Rules with no name (free pdf version review)

I've had a freebee version of the "Rules with no name" on my hard drive for some time now. This is the short 27page PDF from when the rules were available for free download, before Foundry bought the rules and made an over the top expensive 130+ pages rulebook out of it.

From what I've read the rules are basically the same though, the book has more explanatory charts and such, pictures, full color etc. But let's forget about that and just focus on the raw rules for this game.

This game I think is set more towards participation games with more than two players taking part in the gunfights - rather than a 1vs1 player gameplay like in Legends of the Old West. Not that you could not play this game 1vs1 but it feels more open ended which explains some of the design choices such as random activation of models by using character cards drawn from a deck.

Another thing that makes this game lean towards having more players involved is that it is a lot more detailed when it comes to wounding characters, actually killing someone is a feat as there are but a couple of "killed" results, but a lot of grazes, flesh wounds and serious wounds on the wound chart. Which of course makes the game go on for a longer period with characters limping about with wounds to their legs or arms, reducing their accuracy and movement rate etc.

The tradeoff is that you will need to have lots of cards and charts at hand to resolve most of the action.

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How it plays.

First of all, you need a "character card" for each model on the board taking part in the skirmish. This should be a portrait of the miniature itself, you also need 1 Joker card and 1 card for each of the "character classes" in the game (Citizen, Gunman, Shootist, Legend). These are used to determine which model takes its turn to perform all allowed actions. You go through the deck until you hit the Joker at which point the cards are shuffled back together and you start from the beginning again. The "character class" cards provide a special bonus allowing players to sometimes activate additional models at the same time.

Models activated are allowed 1 single action. The range of actions available include, moving at full speed, moving and shooting, reloading, clearing jammed guns, recover from being shot, get up from the ground and a few others. But you have a wide selection to chose from.

Movement is a bit weird, since you roll 3D6 and move a model in a straight line up to the distance rolled. Not really a fan of this particular feature, but I guess it fits in with the rest of the game mechanics.

Shooting is interesting since you have to roll a 6 on a D6 to hit anything. You have to choose between a couple of firing modes, such as deliberate fire, shooting like a madman or taking an aimed shot. Having moved also impacts on your shooting, cover, range (both being too close or too far) makes an impact on how many dice you roll. It can easily get overwhelming at first but here is an example:

Character activated is a "Shootist", this profile alone give you +1D6 during your shooting phase. You did not move the model so there is no penalty. You are armed with a pistol and you decide to fire at close range (6") which gives you 3D6. Enemy is in cover which adds a -1D6 penalty.

You decide to fire "Deliberate fire" which can only inflict 1 wound no matter how many 6's you roll but you can never jam or run out of ammo this way.

OK:

+1 for the shootist, +3 for close range with pistol, -1 for enemy in cover = 3D6 roll to hit.

You roll 3, 6, 6 which means you hit your target, but can only use one hit to wound since you used "Deliberate fire" mode.

You then roll on the wound chart, which is a 6x6 window chart of wound results which randomly determines what body part was hit and what kind of damage was done to the enemy. This chart ranges from flesh wounds, to specific body damage that cripples or outright kills the enemy model.

You can substitute the 2D6 wound chart by printing out the 36 wound cards instead to speed up the process of determining the outcome of your hits.

Doc Holliday being a Legend shoots 5 dice at close range and does so with the Blazing away action meaning each 6 will become a wound. He rolls and scores 3 hits, no jammed or out of ammo results. The target gets pretty roughed up having to roll 3 wound results on the chart!
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The core rules are just 8 pages long and provide for some interesting and dynamic gunfights. There are a substantial amount of additional rules however, which includes close combat which is equally detailed in how to hit/deal damage and random in actual wound outcome.

There are also a ton of skills that you gunslingers may gain after they survive a game which adds to the character of each model in a good or a bad way. There are rules for Indians, horses, challenges and duels, despicable acts such as shooting someone in the back, rules for hatred/fear/nerve,  and pretty much every other aspect of a Old West situation that you can think of.

The rules are very detailed with lots of charts, but you can greatly reduce the time spent consulting these if you use the markers instead. True it takes some time and effort to actually make these, but it could be worth it when playing in a group.

The game also clearly aims towards having a "gamemaster" who controls the bystanders in the town where you are raising hell.

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Now I can't compare Legends of the Old West to Rules with No Name in the printed version.
I can only assume that the printed version of these rules have character profiles just like in Legends of the Old West. But comparing the backbone of the rules I think both games have their strengths and weaknesses. Now don't take the amount of +/- to be some sort of a score, but rather what I think of certain aspects of both games. Some are minor others are of greater impact.

LotoW:
+ Very easy to learn and memorize all you need, user friendly mechanics
+ Quick paced gameplay, aimed at 2 player games
+ Very little randomness in the rule mechanics in regard to activation/wound outcome
+ Solid and very fun "after battle" phase where you roll for wounds, skills etc
- Hard to balance games with more than 2 players
- Putting models out of a fight is sometimes too easy
- Close combat is not too fun

RWNN:
+ Very detailed and dynamic mechanics for pretty much everything
+ Gunfights feel like the real deal thanks to the charts
+ Allows for single models taking part in mass skirmish with several players
+ Lots of factors affecting the outcome of shooting
- Random movement, and in a static direction only
- Relies a lot on additional markers and cards that have to be manufactured
- Random activation can create too much uncertainty

It would seem as the free version is not available anymore though, having conducted a quick google search. But if the above picked your interest I can recommend giving "Rules with no name" a try.

7 Western movies I really like

This is a list of my top 7 Western movies in no particular order. There are a dozen or so that did not make the list and that are still decent. But I wanted to make this a "single post movie recommendation" so 7 is what there is room for.

The magnificent seven (no pun intended)
A Western take on the Akira Kurosawa movie about the 7 samurai, in this case gunmen, hired by a small town to protect them from a local group of bandits making everyday life a misery. Not the most original story, but then again I never found westerns to be about telling an original story but rather about interesting characters and atmosphere. If done right and made believable it is awesome, if done half assed you get stuff like Young Guns (and that atrocious soundtrack). The 7 gunmen, greatly outnumbered by the outlaws still manage to kick ass and protect the village against all odds.

The magnificent seven has a great lineup, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach and Charles Bronson among others. Like any good western it has a highly and instantly recognizable theme song that just re-assures you that you are in for a good time of good time


3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Usually don't like remakes, but I really found this movie to my liking.  Christian Bale as a simpleton farmer "doing the right thing" no matter what cost as he risks his neck trying to deliver the criminal played by Russel Crowe to the nearby train station from which Crowe will be transported to prison. There is a nice dynamic between the cocky and self assured character played by Crow, the in over his head farmer played by Bale and the second in command of Crowe's old gang played by Ben Foster.

Crow psyches Bale's character throughout the journey and his entire self confidence is really getting under the skin of Bale. What started out with Bale taking the job of escorting the outlaw to earn a few bucks turns into a quest to do the right thing against all odds by not giving in to the threats and dangers.





The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford
The most "artsy" movie of the bunch, it's a slow moving highly visual experience and a great character study of Robert Ford played and wonderfully portrayed by Casey Affleck. Movie starts out with Affleck wanting to become a part of Jesse James gang, James being an idol of his. Affleck is treated like shit and rightly so because he is so annoying in both the way he speaks and acts that you just want to punch him in the face yourself. However as the movie goes along things start to change and you can see how the characters evolve and understand them much better. Brad Pitt plays Jesse James but Casey Affleck really steals the movie in the end.

Superb visual style and perfect choice of musical score sets and holds the mood throughout the movie. This movie is not action packed so viewers should not expect a lot of shootouts and explosions.




The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The best movie out of Sergio Leones "Dollars trilogy" and a movie with probably the most recognizable theme song ever made, at least within the Western genre. The "Good" played by Clint Eastwood and the "Ugly" by Eli Wallach come upon a shot up army stage coach with only a single soon to be dead survivor. As the soldier is dying he tells them about a buried treasure, one of them learns about the location of the graveyard and the other the name off the grave where the treasure is buried. As such the Good and the Ugly, though being enemies, have to keep each other allive in order to actually find the treasure. This does not stop them from trying to double cross each other. On their travel towards the graveyard they come across a third person, the "Bad" played by Lee van Cleef is also aware of the treasure and starts following the two other characters hoping to claim it for himself.

In my opinion the second best movie Sergio Leone made.



Once upon a time in the West
This movie is in my opinion Leone's best movie. It is a great revenge story that you are not even fully aware off before the movie nears its end. The haunting snippets of the main theme played on a harmonica by the main character called "Harmonica" (played by Charles Bronson) will send chills down your spine when you hear it explode for the first time in the deadly conclusion of the movie.

The story for the most part is about a woman who married a dirt farmer, thinking he was much more successful. As she arrives at his farm she finds him and his kids murdered. Having no place to go she stays at the farm but is soon threatened by a band of ruffians hired by a railroad owner who wants her land so he can build a railroad cheap through it. Harmonica and a second gunfighter "Cheyenne" take it upon themselves to protect the widow. The main bad guy in the movie is excellently played by Henry Fonda and the widow is played by Claudia Cardinale who looks ridiculously good in this movie.


Tombstone
Released around the same time as "Wyatt Earp" I always liked this movie a lot more. It has a more narrow and focused view off the Wyatt Earp story and concentrates on the events in and around Tombstone rather than the whole Earp legend. While both movies had their qualities, it is hard to beat the intensity of Kurt Russel as Wyatt Earp and the fantastic (imo his best) performance Val Kilmer delivers as Doc Holliday. The bad guys, Curly Bill played by Powers Boothe and Johnny Ringo played by Michael Biehn also deliver an edgy pair of characters.

This movie could easily only feature Doc Holliday and it would still work, it is not possible to describe the awesomeness of Val Kilmers acting in this role. The scenes he shares with Michael Biehns "Johhny Ringo" are pure gold. Where the "Wyatt Earp" was out to tell the entire story of Earp's life, Tombstone zooms in on the "good stuff"  and highlights the badass gunfight, lust for revenge and asswhooping.


Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood plays an ex outlaw turned unsuccessful farmer. One day, after failing to impress on his kids with his inadequate farming skills he is visited by the "Scofield kid" (not associated with the Prison break Schofield's) who wants to hire his help to catch a man who had disfigured some whores. The whores had set up a bounty for a 1000 dollars, and Clint's character figures that he could do with some money as he is a crap farmer. On their way to the town they pick up Clint's old friend played by Morgan Freeman. As they arrive in town they are soon introduced to the ruthless ass of a sheriff played by Gene Hackman who holds the town in fear by his psychopathic outbursts of anger and delight in dealing out pain and death. After beating the shit out of Clint and killing Freeman, he thinks order is restored to his little town.

Little does he know that he just fucked with the wrong guy as Clint mends his wounds and then returns back into down sporting a "I will kill all of you sons of bitches and I will enjoy doing so" face and delivers some highly satisfactory revenge.

Small guide to old West miniatures

My old West collection is not that big, but I do have miniatures from 4 different sources so here are my thoughts about them.

Black Scorpion Miniatures;
A good selection of Old West miniatures, both good guys and bad guys as well as civilians in the range. The main problem if you like to call it that, is the size of the models. They are bulky 32mm miniatures that don't fit with a lot of very nice ranges out there. You are pretty much locked to Black Scorpion and a few other sources if you start with BSM range models in your collection.

I have a bit of mixed feelings about their models. On one hand there are a lot of very nice one's, like this bunch of "Outlaws" who look as if they came straight from "Once upon a time in the West". On the other hand they simply don't fit in with a majority of models I own. And there is something about them that just feels a bit "crude" even though they are very well sculpted. It could simply be the size of the models and what they are wearing.

Artizan Design;
Another source where you can find a lot of models and with a wide variety to them. Artizan stuff is smaller and fits in with a lot more ranges out there. The quality of the sculpts themselves range from "OK" to "Very good".




Old West stuff from Reaper Miniatures;
Reaper has some sort of alternative Old West game in their catalogue from which you can pick a handful of "classic" old west miniatures. These miniatures are extremely nice and paint up very well. They do however fit into the "Large scale" category and will mix poorly with smaller miniatures such as Artizan.


West Wind Gothic Horror range;
West Wind does not have an Old West range as such, but it does have a wide range of 19th century dressed and armed miniatures. These can be used for everything ranging from civilians, Pinkerton agents to gunslingers - perhaps this range leans towards the "late Old West" and a bit more urbanized characters. The West Wind miniatures from the Gothic Horror range are all about 25mm in size. If based properly they will fit in with similar small miniature ranges such as Artizan design quite well.


Comparison pictures.

Black Scorpion Miniature, West Wind, Artizan Design, Reaper







Black Scorpion mixed with Reaper models








Artizan Design mixed with West Wind models 

Deadwood

The best TV show HBO has put out to date, and one of the best portrayals of "old west" has got to be "Deadwood". A tv show that ran in 3 seasons, and which was in the end cancelled leaving us with a abrupt ending.

I cannot stress how damn awesome this tv show is. The story takes place in the settlement of Deadwood, located in indian territory in the Black Hills. During the first season it is still called "camp" and you have very few real buildings and a lot of tents and hovels of dubious quality. As the show progressed the town really took shape, new buildings were raised and the gallery of characters was expanded.

The main storyline in season 1 follows Seth Bullock, a former sheriff going to Deadwood with his longtime friend Sol Star to start up a hardware business as the region is booming with a gold rush going on. Arriving at the camp they are soon introduced with the guy pretty much running the camp - saloon owner Al Swearengen, a ruthless yet cunning schemer who tries to analyze every single event taking place in camp to learn if it poses a threat to him or if he  can profit from it.

Also in camp is Alma Garret and her rich idiot husband who want to find  gold in the hills and prosper. Her husband soon gets killed by Swearengens muscleman Dan Dority and a lot of the plot revolves around why he was killed and how to get the widow Garret to sell that "worthless" piece of land obtained by her husband.

The relationship between Bullock and Swearengen start out with a brawl, but ends with Bullock being nominated the camp sheriff to have some sort of "controlled" law and order. The first season is packed with events. A family getting murdered, allegedly by indians. Old West legend Wild Bill Hickok arriving in camp with his retinue to try his luck with the cards, a rival saloon/brothel house sets up shop across Al Swearengens saloon setting up an instant rivalry with the new equally ruthless and scheming Cy Tolliver.

Al backing up the Chinese labour through their appointed spokesperson "Mr Wu" which creates a lot of hilarious scenes between them both as they try to communicate with sign language and a lot of "fucks" thrown in. Cy Tolliver and his goons set out to try to control the drugs, and offer a upper class gambling and whoring environment in their new joint. At the far end of camp bar owner Tom Nuttal owns the original sinkhole, where Wild Bill does a lot of gambling with the drunken scum of the camp.

Plague breaks out and the local reverend starts acting really weird as he himself suffers from an ailment, not to mention the fantastic character of Doc Cochran who tends to the whores, stab victims, sick and everyone else to forget the horrors of the civil war in which he took part. Easily one of the best characters on the show, you can feel his frustration as he is juggled between the power players.

We also have the highly entertaining, spineless creepy hotel owner E.B. Farnum who dresses like a dandy and have very high thoughts about himself, trying to be Al Swearengen’s trusted advisor but failing to realize what a buffoon he is. You got to love the way people around him are grossed out both by his sweaty palms, his kiss ass attitude and downright disgusting ways of running the hotel. Speaking of the hotel, the cook is a real specimen and possible the missing link between man and some cave dwelling mongrel, something often commented on by Farnum himself. Nevertheless, the cook is a highly sympathetic, though also highly repulsive person.

In season 2 and 3 a bucket load of new characters arrive into town. The king of assholes in the show, George Hearst, a powerful mining magnate who has come to Deadwood to mine gold and who does not give a flying fuck about anything else. With him he brings a whore killing maniac Francis Wollcot who acts as his messenger and right hand in Deadwood.

The fantastic quality of the characters, screenwriting, sets, acting and everything else is just amazing. Even the smallest of roles turn into memorable performances, like the snobby bible thumping moron Shaugnessy who own a boarding house. Every character feels real, multilayered and is highly memorable.

The story itself involves several story arcs, most of which are resolved by the end of the third season. The ending of the third season will be considered "half assed" the first time you see it. In a show where every single episode ranges from 8-10/10 in quality the last couple of minutes will most likely bum you out if you are not prepared for it. On subsequent watching’s of the show, it becomes a bit more bearable. Kind of feels like when I watched Kingdom of Heaven for the first time and went WTF? at the end, but on my second viewing I appreciated everything else leading up to that point even more.

If you have not yet seen this show, do yourself a favor and grab the 3 seasons on DVD and just watch it! I cannot really tell all the fantastic lines of dialogue, twists of fate and enough about all the characters in the show. It has to be seen by yourself.

Legends of the Old West

This week will be "old west" week on the blog. I've had several things I've been wanting to review and it pretty much covers boardgames, miniature wargames, PC games, movies and tv shows. So a lot of variety this week.

Don't really know why I have not reviewed the Legends of the Old West rules earlier but here are my thoughts.

First of all, the visual appeal of this rulebook is 10/10. I like the look of this rulebook more than any other in my collection, even more than the Malifaux rulebooks I have. The rules are 136pages of full color and really nice background on each page. It mixes stylish sepia drawings with pictures of real models and terrain that look absolutely fantastic thus serving as great inspiration for any terrain builder.

The layout of the rules is also to my liking, I find it easy to browse and pick out the important stuff in the rules. As it is a Warhammer historical game you have elements of WHFB/WH40k but perhaps mainly LoTR in there, but don't let that put you off. These rules are not very complex, are easy to learn and play fast. In a skirmish game those are important points.

While I love Malifaux, that game can give you a serious headache as each miniature have its own unique stats, abilities, attacks etc. Legends of the Old West is more "newbie friendly" as models share the same characteristics and the weapons are generic enough to learn how they work within minutes.

The characteristics in each character profile are:

"Shooting" = What you need to roll to hit with a ranged weapon
"Fighting" = How well you fight in close combat.
"Strength" = How hard you throw a punch
"Grit" = How tough your character is and how easy/hard it is to wound that character
"Attacks" = How many hits you inflict if you win a round of hand to hand combat
"Pluck" = Your morale

There are two more characteristics "Fame" and "Fortune". These are restricted to the "better" characters , such as the eaders of your posse.

"Fame" is used to tweak the result of a die roll. Each point of Fame spent can alter the result by 1 notch either up or down according to your choice. "Fortune" can be used to press your luck in a dangerous situation. If you are hit by a weapon you can spend a Fortune point and see if you escape the hit or not. You could consider this a "save throw", and this is the only way you can save characters hit and wounded in this  game. Both the Fame and the  Fortune ability is very restricted and only available to specific characters that are more expensive and limited in number.

The turn, this game has a clever take on "I go, You go" in that you roll for initiative at the start of each turn. The winner of the initiative roll will be allowed to move all of his models first. Then the opponent can move all of his. Only after this has been done can the first player shoot with his models, and following that the opponent will be able to shoot. So the risk of being mauled is minimized as you have a fair amount of reaction time to your opponents movement,

"Heroes", that is leaders of you posse, have certain abilities that allow them to break this order by performing a "Heroic action". Such action costs 1 fame point, and can be used to either make the hero and friendly models near the hero to move a certain range before any other models move, make the hero and any nearby friendly models fire their guns before other models do, or start the close combat phase out of sequence.

Weapons and items, there are a lot of firearms in the game. Variations of pistols and rifles, shotguns, archaic weapons such as bows, horses, hand weapons, items that range from playing cards to increase the amount of money earned to boiler plates which increases your Grit. Everything costs money, and each posse starts out with 200$ which they spend on recruiting members for their posse and on weapons. Some weapons are "rare" which means you have to roll 2D6 when attempting to buy them and have to pass the "rare value" of the weapon to be able to obtain it. Weapons have cool abilities most of the time which makes it a good idea to give the right weapon to the right character in your posse. A good shooter should perhaps be armed with a heavy pistol - it has slower rate of fire but a heavy punch once you hit someone. Poor shooters should perhaps be armed with sawed of shotguns that fires a template. Your average gunfighters could be equipped with regular six-guns which could either be fired one shot at a time or "fanned", meaning you will unleash 6 shots in one sequence but will have poor accuracy only hitting on a roll of 6 per shot.

Campaign mode, what this game really is about and where it really shines, is the "campaign mode". Meaning you will start out with a posse that advances in experience as you play more scenarios. This also means that you will have characters gaining new skills, perhaps even get permament injuries. Your posse will increase in "Infamy" and you will earn cash in between scenarios depending on the outcome. Cash can be spent to replace dead or badly wounded posse members, buy new weapons and equipment, hire special characters on a retainer if you have the cash for it - or - hire a "Legend of the old West". The legends are famous characters based on real life persons such as Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, the Earp brothers and many more. The book really does a great job of covering all kinds of special characters as well as famous people which you can hire for as long as you can pay for them.

The rulebook also contains a few generic scenarios, such as bar brawls, breaking people out off jail, preventing the hanging of a buddy or attacking a stage coach on horseback. You can easily take inspiration from movies and tv-shows and quickly come up with dozens of scenarios yourself. The game is all about scenarios, and there is pretty much never a case of completely wiping out the enemy gang as you roll morale tests for your crew when you get below 50%. Members that have been removed as casualties in game are not automatically dead but you roll for them on a "damage chart" to see what happened. It is again a easy and straight forward system, the only requirement is for you to keep a pen and paper around to keep the tabs on who shot how many enemies and what injuries/skills/equipment each model has in his profile.

In my opinion, these rules do a great job of creating a "old west" atmosphere in your games. From the weapons to the skills, and with the rules being easy to play but still create excitement, Legends of the Old West is a great little skirmish game. If you want to pick up a miniature wargame that only uses 3-15 models per side and relies on storytelling, campaign play, characters and setting this are the rules for you. You will be able to spend a lot of time on scenery, civilian models to fill the streets and focus on a small playing space (4x4') .

You can of course also play solo scenarios, with enough heroes and villains in the "Legends" roster you can recreate scenes from movies such as Tombstone.