Showdown at Whitewash City: Blackwater Gulch Battle Report

Well, had an excellent game of Blackwater Gultch last night. It is my first game ever and as with all first time games mistakes are made and things don’t click rules wise until after you start playing and suddenly you go “oh yea…now I see”.

Ryan (DocDuckButter on Lead Adventure) ran an Outlaw gang against mine. We had a unique mix of stats and skills on both sides. He ran a Gunslinger Leader with a Doc and Wrassler in his gang along with 4 henchmen for a total of 7 men (same as me). His weapon assortment was mostly high rating weapons, dynamite, lots of pistols and a sledgehammer on the Wrassler and a single rifle from what I recall.

My mix of weapons was ratings 3-6 depending on the figure, I tried to save a few points here and there and learned some serious lessons this past game about weapon choice. If I had about one more point higher weapon on some of my men the game would have changed in a very dramatic way.

We setup a standard street using Ryan’s Whitewash buildings he printed out and had put together. I brought along some random junk like barrels, cactus and such to decorate the rest of the field. We went with the simple “Showdown” style game and rolled for sides and deployment (getting corners).

I setup first and he setup second. A good thing to note here is that the person that wins deployment is not always the person going first and only one figure moves at a time, something to remember for new players.

The game opened with a few turns of movement to get into good spots…I ran down behind a row of buildings and split up sending some men down one side and others straight over to my side of the street to flank me that way with his strong guy and shotgun.

First blood went to me as my leader with a repeater took down his only riflemen behind a wagon. At this point I tried to toss a bottle of alcohol at his strong man but failed to hit and promptly was pummeled by his shotgun. Then one of my henchmen slipped over and shot down his shotgun with his Army pistol. The wrasslers had a match but with me taking the charge I was able to beat him down with a pair of knuckledusters, otherwise that hammer was going to clobber me into next week.

As this point the game was starting to go into my favor but then a twist of luck happened and the Doc managed to heal up a few figures including his leader and that swung the fight once I lost my Leader and Gunslinger. With only a few Henchmen facing actual characters it was an uphill struggle for me and I just did not have enough dice luck.

As he shot down my last man (I kept passing morale checks) he only had the Doc and Leader both left with 1 wound each and neither of us had any bonus luck dice for our leaders. It was a very close game that could have swung the other way with a dice roll or two.

Some lessons learned:

LEADERS

The Best Leaders (to us): Gunslinger or Doc took the lead with the Wrassler and Gambler taking up secondary spots. Based on your gang and play style is what would determine what is ideal for you.

The Gunslinger grants a bonus to aiming for others and for weaker models this helps inflict a few more hits.

The Doc allows other models to heal, thus allowing anyone (like a henchman) to heal another model.

The Wrassler gives a close combat bonus so if you focus on close combat this can make a huge impact.

The Gambler allows others to use Rerolls.

The Prospector only works well perhaps in a rural gaming area that would benefit the terrain bonuses. In a town, we found most things to be heavy cover like fences, barrels and such.

The Bounty Hunter is perhaps the worst of the formats as he allows a weapon one level higher to be used by the gang. Still once he goes down this creates an instant handicap for your gang if they carry weapons with higher levels than their skills.

WEAPONS

Higher level weapons are a bitch to beat on defense rolls. Just ask Level 5 Repeaters and Level 6 Pistols.

The Sledgehammer is an ugly weapon and a pair of Knuckledusters on a guy is just mean.

Neither of us had luck with flaming alcohol or dynamite tossing but then again I feel with a refined model
armed with these weapons could be very deadly as we discussed things after the game.

ERRORS

• I forgot to account my STR bonuses for HTH.
• I should have had a MC of 6 to Run/Charge in the first HTH combat.
• When Ryan’s character shot, we should have rolled, resolved one shot first then moved to the second target when his leader two gunned two henchmen. Didn’t catch this in my early reading that you should ensure the first goes down before rolling the second. Both died, but in the future that could be a critical swing in a game.
• We didn’t use Crowded Target rule, could have affected me once or twice in the game.
• We mistook a rule that we had to reroll a success if it goes beyond a 6. Early on in the book it states never higher than a six for any rolls on P14. We crossed wires with the rerolls elsewhere in the rules.

Here are a few pics of the game...

The town...most of it Whitewash City that Ryan had and a few random store items and some small stuff I had...

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More of the town...

Another angle...

Most of the gang deployed behind buildings and safe.

Leader and henchman hidden around another.

His gang hidden...

I quickly take cover and command of the street with two rifles.

The rest of my gang runs up behind the buildings...

My riflemen taking their spots for fields of fire.

My gang sneaks around down an alley to take advantage of cover from the barrels.

Ox and Dirty Sanchez have a drink before the fight.

Dirty Sanchez throws a flaming bottle of booze at the strongman and fails to hit! Bad news for Sanchez as a guy with a shotgun lines up a shot!

Sanchez takes one in the rear!

One of my riflemen takes down his rifleman trying to control the street.

Another of Ryan's gang down.

The Irish Kid steps out and guns down the guy with the shotgun that took out Sanchez!

The big guys duke it out!

My sniper gets blasted  by the enemy gang leader.

My boss staying in cover after dropping a dangerous guy with dynamite! Just glad the dice was not on Ryan's side!