Thursday 19 January 2023

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




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