talking very detailed!  If you like to know exactly which type of pistol your character is carrying and fine tune a fist fight then it's a great game but it's not fast moving and I think most people would struggle with more than 2 characters per player.

Still good fun but a very granular sort of game

2022, and some 2023 plans

 So that's Xmas and Hogmanay all over and done with and depressingly I'm back at work tomorrow. Which means it must be time for the traditional look back at the last year...

Firstly, my well-placed pre-xmas hints to the family were successful (not so much a hint...I just sent them a list) and I had a couple for game-related pressies at Xmas. A set of Xenos Rampant, the latest version of the Rampant rules family...

...and the European Birds expansion for Wingspan which I'm looking forward to trying out.

There's also a copy of the Deluxe revised version of Never Mind the Billhooks on its way which was my present to myself! I'll post more about all of these as they get played.

So how was 2022 and did any of my plans which I foolishly committed to at the beginning of the year actually happen?

Games-wise it was a good year... I tend to have one gaming night a week and I think most weeks this year featured some kind of in-person game.  As usual the range of games and settings varied enormously... I'm too much of a games-butterfly to stick to one period or rule set... and they ranged from Star Wars to ACW naval, Romans (late and early... Dux Bellorum and Strength and Honour) to WW2 (Blood Red Skies).  Boardgames also featured heavily with several games of War of the Ring, Tokaido, Terraforming Mars, Star Trek Ascendancy, Eclipse and Wingspan.  I'm also still playing in a fortnightly online RPG with a group consisting of a couple of old friends from my uni days and some new ones from across the world.  This started in 2020 as a lockdown game and has carried on with no signs of stopping.  Initially we were playing the old SPI rpg Dragonquest, but this has now morphed in a playtest for a new set of rules and is great fun.

There were lots of games at Eric the Shed's (do check out his blog for all the news about imminent changes to an even bigger and better shed) as well as regular games at friends (Andrew and Anthony)... sadly I don't have space to host games in my tiny dwelling but I'm blessed to have a great circle of friends who are happy to put up with me and for which I'm very grateful!

Last year I posted about some plans for 2022 in an attempt to shame myself into actually doing them...so did any of my plans actually happen?  The usual answer to this is pretty much always 'no' as I'm terrible at sticking to a plan (don't tell my boss!) but for once I can say I've surprised myself and actually seen several projects that were on the list through from planning to a proper game or 2.  I managed to 'complete' my Arthurian armies and have a few games of Dux Bellorum with them and I finally painted up my 1/600 ACW Ironclads and got some games out of these as well.  This was particularly satisfying as these had been hanging around for several years.  I failed to do anything with my WW2 ships (again) but I did get my WW2 planes into action which again was a project that had been in limbo for a long time.  Not on the plan, but nice unexpected diversions were repainting some 30 year old Laserburn figures and then adding a lot more, and discovering Strength and Honour and putting together 2 x 10mm Roman and Celt armies 

So... what's on the cards for 2022?  

#1 paint up the box of Picts I purchased last month at Warfare (and add a few more) to add to the Arthurian armies

#2 Get some games in with Xenos Rampant and my new Laserburn inspired 15mm scifi figures

#3 Once Billhooks Deluxe rules arrive I want to dig out my very old 15mm Swiss and medieval European armies which haven't seen the light of day in many years and see if they can be repurposed for the Burgundian Wars

#4 add a bit more to the 10mm paper Romans

My wargaming stuff is all stored in the loft and it's a place of nightmares so a major project is sorting this out and hopefully getting to a point where I can more easily find things without risking life, limb and the bedroom ceiling!

I hope everyone had a good Hogmanay and the post-xmas break depression doesn't hit too hard!!