Back in 1997 Pinnacle Entertainment released one of the best miniatures games to ever grace our horizons, Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars. The club I that was a full-time member of fell in love with it and we played at least once a week. Mike and I were the painters and we went "great guns" in buying and painting. But... since we are Gamers who (like most Gamers) suffer from "oh, shiny" it eventually fell to the side.
Mike and I found ourselves the only two available last Wednesday so we threw together some Posses and had a good-old-fashioned Rail War!! We chose 350 points as our force totals and went to rounding up our armies.
Mike showed up with a force from the Iron Dragon Railroad:
2 Posses of Ronin
2 Posses of Tong Gang
2 Pryomancers
1 Sorcerer
And little did I know that the Town's "Saw Bones" was on the Iron Dragon payroll....
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I put together a group of "Concerned Citizens" who were none to pleased that the Iron Dragons were taking over the town. To put things right I brought:
1 Gunslinger
3 Posses of Gunman
1 Posse of Buffalo oHunters
and someone found a 6 lb. Cannon
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HELL COMES TO CATTLE BEND
The sleepy little Cow Town of "Cattle Bend"
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| "Hey guys, someone left the gate open! Let's mooove out...." |
Mike's Tong Gangs begin to pour into the streets....
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| Alerted to the upcoming fight. Mike's Saw Bones comes running. You can tell by this clothes he's not too good at his job.... |
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| The "Concerned Citizens" move to join in to fight the Iron Dragons... |
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| My 6lb. cannon deploys. The Buffalo Hunters provide security for it... |
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| Mike's Sorcerer, Fu Wang Chung |
When the battle was joined it got really bloody. Mike very shrewdly used a tactic of run and go prone, run and go prone. Since his figures didn't have firearms going prone made them harder for me to hit. His two Pyromancers did carry exploding rockets that gave me some trouble, but once they got into range of my Buffalo Hunters and Cannon, problem solved....
Cattle are a curious critters. "Hey guys, what 'cha doing?"
When Mike got close I had real trouble. I didn't realize how deadly his Ronin and Tong gang guys were. When it came to Fight'n, my Gunman were completely outmatched....
Great Rail Wars has a variable end game rule. The game lasts 4 turns, then you roll a d6. On a 6, game over. Not a 6, play another turn. Then roll again, 5-6, game over. If not, play another turn...etc. We played 4 turns and (I don't remember who) one of us rolled a 6. Game over. We totaled up our causalities and I barely won, 104-100. To be honest, I was shocked. But Mike and I decided to play one more turn anyway. It was almost my undoing.....
Fu Wang Chung doing a "Matrix move"...
On turn 4 my Gunslinger had hit Mike's Sorcerer in the groin and made him "Eat Dirt". He failed his Vigor roll and wasn't able to stand up. On turn 5 I moved my Gunslinger up close enough to negate the fact that Fu Wang was prone and I missed. I took another shot before Mike went...and missed again!!!! It became Mike's turn and he rolled so well on his Vigor check that not only did his Sorcerer recover from the groin hit, he was able to move and attack!! AND he had a spell on him that made him fight as well as his Ronin and Tong Gang Posses!! 😟
If Mike was able to put my Gunslinger down, I would have lost. As luck would have it, Mike's luck ran out and he wiffed on his attack rolls...WHEW!!
What a great game, so fun, so many great memories. We need to get this out more often....
Thanks for playing Mike.
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