Campaign | Dinosaur Cowboys - Tabletop Skirmish Game

Battle to Seattle – Wrap Up

April 15, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Well the very fun and lengthy Battle to Seattle campaign ended this Saturday, with a rather grand finale. In case you missed the campaign you can read the saga through the BTS tag.

Basically though I ran a campaign for my three friends, wherein they fought from the southern deserts to the re-emerged city of Seattle, hoping to unlock the fabled secrets rumored to be in the Space Needle.
In the end the fluff surrounding the Space Needle was:
As the eruption was happening and dinosaurs were emerging, teams of scientists hoped to hide away their vast stores of knowledge in various secure structures around the country. The Space Needle was deemed a suitable location because of it’s safe location, resilience to damage, and height over the dinosaurs.
So when you three entered the top of the tower, instead of finding a bunch of old world weapons and armor, you instead found books, CDs, and old rusted computers. Who knows if your three leaders would have fought for this, or considered it junk, or allied to decipher the remains.
However given enough time and effort, most of the information and knowledge could be recovered. Perhaps even leading to the emergence of a new fifth allegiance: Old World, a people who follow democracy, have advanced medical and scientific knowledge, and use robots and other strange technology to do the fighting for them.

Posses
The three players involved were: Dustbowl Dusters, Dustin Tails, and New Haven Vigilantes.
Because we used the official campaign rules these posses were able to grow and develop through the game, from basic 100 IP/$1,000 gangs to 300 IP/$3,000 veterans. Here is a fun little chart showing their IP growth:

In the end the involved posses looked like this:

Game List
We played through an intro game, and then 10 games involving different locations along the western coast of the US. Sometimes the players were against each other in a free for all, or in two separate 1vs1 games where I played an NPC posse against one of them, or in a big 3vs1 coop. In total these were the games and locations we played:

Feb 6: Intro game (unrelated to campaign)
Feb 13: Radio Tower. Dustbowl Dusters won by objective vs New Haven Vigilantes and Dustin Tails.
Feb 20: Death Valley. NPCs won against New Haven Vigilantes and Dustin Tails.
Feb 22: Pahrump bonus game. All three won against NPCs.
Mar 6: Lake Tahoe. Dustin Tails won vs NPCs. New Haven Vigilantes and Dustbowl Dusters tied (amazingly enough).
Mar 13: Lassen Volcano/Redwoods. New Haven Vigilantes won vs guest Rob NPC at Redwoods. Dustin Tails won against NPCs at Lassen.
Mar 20: Crater Lake/Coos Bay Swimmers. Dustbowl Dusters won vs guest Cheryl NPC. Dustin Tails won against New Haven Vigilantes.
Mar 27: Dunes Park/Warm Springs. New Haven Vigilantes won vs Alligator NPC. Dustin Tails won vs Dustbowl Dusters at Warm Springs.
Apr 3: Tillamook/Columbia River. Dustin Tails won vs New Haven Vigilantes at Tillamook train yard (with no kills to either side!). Dustbowl Dusters won vs guest Paul NPC at Columbia river.
Apr 10: Lewis Military Base. Robotic NPCs won vs all three (beep boop beep).
Apr 12: Space Needle finale. Markus lost big time!

Thoughts
Well this campaign was a ton of fun. I’m glad I could rope in three friends to dedicate this much time to playing a game I designed. Very nice of them to indulge me like this. We played pretty much every Thursday for two months or so. Having a consistent game was nice, and I think the ruleset held up well. Plus the campaign finally motivated me to make my 6’x4′ table overlay (split into two 3’x4′ pieces), so that we could have two simultaneous 1vs1 games running.

We did have a brief hiccup around weapons a few weeks in. Every posse had focused on long range weaponry, which made the game play a lot differently than I would have liked, and nullified various fun posse builds. So rifles were toned down. I took that opportunity to do a big revamp of the weapons, which will be coming soon in the v2.5 release of the rules.

The only other problem I found was the weapon list is geared towards mid-tier posses, in the sense of $1k-$2k or so. Once you are past $2,000 the “top tier” weapon choices boil down to 1 per category (for example 1 repeater, 1 shotgun, etc.). This meant that there were a lot of Lawstar Repeaters :) The other issue was the Dustin Tails posse seemed to win a ton of their games. I’m trying to decide and analyze whether that was posse choice, player skill, enemy builds, or something broken or unbalanced in the rules. If it’s the last one we have a problem, otherwise I think we’re okay.

Otherwise I can’t complain. Everyone grasped the rules quickly and learned the intricacies and strategies as time went on. Introducing guest players to the system also seemed to go well. All in all I’m happy with the state of the rules, and I think a long term campaign like this was great for putting them to the test.
I do think having a “Gentleman’s Agreement” helped keep everyone happy, since even agreeing to stop at Defense 4 still caused a bit of tension. I can’t imagine how things would have been if anyone managed Defense 7.

From here we’ll be switching our weekly game sessions to a new campaign (probably Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG from Fantasy Flight games). So besides finalizing v2.5 (just need to retake the component photo and do a couple more tweaks), I’ll be a bit quieter in terms of Dinosaur Cowboys. But I hope to get back to (somewhat) regular battle reports after the next campaign.

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Battle to Seattle – Finale at the Space Needle

April 12, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

And so begins the grand finale of the Battle to Seattle campaign. The fight from the southern deserts north to Seattle was long and tough for all posses involved. I’ll post a wrap up entry a little bit later with some stats and overall info. For now the focus is purely on the finale game.

First of all this game differed because we set aside an entire Saturday to play it, instead of our traditional Thursday night game. This meant I could get pretty elaborate with the setup. The make the game feel truly epic I broke the finale down into three phases, or sub-stages. Although we ended up not playing the (admittedly short and not hugely needed) third stage.

Markus Graves
So far I don’t think I’ve hugely mentioned the fluff that went along with the campaign. Besides the general goal of reaching the Space Needle (and hopefully unlocking old world secrets within), the players were introduced to Markus Graves during the last few games. First of all they saw his massive posse, called the Six Grave Gang, on the Swimmer coastal ferry. They briefly met and talked to him in the saloon at the Warm Springs Indian Reserve town. And they had a chance to attack his wagon stealing parts from the Lewis Military Base (although a powerful Shield blocked the attempt).
The story behind Markus Graves is he has a debilitating, unknown disease. The disease already wasted away his wife and five children to nothing. Markus buried them himself (thus the name “Six Grave Gang”) before setting off to the re-emerged city of Seattle. His hope was to find a cure, or way to prevent the disease from taking his own life.
What this meant in game terms was the finale focused on Markus Graves and his various gang members.

Final Player Posses
First of all every player posse was boosted to 300 IP and $3,000, and all Wounds/Injuries were healed. So everyone started on an even footing. Here are the final rosters for everyone involved:

Stage 1
The first stage was a free-for-all, with me controlling an NPC posse (equal to the players). This posse was named the Six Grave Gang Scout Force (PDF roster).
The table was setup to look like a somewhat flooded Seattle, with the Space Needle represented by an upturned bowl in the middle. For a while I was tempted to get a giant 4 foot tall laser cut 3D Space Needle, but decided against the expense. Instead we had a miniature Lego Space Needle which got the point across well enough :) I included the overgrown parking lot from the actual Space Needle, as well as a few rivers that now criss crossed the city.
Although the whole 6’x4′ table was setup, for the first stage we played on a 4’x4′ section centered around the Space Needle. This was to ensure that the four corners (where we would deploy) were equal distance from each other, to give players motivation to attack any direction instead of naturally matching up against their closest opponent. Anyway like I said the deployment was Corner, in a 6″ square.
The objective was Capture the Space Needle, with the player having the most entities near the bowl in the middle at the end of the game being declared the winner of this stage. Initially I had set a 7 Turn limit, but bumped this up to 8 Turns. We had the possibility for a Turn 9 if we rolled 9+ on a D12 at the end of Turn 8, since variable turn length works well for capture games.
Any player entity that was taken out of action was placed face down on the table, instead of removed. The reason for this would be revealed in Stage 2.
As expected this was a very fun game. There were lots of initial shoot outs and skirmishes from all four corners, before a slow but steady push to the middle.

Stage 2
After a little BBQ dinner we started in on the second stage. In this game reinforcements lead by Markus Graves showed up. All the fallen player entities were restored to full Hitpoints, which meant standing them up from being face down (as talked about in the first stage). This made for a very organic deployment since the player entities basically started where they had ended up by the last turn of stage 1. To be fair they were given a single Movement Phase to reposition themselves, which I saw as a mad scramble to confront the new reinforcements. In addition the players agreed on a temporary truce to fight off the much larger Six Grave Gang force.
Then we played out a 3vs1 coop style game, with me controlling four posses that totaled very close to the max IP and ND of the three players. We didn’t use a turn limit, and the objective was simply “kill everything”. The Six Grave Gang reinforcements showed up along the two short table edges, sandwiching the players in the middle.
As well Markus himself eventually emerged, wearing some kind of strange powered medical suit that seemed to be keeping him alive. In game terms this meant he was extremely challenging to kill, regenerating a ton of Hitpoints per turn as well as having great base stats. Another big surprise for the players was the Papo Brachiosaurus toy that I bought! What an imposing size and weight. Everyone was excited when I put the big dino down on the table. The dinosaur had a special Shield (stolen from the Robots at the Lewis Military Base) which made him a focal point for attacks.

The NPC posses involved were:

Initially the players thought they were doomed, and I can understand why as the massive numbers of enemies were deployed. But the melee posse backing the Longneck tended to die quickly to superior firepower. The generic posses did well, but couldn’t compete overall against player posses that had been painstakingly tuned over weeks of play. Eventually the Longneck was brought down, and the focus switched to Markus. He circled the tower, trying to burn and blast anyone alive, until eventually he was the only survivor left, surrounded by many foes. He went down shooting though, and then an Auto Shotgun blast to the back finally finished him off.
In the end of the players won. Like I said I had planned a third stage, where the Leaders of each posse fought each other indoors at the top of the Space Needle. But because we didn’t have a turn limit for this stage it ended up going quite late (1am or so), so we just called it a night after the big coop ending.

Anyway I had a great time with the Battle to Seattle campaign, and all the players and guest players seemed to enjoy themselves as well. Like I said I’ll write a quick wrap up entry separate from this one with my thoughts on the campaign, state of the rules, etc. If you read and followed this series from start to finish I thank you, and hope the campaign inspired you to craft your own Dinosaur Cowboy narrative adventure.

Posted in Campaign. Tags: Battle to Seattle, Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys, Finale. 2 Comments »

Battle to Seattle – Lewis Military Base

April 10, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

This week was the last normal game before the Battle to Seattle finale. Initially I had planned for the players to choose between Mount St. Helen’s or Lewis Military Base, but eventually decided the setup for Lewis Military Base was too fun to be ignored. So I somewhat railroaded all the players to Lewis Military Base by having Mount St Helen’s erupt again. Why did I want everyone to go to the base? Because…ROBOTS. I imagined the base as having a bunch of old world autonomous war machines rambling around. They would start quite impressive, but eventually their weapons would degrade more and more. What this meant was some more custom rules for the robots, including some Shield rules.
As for the robots themselves, this gave me a perfect opportunity to bust out my old Battletech Mech collection, painted in what I call my “Triad of the Sun” scheme. Nice and bright, just like most of the paint schemes I like.
Each robot would have a weight class (Light/Medium/Heavy), and a command Mech (um, robot) that was slightly better. Destroying the command Mech would shutdown the Shields of the subordinate robots. The weapons carried by the robots were rethemed top tier weapons, with a slight boost. For example the PPC was 6A-4D, much like the Lawstar Repeater (6A-3D). The UAC was like an Auto Shotgun, and so on. These weapons would degrade as the battle went on, so each turn the re-roll value would go up by 1. So on Turn 2 any rolls of 1 OR 2 would count for a reload. Up to a max of 4, which meant by the end the robot weapons were really shorting out.
In terms of the Shields they basically acted like “saving rolls”, with a set target number on a set number of dice. For example 3D12, 8+ (noted as 3D8+…confusing I know). In this case when the robot was hit they would roll 3D12. Any roll of 8+ would cancel out one of the incoming attack dice. This meant low Attack weapons were less useful (such as 1A-6D, since a single save would cancel the whole attack). In practice this made the robots super tough to kill.
In addition the robots were able to allocate activations a bit differently than normal. Instead of a traditional 1 activation per entity, the robots had a “pool” of activations (represented by the green D6s seen in the pictures). Up to 2 activations could be given to a single robot, although that meant another robot wouldn’t get to activate that turn.
You can see the skeleton of these rules here: Robots Rules. Anyone familiar with Battletech should recognize some classic names and weapons, as well as many of the Mechs from the pictures.

Of course with this many rules involved the objective was simple: kill everything, don’t die. The three posses teamed up in a co-op style game. Overall the focus was just to have a wild and different Dinosaur Cowboys game before the big finale. Also no long term penalties were given to the players, instead they were all boosted to 300 IP and $3,000 at the end of the battle (to finally be on level footing for the final game).

For the terrain setup we used a great fortress piece my friend made (and was actually used in the finale for our last non-DC campaign). This was perfect to represent the entrance to the military base.

Posse rosters at the start of the game:

Unfortunately for humanity (and the posses involved) they couldn’t stop the tide of machines and were defeated. They deployed well, using a denied flank to force half the robots to shuffle slowly across the board. Then they fought the half in range, and did quite well against them. But by the time the remaining flank had caught up the humans were on the ropes and didn’t have the Hitpoints or weaponry left to stop the heavier robots.

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Battle to Seattle – Columbia River and Tillamook

April 3, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

This week saw some great table setups, if I do say so myself. Also fun locations, since I love Tillamook in real life (they have a great cheese factory, and are situated in a nice coastal town). We had a new guest player as well which is always enjoyable.

Player posse rosters at the start of the game:

Columbia River
The matchup was Dustbowl Dusters against The Ferryman Slingers (NPC posse) played by the guest, who fought at the Columbia River. Both posses had the goal to cross the river using a ferry (or desperately swimming [and probably drowning]). The ferry made for a perfect bottleneck and most of the action happened aboard it. In the end Dustbowl Dusters were able to triumph against the NPCs (narrowly), but a few mistakes or different choices on either side could have swung the balance the other way. The NPC player skillfully blocked the ferry landing with their big Triceratops, which made escaping to the other side a bit tough for the Dustbowl Dusters.
You can see the NPC posse roster here: The Ferryman Slingers Roster PDF. The other option for their posse choice was “Troubled Youth”, a bunch of Neotechnoists who modeled themselves after movie characters from the 20th and 21st century. For the sake of completeness you can see that posse roster here: Troubled Youth Roster PDF.

Tillamook
On the other side of the table the Dustin Tails posse fought the New Haven Vigilantes at the old Tillamook train yard. The player running the New Haven Vigilantes graciously lent me some of his train set, which really made the table pop and gave a unique setup to the game. Their objective was to capture the train, so there was a bit of a mad rush forward followed by tactical shooting to hold the location. Of course to add some drama the barrels lining the tracks were Explosive, meaning they could be shot to damage nearby entities. In the end the Dustin Tails posse won by objective, and amazingly enough there were NO kills on either side (I think that’s a first for a game of Dinosaur Cowboys!).

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Battle to Seattle – Dunes Park and Warm Springs

March 27, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Apologies for the gap between the last report and this one. We finished the Battle to Seattle campaign, and then I sort of just took a break from all things Dinosaur Cowboys. But I’m back now and will be uploading the rest of the reports today (with the retroactive dates correct).

Anyway this week had split locations of Dunes Park (which the New Haven Vigilantes went to) and Warm Springs Indian Reserve (which Dustin Tails and Dustbowl Dusters would be at).

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of Warm Springs, but I basically setup a ruined town with a road running through it. The posses had their leaders start in a bar, have a couple turns of bar fighting (complete with broken bottles and bar stools), and then the fight spilled out into the street. The fun part was we did a “Scattered” deployment (to represent all the different members wandering around the town). Combined with the dense terrain and simple objective (“Shoot Out”, aka kill everyone) made for an interesting game. Eventually the Dustin Tails posse was victorious.

On the other table at Dunes Park the New Haven Vigilantes got to fight a “boss monster”, aka a giant alligator toy I bought from a craft store a few days before the game. I wrote up some custom rules for the Giant Alligator, including a ton of different special attacks and abilities (like “Tail Swipe”, “Acid Breath”, etc.). Another fun ability was that the alligator could send out the young (modeled on the back of the toy) like “missiles”, that would seek out and bite targets. In addition the alligator could swallow targets, and then the victim would have to fight their way free from inside the alligator (which was mapped out using a square grid, haha). The alligator had a ton of Hitpoints, and also had “directional” Defense so that hitting from the front was harder than shooting the alligator in the side or back. The alligator was also so huge that it would crash through terrain as it moved, meaning trees and other vegetation it passed over was removed.
You can download the single page rules for the Giant Alligator here: Giant Alligator rules PDF.

The game ended up fairly thematic with the New Haven Vigilantes pouring fire into the alligator for many desperate turns. A doctor in a nearby cabin would revive any fallen posse members, so they had a few “waves” of humans to throw against the alligator. Eventually the posse were able to wear down the alligator and kill it.

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Battle to Seattle – Coos Bay Boats and Crater Lake

March 21, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Two quite fun games yesterday!

On one side was Coos Bay, which used the newly roughed out “naval rules” for fighting aboard a Swimmer dinosaur. The match up was New Haven Vigilantes against Dustin Tails.
The other table was Crater Lake, with a guest player using Rhinebeck Herders against the returned Dustbowl Dusters.

Both sides were on the hunt for metal scrap. At Crater Lake they were looking for old meteorite to give to a crazy hermit/prospector who had a metal working shop in his house and would upgrade a weapon for the winner. They deployed in their boats.
At Coos Bay there was rough iron on various islands that could be brought to a merchant in town to also make upgrades. They deployed using the Layered deploy, which made for some early chaos and Shot in the Back bonuses.
In the case of upgrades everyone could basically choose a Weapon Special Ability, with a couple removed for balance issues (for example “Seeking” would be overpowered on a normal weapon). In the end everyone, without fail, went with “Hail of Shots”, which allows 1-reroll per attack. This was spread across various weapons in each posse.

In terms of the games I was able to get more pictures since I was just being referee and not actually playing, so that’s a nice change of pace. The games seemed to go well, with Dustbowl Dusters barely squeaking out a win against the NPCs, by having 7 metal compared to 6. In the process though they had 3 members taken out of action, and ALL three took Wounds. Still no Injuries yet at least! On the other side Dustin Tails won against New Haven Vigilantes both in metal and in kills.

Next week New Haven Vigilantes will finally get to fight an NPC posse, in this case at Dunes Park along the coast. The fluff rumors heard were “a weird sighting of a weird dinosaur”, so that’ll be fun to see what happens. And then Dustin Tails and Dustbowl Dusters will be facing off at the Warm Springs Indian Reserve, which they’ve heard is a semi-ruined town that still does some business (aka the closest thing to civilization in a while).

Anyway I’ll do a separate post with the naval rule supplement. In the mean time enjoy the usual smattering of pictures! I split them by table again:

Combined

Coos Bay

Crater Lake

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Battle to Seattle – Redwoods and Lassen Volcano

March 14, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Another Battle to Seattle night! We had two simultaneous games again, except this time at different locations, hooray. The first was Redwood Forest in northern California. The second was at Lassen Volcanic National Park, aka the Lassen Volcano.

We also had our first guest player, my cousin Rob, who would play vs New Haven Vigilantes in the Redwood Forest. I was playing some savage cannibal cultists against the Dustin Tails posse. The Dustbowl Dusters couldn’t make it.
Speaking of my cousin he’s actually designed an RPG called Realm of Strife which has a terrific class mechanic where you basically can mix and match power sources to define what your character is. For example a pure Vigor character is a Fighter, but if you mix Vigor and Stealth you get a Ranger, or Vigor and Faith for a Cleric. With a bunch of power sources this makes quite an impressive matrix as you can see here, and I like gives a fresh, less restrictive approach to class design compared to the traditional D&D multiclassing. In some ways it reminds me of the old computer game Titan Quest.

Above: The tin can trees, and also the New Haven Vigilante Stegosaurus who is started to get some custom armor added.

Above: The new inca statue and the path to the volcano.

Redwood Forest
I hastily made some large tree stumps from old tin cans and cardboard tubes. I used textured spray paint, followed by a flat brown coat, and then a light dusting of green and more textured spraypaint. Then a bit of protective clearcoat. I’m happy with how they turned out, and made for some fun line of sight blocking terrain.

In terms of the game the New Haven Vigilantes setup in the middle of the table, in a rough camp of barrels and crates. The idea was they would be ambushed by raiders just as the sun set. The raiders would deploy half their posse to each long table edge. So basically Center deploy with a slight change.
There was a single objective in the middle, marking supplies, which either posse had to get off the table. The idea was the New Haven Vigilantes wanted to grab their supplies and run from the ambush and rally up later, whereas the raiders (predictably) wanted to steal things! So Smash and Grab objective type.
For Features the plan was “Dusk”, which is kind of like Night, and provides a 10+ save against Long Distance attacks. The other was Gusting Winds from the strong breeze through the trees, which provided 2″ Pushed to all weapons. However the players ended up forgetting both Features so they weren’t even a factor. I’ve definitely done that before!

The posses involved: Bigtree Raiders (PDF) vs New Haven Vigilantes (PDF)

In the end the New Haven Vigilantes, who started right on top of the supplies, were able to safely get them off the table and secure victory. From what I saw it looked like the rider of the T-Rex fleeing (and taking the dino with him) hurt the push to secure the supplies. Then it looked like a fight amidst the trees as everyone tried to position around the supplies.

Lassen Volcano
The Dustin Tails posse heard screaming as they approached the volcano, and saw a young woman chained at the base of the volcano. A hooded cultmaster was preparing to sacrifice her to their Molten King, while various cultists chanted nearby. Sort of like Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, haha. Anyway the cultists had to wait until the stars were properly aligned to perform the sacrifice, which gave Dustin Tails a chance to sneak in and try to rescue the girl. However as they approached the cult leader noticed them, and soon cannibals were pouring from the jungle to attack.
A Line deployment was used, with Dustin Tails in a 4″ line near the road. The “Sacrifice” was an ally and could be used normally. The cult leader deployed on the volcano itself, while the cultists were continually added from the two long table edges. They were easy to 1-shot with only 6 HP and crude weapons (Throwing Knife and Axe).
An Escort Objective was used, where the Sacrifice had to be moved off the short table edge opposite the volcano.
For features there were a few. I had a new “inca head” statue (more aquarium terrain repurposed) that was Fearful Ruins to Dustin Tails and Inspiring Ruins to the cultists. Also the volcano would start erupting at the start of turn 2, spreading deadly lava D6″ forward each turn. Anyone in contact with the lava would suffer an automatic 1D12 Damage.
Also the cultists were represented by goblin and other monster figures (like Skaven from Warhammer) since with the heat the Dustin Tails gang was hallucinating the cultist warpaint into a truly menacing appearance. Plus let’s be honest, I just wanted to use goblins in Dinosaur Cowboys.

The posses involved were Cult of the Molten King (PDF) vs Dustin Tails (PDF)

The cultists started strong with some early pressure, but eventually the overwhelming firepower of the Dustin Tails posse chewed them to pieces. The Auto Shotgun was particularly deadly with a kill a turn. That 5A-5D at Short distance just mulched 6 HP cultists!
The cult leader was somewhat effective, initially Slowing the Sacrifice with his Bolas. He tried to go toe to toe with the Dustin Tails Leader but both characters found the high Defense of their opponent tough to surmount. The lava was a huge factor in this fight and came less than 1″ away from hitting the cult leader. After the Dustin Tails Leader killed the cult leader he was actually overtaken by the lava (after an amazing 6 on the D6″ lava roll) and suffered 12 damage on the D12 roll! Good thing he had 14 HP.
The Sacrifice was harried the rest of the way down the track, and had fairly low HP by the end, but was able to survive. She had a lot of defensive Traits that helped get her out of sticky situations, especially Escape.

So double victory for the “player character” posses of the campaign!

What’s Next
Next week should be another fun one. We’ll have another guest player to fight against Dustbowl Dusters at the dried up Crater Lake. Then Dustin Tails and New Haven Vigilantes will fight onboard Swimmer dinosaurs. Basically hopping island to island trying to recover metal salvage to give to a weaponsmith.

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Battle to Seattle – Skirmish at Lake Tahoe

March 11, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Last weeks battle was a fun setup and game, although it did bring up the issue of rifles and their relative power level. Part of the problem is the relative flatness of the terrain, as you can see from the pictures.

But anyway the players had heard a rumor of old maps and information booklets in an abandoned camper trailer near Lake Tahoe. When they arrived they found the lake totally empty however, and a few other gangs wandering around the area (since watering holes are popular stopping spots). However in the middle of the night a boat drifted to the surface, probably from wreckage loosening under water. Everyone assumed the information was aboard the ship, so a fight ensued. Some crates had been offloaded in the middle of the night so they became a focus as well.

The tributary rivers were Strong Current which pushed towards the lake itself. The lake was Deep and Populated, which was tough for people to cross. The boat was Pit Fight only, meaning no guns could be used (on it, off it, into it) for fear of damaging the goods.

The deploy was Quadrant, but in an 8″ square instead of “deep” to the middle of the table.

The objective was Capture, with a 7 turn limit with a possible 8th turn (roll of 7+ at the end of turn 7). Both the boat and crates could be captured.

This was our first simultaneous 2x1vs1 game, and that aspect was really fun. If posses from different tables reached the boat they would just ignore each other basically, since they would be on different turns and activations and so on.

The boat itself was made by me long, long ago. I think I was maybe 17 or 18 years old at the time? It was made for a D&D campaign and was originally an airship (there was a clear plastic cup glued to the bottom to raise the boat up) that was hopping the planes, as in a planar campaign, like the video game Planescape Torment. The sails were a bit dark for Dinosaur Cowboys, but otherwise the scale and details were perfect.

This was also the debut game of some new figures. The players all bought various resin minis from the Black Scorpion “Tombstone” line. They look great and have some nice poses and weapons. We’re going to try to do a painting night soon so hopefully you’ll see less gray.

After the game we had one posse go to the Redwoods, and one go to Lassen Volcanic Park. We had to talk a bit “out of character” to end up with this, since so far everyone has pretty much gone to the same places, haha. Should be a good set of fights this week. We also have the first guest player so I’ll be interested to see how that goes.

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Battle to Seattle – Bonus Game – Race track at Pahrump

February 23, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

We had a great bonus game of Dinosaur Cowboys on Saturday, in the Battle to Seattle campaign. I told the players I was more than happy to run extra games outside our usual “games night”, and the response was good enough that we could get a fun “defend the resort!” mission going.
Unlike the last science station battle in Death Valley, this game was skewed very strongly towards the strengths of the player posses. Plus the fact that they did well at target priority and keeping their cool as 10 Savages and 3 Dinosaurs rushed towards them helps too! Fights like this always remind me of the V for Vendetta quote: “What usually happens when people without guns stand up to people *with* guns”. But that’s exactly how the game is intended to work, and I wanted a fight that was a bit more upbeat than charging a fortified structure like the science station.

Table Setup

Background and Setup
The fluff/background is basically Hadley’s Hope and Dustin Tails left Death Valley out the east side and tried to find shelter to heal their wounds, dust themselves off, and recover for the rest of the trip north. Meanwhile Dustbowl Dusters, who had made a leisurely trip north from the radio tower, heard about a ruined resort at the old Pahrump race track. So they descended on the villa to rest and relax.
Which meant all three posses were together at the resort. But the first two had baggage from their last battle, in the form of angry Savages from the Neotechnoist field team. The Savages gathered their clan mates and local hired guns and set forth to raid the race track.
The posses found a few bottles of whiskey in the resort, which they were intent to defend. They also found enough leftover, well stored, racing fuel to jury rig a Flamethrower.

The setup was pretty simple, and after the complex Feature usage of Death Valley I whittled down the number to the basics:

Deployment: #4 Delayed, from long edges (to represent some of you hanging out in the resort, and not being quick to the front line. On their end it represents the faster elements eagerly coming to grips).
Objective: #8 Defend. You will be the defenders. The objective will be the cask of Whiskey (a single objective).
Turn Limit: 5 (one less because of the long edge deploy)
Features: Weapon Emplacement (Jury Rigged Flamethrower, 8A-0D, 1-8 distance, Fireline). Road (the ruined track). Night (at the start of Turn 4).
Enemies: Bluescar Savages (original field team from science station), Death Valley Ravagers (their allies), Fire Column Bandits (some hired guns).

Quick Report
In general the battle went well for everyone but the Savages. The Savages were almost completely a melee posse, and charging a bunch of good guns with better RTN was suicidal.
In addition a gamble I made didn’t really pay off. Since we were using the Delayed deploy we had to put one entity from each posse “in reserve” to come on later. I decided to risk putting ALL my dinosaurs. My hope was they would come on in turn 2 (or 3, at the worst) on a flank, instead of the back edge, and rush in and distract everyone long enough for the surviving Savages to get to the whiskey objective.
Instead the dinosaurs showed up on turn 4, haha. When they DID turn up the T-Rex one shot killed a Dustin Tails shooter. But it was too little too late.

Pictures During the Game

In the end the three player posses got a TON of IP and ND, which is great for giving them more options to play with. All the kills were shared, and I think they got something like 8 in total.
After the battle Dustbowl Dusters have 150 IP and $1560, Hadley’s Hope has 160 IP and $1630, and Dustin Tails have 170 IP and $1730. Quite a nice progression actually. No real Wounds to talk about.

Next Game
In terms of the next game, everyone chose to go to Lake Tahoe. But this time we’ll be doing two side-by-side simultaneous 1vs1 battles, with a random roll to see who fights the “NPC posse”. Should be a neat setup. I envision them fighting on opposite sides of the main lake.

Campaign Going Forward
Three important items to talk about for the Battle to Seattle campaign going forward.

First of all the posse Hadley’s Hope has been renamed to “New Haven Vigilantes”, so be aware of that.

Second I’ve sent out an invite email to various friends to see if they’d want to drop in and play the NPC posse (instead of me doing it). So maybe we’ll get some guest players.

And finally we’ll be moving to the new weapons from the upcoming v2.5. I know I waffled on this, and maybe even said “We won’t move during the campaign” in earlier posts. But the variety and balance of the new weapons won me over. So the posses will be slightly tweaked to use the new weapons. Once that is done, which will be in two weeks (no game next week), then I’ll probably pot v2.5 and update The Saloon. Expect a v2.6 after the campaign though with any other changes and fixes we encountered.

Posted in Campaign. Tags: Battle to Seattle, Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys, Pahrump. Leave a Comment »

Battle to Seattle – Death Valley science station

February 20, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

This was an exciting but brutal match for the two posses involved (the third player is away on business).

First of all, the setting: The players had heard rumors of a Neotechnoist science station deep in Death Valley who were studying weather patterns. They found the station, and spied on the crew for a while. They learned that a field team was elsewhere, and the Neotechnoists were testing some kind of “Thunderclap Gun” (which was actually a Sonic Gun, basically 4A-0D with the “Terrify” special, meaning 2+ damage = force Bravery Test on target).

Objective: “Smash and Grab” to get two prototype guns and escape off the board.
Deployment: “Center”, with the Neotechnoist lab team in their science station in the middle, and both players deploying opposite each other on the short table edges.
Turn Limit: 6, but we decided to bump this up to 7 during the game.
Features: The idea here was to simulate a growing dust storm and increasingly bad weather. Which meant:
Turn 1-6: Blinding Sun
Turn 1-3: Extreme Temperatures
Turn 2: Light Duststorm
Turn 3: Heavy Duststorm
Turn 4: Light Fog
Turn 5: Heavy Fog
Turn 6: Forest Fire

For some bonus spice the players could choose to team up, which they did. But this meant the Neotechnoists, seeing the large attack force, called their field team for backup.

The “NPC” posses involved were Sandoro’s Lab Rats (the Neotechnoist lab team) and the Field Team Alpha Tango (field team).

The Field Team showed up at the start of Turn 2 from a random long table edge, to keep with the “Center” deployment style. They showed up all mounted on their dinosaur, to represent them rushing to the base with all haste.

Like I said the battle was pretty brutal. The lab team hid well in their bunker, only popping out to take potshots at the Hadley’s Hope posse. The field team, seeing no dinosaur for the Dustin Tails, decided to commit their melee based group to push back that gang. In the end they did so, at a heavy cost (losing all but one member).
Neither player was close to capturing the objective, since the close quarters fighting inside the building was not their forte, and from the pressure of the field team. However they did a lot of damage to the defenders, but ended up retreating into the deepening dust storm.

Next up they will head to the race track at Pahrump, which will be played out this weekend. Should be a fun time!

Pictures of the table setup before the Death Valley game started:

Left to Right: The full table, with the side tray for the building interior. Look at the “four quadrant” hill style of the table. The building interior, with the 3D table being a “Medical Station” providing 1D12 healing per Action Phase using it. Up close of the science station, which is an old cardboard bunker I made when I was a kid. Half game, half game room. A close look at the campaign map, where you can see the splitting route.

Posted in Campaign. Tags: Battle to Seattle, Campaign, Death Valley, Dinosaur Cowboys. 2 Comments »

Battle to Seattle – Radio Tower in the Mojave Desert

February 18, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Well we got in the second game of the Battle to Seattle campaign. I’m not going to link back to the introduction post each time, since I’m sure you can find it by this point.
The first game was a “demo game” with basic posses I designed, and was unrelated to the main storyline. Then my three friends designed their owns posses, and we pitted them against each other in a 3 player free-for-all. The setting for the encounter was the Mojave Desert. Each posse had heard about the rumored re-emergence of Seattle on the coast, so they all went to the local radio station tower to confirm the details. Unfortunately they ran into each other and ended up fighting over the tower.
There was an NPC character at the tower, basically a crazy woman who was said to control snakes and dinosaurs. She was quickly butchered by the combined posses as they considered her a significant threat.

The table itself had a few Features in play, specifically: Gusting Winds (2″ Pushed to all weapons), Hidden Tunnel (a series of them, marked with green doors), and a Road opposite one of the deployment zones. In addition the crates at the base of the tower were Fortified and Ammo, which hopefully would give anyone rushing to the base a better chance at defending.

The objective was to Capture the radio tower, with a hidden turn limit (in this case 4, which was one shorter than everyone expected :) ). Besides the usual bonus for winning an encounter, the player would receive some hidden information from what they heard on the radio tower.

The posses involved, which I’ll post eventually in their own entry, were Hadleys Hope, Dustin Tails, and Dustbowl Dusters. So…lots of dust in their names. Hadleys Hope consists of a two brother sniper team with a Stegosaurus. Dustin Tails is a three person, mostly Neotechnoist gang, with plenty of good weapons. And Dustbowl Dusters has three people and a Thickskull dinosaur, and generally has harder to kill members due to them being Dusters with boosted Hitpoints.

Anyway there was plenty of good shooting all around. Dustbowl Dusters took the initiative on charging the tower, and came under a LOT of fire as a result. Dustin Tails tried to cut through the Hidden Tunnels to get closer to the objective, and ended up disturbing some NPC lizards! These were related to the crazy woman, and basically emerged from each tunnel entrance and attacked the nearest target.

In the end Dustbowl Dusters were able to capture the radio tower, but at a heavy cost. They suffered two losses, one being the Leader, and BOTH of the people took Wounds! To make matters worse the Leader took a “Stunned Head” (which is pretty rare to roll), meaning they have a small chance at the start of each Activation to be Stunned. Ouch. The other out of action member took a Bruised Head Wound, so lots of brain damage all around!

The pictures are a bit shaky, but that’s life :)

Pictured: The table setup and early moves, with the road visible. Then the main radio tower from both sides. You can see the Thickskull aggressively capturing the objective.

So far all the minis are proxied from Warhammer 40,000. But orders are in from each player for some wild west figures. I’m looking forward to seeing them all arrayed against each other. Also notice the Stegosaurus is a non-Papo toy for once!

As for the post-encounter decisions, the route split from the radio tower to Las Vegas (now mostly ruined and mostly run by gangs) or Death Valley (super hot, with a rumored Neotechnoist science base). EVERYONE decided to go to Death Valley, which was a surprise to me!

Posted in Campaign. Tags: Battle to Seattle, Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys. 8 Comments »

Battle to Seattle – Demo Game

February 12, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Battle to Seattle Start!
Remember my wordily titled Search for the Sunken Space Needle in Seattle campaign (shortened to “Battle to Seattle”)? Well, it officially started last week! I’m very excited to host this campaign for three friends as they battle north from the desert to the fabled sunken city of Seattle.

I can’t post the schedule of cities/events here, in case any of the involved players read it, but I can do recaps of previous sessions.

In the case of week 1 we started with a simple demo game, unrelated to the main campaign. The purpose of this game was to introduce everyone to the rules, show them various strengths/weaknesses of posse styles, and have a fun time. After the demo game everyone semi-secretly built their own custom posse, which I will detail in future posts.
Sufficient to say there are now three custom posses just chomping at the bit to start killing each other. Which will happen this week! We will have an “official” kick off game involving all three posses, then a chance to revise the posses (in case someone really regrets their build choice), and then the posses will be locked in and the rest of the campaign will continue.

Anyway for this first week demo game I created two posses that had identical members and slightly different dinosaurs (Ripper and Ducky). These resulted in the Thunder Valley Gang (Ripper version) and (Ducky version).

The game itself went off without a hitch. We played the simplest objective (Shoot Out) on the simplest deployment (Edge, in this case on the long table edges), with a turn limit of 5, and no Features (how rare!). Every game after this will be more complex and involved, but again I wanted to start with the basics to get everyone familiar with the rules. Since I am aiming to have two simultaneous 1vs1 games going at the same time it’s imperative that each player knows the rules well enough to play on their own, without me overseeing the game.
The posses can look forward to lots of decisions, various scenarios and situations, and (hopefully) plenty of fun over the next month or two.

Anyway we used one of my new 4’x3′ boards. The first picture (above) is of the setup before everyone showed up, and then an action shot a few turns in to the chaos:

Posted in Campaign. Tags: Battle to Seattle, Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys. 3 Comments »

The Search for the Sunken Space Needle in Seattle

January 13, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

A New Campaign
In other words, “The Battle to Seattle”. But what am I talking about? The next Dinosaur Cowboys campaign! This won’t be a test campaign run solo, this will be an actual campaign with 3 of my friends. We’re aiming to start at the beginning of February, and run 9 game nights playing through a broad story arc.

History and Fluff
As you may remember, part of the history of Dinosaur Cowboys involves greenhouse gases being released when the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted, which melted a bunch of the ice caps and raised the ocean water level. That means coastal cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle were under water.

But now in the year 2294 (ie: 9 years after the rulebook history leaves off at 2285) there are rumors of a strange tower emerging from the ocean. Scraps of pamphlets and waterlogged tourism books identify this tower as the Seattle Space Needle.
As with any old world technology, there is a lot of mystery around the contents of the tower. Perhaps scientists stored away desperate experiments, or maybe historians packed the tower with books and manuals from the past.
Regardless, word of the receding ocean tides (whether they are temporary or permanent is up for debate) has spread like wildfire, and a new gold rush to be the first posse to Seattle has begun.

Rules of the Campaign
In terms of rules we will play 1 introductory session, unrelated to the campaign, wherein everyone is refreshed on the basics of the game and shown various posse strategies. Then each friend will design their own Posse using the standard rules, with my help that first game session.
Week 2 would be the official start to the campaign, with each new Posse involved. The plan is to have TWO simultaneous 1vs1 games going, on a 4’x3′ chunk of a split 6’x4′ table (see right for the early version).
Who fights who and over what terrain will be decided by the campaign route each player chooses. Initially they all start somewhere in the Mojave Desert, but after that two branching decisions will be presented at the end of each week as to where the posse goes next.
For example Player One and Player Two choose to go to Las Vegas after the Mojave Desert, and Player Three decides to go through Death Valley. That means Player One and Two will fight it out in Las Vegas. Player Three will fight a generic NPC posse that I design and play, in this case across Death Valley. So the matchups will change as the gang fights their way north to Seattle. This should allow lots of variety, choice, and fun.
The usual campaign rules will be used, although I’ll be tweaking the Wounds slightly (mainly for Dinosaurs, since some don’t make sense, like “Broken Tail” which involves Difficult Terrain). If someone cannot make a battle that week they’d miss out on the IP/ND gained from combat. So expect a v2.1 rule update with some minor touchups (as usual!).

Posts
Any details I post here will be written with the players in mind, so there won’t be spoilers in advance or any big reveals. But I will try to get a picture or two of each game, although certainly not to the detail level of my previous reports. Should be a grand ol’ time!

Posted in Campaign. Tags: Battle to Seattle, Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys. Leave a Comment »

Search for the Antidote – Windy River Day 7

January 11, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy

Well, it’s been a whiiiiile! The timestamp of the images for this battle report are from the middle of October! Then again I did have a grand total of 3 or 4 days free in all of December, so I’ve been a bit busy. Too much Mad Men, Robocraft, Simcity 4, family and friends, and gin. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to use :)

Anyway when we last left off the Drylands Expedition had helped defend Hyran Mine against Night Dagger raiders. During the fight Amparo was hit by a “Toxic Gun”, which infected him with a deadly poison. With barely a break to breathe, the posse immediately headed towards an outlying / forward post of the Night Dagger camp. Their intent was simple: get an antidote for Amp!
In addition a new member joined the posse, named Sarah Love, as talked about here. Since I last mentioned her I’ve painted 90% of the figure (mainly just need to finish the base and a few details), so hopefully I can wrap that up soon.

My notes for this battle are…sparse. As in not even a page. But the pictures speak volumes. I think the table looked really good this time, as I went for slightly lower hills, the black mat (to represent the dark hills around Hyran Mine), an old abandoned bus (which I always love), and best of all I got to use my new inexpensive roads! Brief sidenote, the roads are made by cutting out textured fabric from a local craft store. They look good (especially for the price) and the cobblestone really pops on them. I cut a few to be main roads and a few to be little side trails, so lots of variety. Now that I’ve (successfully) tested the roads I think I’ll try to get more fabric in the near future and make even more roads.

Table
I played on my usual gamesroom table, 4’x3′. I’m hoping to get two slabs of wood to make the table 6’x4′ at some point (so I can run two simultaneous Dinosaur Cowboys games) but for now it’s the classic size.

Objective
The Night Daggers had to Destroy 4 casks of Anti-Toxins. If the Drylands Expedition could stop them from doing this, there would be enough antidote leftover to help Amp.

Deployment
The deployment used was “Quadrant”, although my rolls basically made it “Edge”, haha. Both halves of the Night Daggers deployed on the west side (with the bus) while the Drylands Expedition deployed opposite them. I was hoping for a true Quadrant battle, but like I said the deploy rolls didn’t end up that way.

Features
I had the Drylands Expedition start “Out of Supplies”, to represent their haste from running from Hyran Mine. That meant they would start with all weapons needing a Reload. So the first turn would be catching their breath and moving to better positions while reloading their weapons.
I also had the “Night” variant in effect, which would give some protection against Medium or Long range shots (basically a saving roll).

Posses
Drylands Expedition – 1/179 IP, $2,000 – Posse PDF
Night Daggers Antidote Defense – 4/179 IP, $2,000 – Posse PDF

Setup
The Drylands Expedition split Quidel with Rhodes and Sarah Love, and then Gibson, Amp, and Dwaal. The first half were in the south east quadrant, with the dino half were north of that (north east quadrant).
The Night Daggers split Lanecaster with Zeus to the south west quadrant, opposite Quidel and those fellows. Then Igel, Aletha, and Cobalt were in the north west quadrant opposite the Dryland’s dinosaur Dwaal.

General Report
In general the Night Daggers surged forward, trying to destroy as many antidote casks as they could. By the end of Turn 2 the newcomer Sarah Love was down, and both objectives near the Night Daggers side of the table had been destroyed. One of these was torn to shreds by their mighty dinosaur Zeus.
There was a great fight around the bus (as usual…that bus is awesome as a focal point), with plenty of moving and position for the best shot. Dwaal had rushed forward to try to slow the cask damage, so he proved to be a useful distraction.
On the south part of the table Quidel and Zeus duked it out around the third cask, with Quidel barely slaying the mighty dinosaur before the T-Rex could tear apart the cask.
Amp spent most of the game sniping from a building, but eventually no targets were in range so he advanced and had a bit of a long range duel with Igel.
Dwaal and Gibson eventually teamed up to do an aggressive flank and further draw the focus away from the fourth cask by Amp’s building. With Quidel and Amp closing from the other side the Night Daggers were in trouble.
However everyone was pretty beat up by this point so both sides had heavy losses in each of these late game turns.
Finally Amp engaged the Night Dagger leader Lanecaster, who had slightly hung back earlier due to her short range, and she was able to take Amp out before help arrived. But Quidel showed up soon after to finish off the enemy leader.
In the end the Drylands expedition were able to offensive defend the last two casks by pushing back the Night Daggers.

End of Encounter Process
Drylands Expedition had everyone except Quidel taken out of action. Ouch! In total they had 5 kills for a total of +15 IP and $150 (plus the usual $30 for winning) and the IP boost gave them another Trait. Luckily 2 casks were undamaged enough that Amp could be healed of his toxic infection.

Like I said, light notes compared to the usual blow-by-blow account!

The Wound and Injuries results weren’t that great for the Drylands Expedition. Amp and Dwaal managed to avoid a Wound, and Quidel’s old “Broken Knee” Wound healed up. But Gibson, Rhodes, and Love all took a Wound, as rolled below.

Wounds:
Gibson Crawford – Cut Feet (W)
“Crazy” Rhodes – Broken Hip (W)
Sarah Love – Shaky Hand (W)

New Resources: 16/194 IP, 180/2180 ND, 5/6 Traits

Flush with cash I decided to rework the Armor setup of the posse a bit. Quidel handed down his Cloth Armor to Sarah Love (no cost), and then bought himself shiny new Bone Armor for $150, leaving the posse with $30. I decided to hold on to the leftover cash for now.
In terms of IP the characters are getting to the point where upgrades are pretty expensive. For example to go from RTN 6 to 5 is 22 IP (but also really awesome and tempting). Instead I gave Quidel another boost, and finally got his Speed up to 4 (from 3) for 10 IP. That left 6 IP, a convenient number considering that is the cost of +1 HP. So Crazy Rhodes got +1 HP, boosting him from 11 to 12 HP.
Traits were a bit tougher, mainly because there are so many I want to get, but I had to narrow it down to a single choice. I considered giving another Trait to Dwaal, perhaps even more HP or some Speed. I considered going for a second tier (II) Trait for someone, maybe Amp with “Inspiring Shot II”. Maybe “Eagle Eye” for Rhodes to push his range out a bit further. An Active Trait was the most appealing, maybe “Retreat!” for someone who normally is near Dwaal, so that the dinosaur could get Speed 14 for a turn! The flat damage Traits are always nice too, and come in handy in pretty much any situation (like Quidel’s “Knee Shot”). “Quick Hands” or “Rally”, “Speed Reload”, the list of things I want is endless. But time to decide (I’m literally sitting here with The Saloon open as I type this, trying to figure out a choice). And that decision is “Rapid Fire II” for Sarah Love, giving her the possibility of 6A-6D, which just might be enough for a one shot kill. Actually it’d be 7A-6D with the Dual Wield variant in play (which it is for this campaign).
I’ll need to boost up Gibson next time, I think, as he’s falling a bit behind.

Final Resources: 0/194 IP, 30/2180 ND, 0/6 Traits

Posse after updates: Saloon link or PDF link.

Next Up
After counter-raiding the outer Night Dagger camp and stealing the antidote the Drylands Expedition have their eyes set directly on the main Night Dagger camp. So the next campaign game will focus on a big attack through the layered defenses of the Night Daggers. I expect a lot of casualties and chaos.

Posted in Campaign, Game Sessions. Tags: Antidote, Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys, Game Sessions, Hyran Mine, Windy River. Leave a Comment »

The Saloon posse designer now has full Campaign support!

October 1, 2013 — Dinosaur Cowboy

This post will cover Saloon updates as well as Windy River Campaign updates, specifically what happened during the End of Encounter process from the Big Raid at Little Hyran Mine.

The Saloon Supports Campaigns
First of all I’m very pleased to announce I’ve added extensive Campaign specific support to The Saloon online posse designer. The program has been great so far, specifically the PDF export feature I use heavily in all my games. But it was also somewhat lacking for ONGOING posses, instead of just initial creation. Well this latest update remedies this problem and means I can track everything from used medical devices to Wounds and Injuries.

The entry to this magical land of campaign tracking goodness is the new “Campaign” mode checkbox, pictured to the right. This checkbox value will be persisted when you use the “Save to URL” function. There is also a warning beside the checkbox telling you the Campaign mode is for advanced users. So advanced in fact that if this is your first visit to The Saloon this checkbox won’t even be displayed!

Once the Campaign mode is checked there are a few fundamental changes to how your posse is managed:

Recruiting a new Member costs $250 (although the recruitment cost isn’t tracked per member, so you’ll have to toggle the Campaign checkbox if you want to remove them at a normal price)
“Use” Medical Devices by clicking the little pill icon () to the left of the Medical Device in the Inventory section of each posse member.
Sell any viable piece of equipment (price must be greater than or equal to $10, as per the rules) by clicking the “dollar sign” () to the left of the item. You can also sell your Dinosaur (again as per the rules) instead of flat out removing them. Tooltips have been updated to reflect what each button icon does.
Manage Wounds/Injuries! Select the entity you want to manage and click the “Wounds/Injuries” button to open a new panel below the posse list. From here you can choose a Wound/Injury from the full list and apply it to that entity, or Heal it when the time comes. All Wounds/Injuries are properly persisted when you use “Save to URL”.
Wounds/Injuries are noted by bolding the HP field in the posse list, which can then be moused over to see the full list of what is affecting the entity.
If the “Apply to PDF?” checkbox is selected any Wounds/Injuries will be noted at the top of the “Current HP” field in the PDF, and directly modify stats if possible (so a “Busted Leg” with -1 Speed would indeed reduce the character’s Speed on the PDF roster).

So as I said, lots of really handy functionality! I think the majority of players (anyone out theeere?) tend to play one-off games and not a Campaign. But the functionality is very useful for me and the Drylands Expedition. Speaking of which…

End of Encounter Process for Drylands Expedition
I finally got around to sitting down and figuring out Wounds/Injuries and what to do with my leftover IP and ND from last game. The Drylands Expedition is at 179 IP, $2,000, and 5 Traits, and I need to spend some of that!
After much deliberation I decided it’s time to recruit a new Member! So exciting. Also a little sad because my roster is now full :( I don’t have a ton of IP to really bring them up to snuff with the rest of the posse, so they will start a bit wet behind the ears, but that’s okay because it’s realistic and fun to try to keep them alive.
So let’s all take a moment and welcome “Sarah Love”, a Duster cowgirl with a brace of pistols and a sunny disposition. She is a wandering caravan guard that happened to stumble across Hyran Mine soon after the attack. Having heard of the Night Daggers, seen the effect of their Toxic Guns (poor Amp!), and generally finished her current caravan job, she joined the Drylands Expedition in their quest for revenge (and an antidote).
As I said she’s a Duster, and the model I have for her is pictured to the right. Currently she’s unpainted, but I have her based and undercoated, so hopefully I can remedy that problem this weekend. I won’t get a chance to play Dinosaur Cowboys before then anyway, so the next time you see her she could be all done.
The model is great with a very dynamic “over the shoulder” pose. She has a ton of cool looking pistols belted onto her hip, 4 in total. So I figured I’d run with that idea in regards to her equipment. I gave her TWO Handcannons ($240 total). That means she’s actually better equipped than Quidel, so guess who will get an upgrade in the future? Anyway after Campaign recruitment of $250 that left me with exactly 0 ND, so no armor to start.
For statistics I didn’t have a ton of IP, like I said, but I did manage +1 Defense and +1 Speed (she’s also faster than Quidel!). Unfortunately no Ranged Target Number improvements so her shooting might be lackluster to start. But with the “Dual Wield” variant rule she’ll get 3A-6D on those awesome Handcannons. Know what would make them even more potent? The Rapid Fire Trait which gives +2 Range Attacks once per encounter. 5A-6D…swoon!
I actually had enough IP left to boost Amparo’s Hitpoints from 9 to 10, which will also help reduce his chance to take a Bravery Test. And that means my entire Posse has double digit Hitpoints (finally)!

I also did the unfun process of seeing how my numerous Out of Action characters did. As you might remember everyone but Dwaal was Taken Out of Action last game, haha. However I HUGELY lucked out on rolls with only Quidel suffering an Injury! The rest passed their 8+ Wound Test roll.
Quidel rolled a 2-4, which gave him a temporary “Broken Knee” which means he cannot Hustle! At 3 Speed…ouch. Sort of ironic (and vaguely karmic) though since his Trait is “Knee Shot”.
I can’t complain too much though considering everyone but the dinosaur was taken out.

So in summary:
– Hired Duster “Sarah Love” for $250
— Two Handcannons ($240)
— +1 Defense, +1 Speed
— “Rapid Fire” Trait
– +1 HP for Amparo
– “Broken Knee” Injury for Quidel

End result: 1/179 IP, 0/2000 ND, 5/5 Traits
PDF: Drylands Expedition Roster (Day 6)
Saloon Link: Drylands Expedition Online (Day 6)

Like I said I probably won’t get a game until this weekend, but I do have the Night Daggers Antidote Defense posse (PDF) all setup and ready to go!

Posted in Campaign, Saloon. Tags: Campaign, Dinosaur Cowboys, Saloon. Leave a Comment »

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