When I was paging through the rulebook before the v2.0 release I remembered I had put the maximum base Hitpoints at 40. I immediately wondered what a Posse dedicated to reaching that cap would look like. Pretty interesting idea right?
Well the result is the Snake River Cavalry (Saloon link) (PDF link).
I went for the theme of a roving, slightly mad Knight (everyone who wanders around the future seems to be a bit crazy). A knight certainly doesn’t fit the general Dinosaur Cowboys theme, but it’s still fun, haha. Anyway I hired two very basic Members who have given up every single stat they can with Voluntary Weakness to provide as much IP as they can to the Leader.
The Leader himself started as a Duster who got max Hitpoints (40) through huge IP expenditure. Then he greedily took three Passive traits to reach Bonus HP III for a total of 49 Hitpoints! Pretty wild. I wanted him to be survivable instead of just a bullet sponge, so with the left over IP he has +1 DEF and enough for a suit of Dinohide Armor for a total of +4 DEF.
But just having a hard target wasn’t enough, the Knight needed to be able to hit back. Although a Shudder Lance would have been quite thematic, and I might do a variant build with that, I settled instead of the classic Heavy Repeater and a Machete (should have been a Short Sword). Throw on a pair of Large IRPs for easy HP recovery and he’s quite deadly.
Then of course his mount, a Runner of the Plains Breed. Pretty flimsy but super fast, so the Knight should be able to reposition once at least.
Here’s how it all looked in the end:
Posse: Snake River Cavalry by Carlo (1/100 IP, 0/1000 ND, 3/3 Traits)
Knight Alfandor (Duster Leader)
DEF 4, RTN 6, CTN 8, BTN 7, SPD 4, HP 49, Bonus HP, Bonus HP II, Bonus HP III.
Heavy Repeater, Machete, Dinohide Armor, Large IRP, Large IRP.
Squire Peter (Bandit)
DEF 0, RTN 8, CTN 8, BTN 12, SPD 1, HP 1.
Squire Carrie (Bandit)
DEF 0, RTN 8, CTN 8, BTN 12, SPD 1, HP 1.
Jousty (Plains Runner Dinosaur)
DEF 0, DIS 4, CTN 9, PANIC D10, SPD 11, HP 11.
And who would have thought but “knight on dinosaur” is actually a pretty popular image search term! The image above is from keithburgun.
Now I’m rather tempted to pit this wacky build against a normal posse and see who wins. I wonder if lucky hits would slowly whittle the Knight down, and if he could do enough reliable damage with RTN 6 to kill all the enemies. I feel like an enemy posse that had a massive dinosaur to bog the Knight down would help quite a bit.
The more thematic version with a lance and six-shooter would look like this instead:
Knight Alfandor (Duster Leader)
DEF 4, RTN 8, CTN 6, BTN 7, SPD 4, HP 49, Bonus HP, Bonus HP II, Bonus HP III.
Plasma Lance, 300kW Six-Shooter, Dinohide Armor.
Dinosaur Cowboys - Tabletop Skirmish Game 