Last Friday (21st July), John and I got together for another game of ‘What A Cowboy’, the Old West skirmish game from Too Fat Lardies. John, Doug and I have been playing a lot of the game recently, first learning the rules and then starting a campaign. The game works best with 2-4 miniatures per side as although it is easy to learn it is quiet detailed, tracking rounds remaining in each weapon carried and who you have spotted. Over the last few weeks I have been working on some optional add on rules to facilitate ‘horror checks’ so that Cthulhu type horrors, vampires, werewolves of creatures from Dracula’s America could be included in a game.

The table was set up to represent a disused Spanish Mission, corn fields and surrounding village some where towards the Mexican border. As this was our first play test of the rules, we decided that we would play co-op, with John and I fielding two characters each, a Gunslinger and a Greenhorn. I played Eliot Ness as a gunslinger (he’s the character trying to impress the cultists with the shiny gold badge on his warrant card) and his bagman, Jake (a greenhorn), looking a bit pale and carrying a torch.

The Cultists were played as NPC’s, although we are working on points costs so that horror effects can be added to player characters. The Cult had a Priest (Gunslinger – Horror 3), an Acolyte (Greenhorn) and three groups of Henchmen. Two of the Henchmen groups were Hybrids, so also had the Horror – 1 trait. A diabolical ritual was being carried out in the Old Spanish Mission. The Priest and Acolyte had a hostage, that they would kill at the end of turn four to summon a minor Demon (Horror – 4). The Henchmen were roving, external security, who would move towards spotted enemies, shoot if they had firearms or charge if they were just scary!

John and I deployed our Investigators from adjacent corners, and making best use of the cover advanced towards the church. The henchmen proved fairly easy to deal with.

John’s agents worked there way through the ground floor of the Spanish style villa, at the moment they are hidden in the shadows but the Cultists have heard something and are heading in there direction.

Poor old Jake, had reacted badly to the horrors of the Hybrid-Cultists, initially he had gone off into a ‘Blind Panic’, running 2D6 in a random direction from the horror. Luckily, the next time he failed a horror check, he drew ‘Steadfast’, the effect of that was to remove the ‘Blind Panic’, so he is now back on mission. The majority of horror effects are negative, but there are some, such as ‘Rage’ which gives you ‘+1’ in melee, which are beneficial.

A little later in the game, Eliot also fails a horror check and is shaken. Horror checks are taken when charged by an enemy with ‘horror effect’ or activating or moving within 12″ of an enemy with horror effect. The test is rolled on a D6, 4+ is a success. There are a few modifiers, such as the proximity of friends, whether the enemy is a higher or lower level than you and if you are drunk. Being drunk helps! “Cthulhu…. bring it on… does not scare me”.

As Eliot & Jake take on the Hybrid-Priest, John’s Investigators open fire on the Acolyte. Unfortunately they miss and instead kill the hostage that he was standing over, which triggers the summoning earlier than planned.

The demon, was a much harder opponent, and most characters suffered a horror effect at some point, but at the end of the day, it was brought down in a hail of hot lead, another victory to Colonel Colt.

After the game, we had a few minor modifications to the horror rules, but in the main they worked very well.

We are planning to play another test game against NPS Horror characters, and then come up with some proposed points cost to try the effects on characters.

If you would like to have a go, the draft horror rules and horror effect cards can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here.

If you’ve not got a copy of What A Cowboy yet, click here to take a look at it in the webstore.

The mat that we were playing on is one of the new Sally 4th Game Mats, ‘Blue Grass’, I’m not sure why Iain decided to call it that as it looks very green and brown to me!