When A Man's Gotta Go

After a hard day of ridin', squintin', sneerin' and shootin', the good folk of Tombstone mosey on down to the friendly local saloon, The Bucket of Blood (it's pronounced "bouquet"). There they've got whiskey, girls and a death rate of less than six varmints per month. What more could you want?

Inside toilets, that's what. And this weekend a bitter gunfight broke out over who had the right to the outside shed, as a band of desperate men tried to take the Bucket of Blood and its outdoor facilities by storm.

This was our first attempt at playing Tombstone, Black Scorpion's Wild West game. James took a force of well-dressed and heavily-armed ladies, and I took a gang of (statistically) identical desperados, and we fought it out in the  road.

As the fight for the khazi intensifies, the Disruptive Kid goes behind a cactus.  Not like that.

 The Tombstone rules are quite unusual. Almost everything involves the players rolling dice against each other, the highest roll being the successful one. The skill of the character determines the dice rolled: a skillful fighter might roll a d.8, where an injured opponent would only roll a d.4. There's also an interesting mechanic for seizing the initiative - ie forcing your opponent's turn to end.


Overall, it was a fun game, even though we were struggling with the rules as we went. I think Tombstone has potential to be a fairly fast and tactical game, even if I can't work out what the heck those tactics might be. It looks very promising.

Fighters lie stunned and unconscious around the whiskey barrels.

Anyhow, the saloon girls stepped up and drove the gang of toilet-rustlers away, with fatalities on both sides. A particular highlight was one spirited lady leaping through the window of the Bucket of Blood to batter Doc Casserole on the verandah. Ouch. Reckon he won't be doin' no square dancin' for a while.