Raiders!

So reads the message that reaches a clan of Mandalorians on the Outer Rim during the early days of the New Republic. The promise of Credits and Settlement Rights are a mighty tempotation for a wandering band of mercenaries looking to settle down after the destruction of the Despised Empire.

Two of the mysterious warriors have arrived on the planet of Jantouine before the rest of the clan, The Kid and The Guide. But, their attempts to reach town are paused by the arrival of a pair of raiders, here to check out the newcomers and remind them of how things are done in these parts.

Opening Crawl, Episode 1

Well it’s time – let’s actually put some figures on the board and play What a Cowboy.

As is tradition when trying out new systems, my guinea pig was the Dastardly Regular Opponent. We took advantage of the Bank Holiday weekend to play late into Sunday evening and I lugged my case of figures and rulebook over to his and set up a sci-fi desert world, covering the gap between the spaceport and the town. Ideal for a showdown!

We went for a simple starter game of two Shootists each. For the Mandos, I had The Kid armed only with a pistol and The Guide armed with a pump action shotgun (playing the game of “what on earth is that Star Wars gun”). Against me, the Imperial Raiders comprised of one figure armed with two pistols (and the skill to use them ambidextrously) while the other brought the trusty E11 blaster (which we rolled as the Winchester rifle).

The figures used are all from Skull Forge Studios and printed off on my Elegoo Saturn. The Mandolorians are pretty stock but the Imperial Raiders are assembled from the heist crew with some Imperial officer heads. It nails the feel of Ex-Imperials pulling gear together to continue their tyranny (with a much more selfish aim) and means that eventually, we can have some Remant vs Raider fights as the true Imperials turn up/come out of hiding. These figures were great fun to print off and paint, using the Slapchop method (or whatever you want to call it) to get them off the paint desk and ready to play.

After having ignored the warnings of the strange tentacled alien that ran the starport (and spoke only in a strange language that the Dastardly Regular Opponent was happy to do his impression of), the Mandolorians walked out in the wastes, only halting when a shot ran out.

The game kicked off with both sides moving forward into cover. The Mandos, both being relatively short-range, really wanted to move forward and get into closer quarters. However, the straight shot towards the Raider’s side came into trouble when The Guide found himself in the line of fire from the E11 blaster. The first shot sent the man in blue rushing for cover.

On the other side of the board, it was a battle of the pistol wielders – The Kid had bounded forward blasting away, while the Akimbo Raider responded in kind. Cover and crap dice rolls managed to only cause shocks and pins until eventually, I pushed for a brawl. This brawl managed to drag both characters out into the open, and although it ended in a draw, the Akimbo Raider was able to score a critical hit on The Kid, shooting him in the head (and presumably knocking his helmet off).

Unfortunately, we missed the picture but my attempt to push forward with The Guide to save his buddy came at just the wrong point. The Akimbo Raider managed to roll 4 sixes, bringing an end to the turn and leaving my Blue Mandalorian in the open. A lucky draw from the activation deck gave Akimbo the chance to start blasting, reducing Blue’s action dice through shock and injury. All it took was an aimed E11 shot to finish him off, removing him from the table through too much shock.

With The Guide forced to make a run for it by E11 fire (probably choosing to fire his jetpack and leaping away back to the ship), the injured and pinned down Kid was left with only a single action dice, dangerously close to going out of action. He was able to move pinned markers off while dodging behind cover RIGHT up until E11 pushed forward, getting in behind The Kid, and then declared a brawl with the intention to capture The Kid. A round of combat later, The Kid slumped to the ground with no more action dice and the Imperial Raiders took the field, claiming victory!

Well, that didn’t go well for the Good Guys (which to be fair, it is only the first episode). There were some truly terrible action dice on both sides, meaning I got bottled up by the E11 blaster and that sent The Guide running off. The Kid, with only one action dice by the end thanks to shock and injuries, was then completely overtaken and kidnapped.

As for the rules themselves, yep it plays exactly as I thought it would from reading the book. If you’ve played any of the Too Fat Lardies rules, you’ll know the basic feel and concepts of the rules, to the point where it’s mostly like putting on a comfortable set of gloves that can also do some new things as well. The step up from controlling a single tank in What a Tanker to multiple characters works well, with the only thing being maybe a touch of a sticking point being spotting. Luckily, with only a few characters per side, it never quite feels like you need a full graph for it. The action dice system in Chain of Command is one of my favourite activation systems and it provides the exact same level of uncertainty with each activation – it can be a bit harsh, but that does make the higher-level characters who can adjust dice rolls feel more interesting than just “is better at shooting”. Combat can feel a little bit “and then they started blasting” but I think it works for the type of game they are going for, the action movie where rounds go down range but people very rarely actually get taken out.

Of course, because it’s me, my brain does tend towards the mountain of guys with AR15s and AKs in my cabinets when news games turn up. I think that What a Cowboy (or at least the core of it) has the possibility to become an ideal “cinematic individuals” game for Ultramoderns with a few tweaks. Mixing in your main characters with some grunts/chaff using the Henchman rules, and you’ve got a game that could be similar to Sangin but with a fraction of the paperwork and much simpler to setup, ideal for playing an action movie in an evening. I know the author did do a What an Operator for one of his demo games (using a rather excellent Cartel board) and I did briefly chat with him about some of the tweaks for more modern combat when I met him at Salute so this is something I’ll hopefully be playing around with soon.

I do want to get some dashboards printed off, rather than simply scrawling on pieces of paper just to keep things a little tidier. Of course, playing with Star Wars figures means that the reloading mechanic might need a tweak, but if there is one thing I love, it’s breaking perfectly serviceable rulesets to do dumb things with them. We finished the game thinking about how we were going to make the Mandolorians feel special on the table, as well as such additions as Droids (don’t take shock but less action dice) and of course those pesky Force users.

However, we will also have a continuation of this story. After all, the Raiders have dragged The Kid back to their hideout and thrown him in their prisoner pit. The question is, are the prisoners (emboldened by the news that the Mandolorians are coming) going to try and break out or will it be the rest of the clan turning up to rescue their boy?

Well, on Saturday while at Salute I took into my hands a suspicious brown paper envelope from one Mr Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies. Inside was the rulebook and cards for What a Cowboy, a ruleset that went from “eh cowboys” to “VERY EXCITED” in not a huge amount of time. Of course, this is probably in a large part down to the Mandalorian returning (as well as rewatching the first and best season of it) as well as playing some Red Dead Redemption 2 but something in me got very excited about some rooting tooting cowboy shooting… even if the shooting is blasters rather than six guns.

Of course, I’m going to need some cowpokes Nerf Herders for the tabletop. So naturally Skull Forge Studios was my first port of call and Oh Boy their recent releases are spot on for what I was thinking. Setting wise, I’m focusing on the New Republic era – it seems the most open for Wild West-esque Shenanigans as things attempt to get better run by a Republic very far away and not enough law to cover the frontier. Obviously as part of this Mandalorians were my first port of call, and a variety of them with different guns means I can run the different levels of character What a Cowboy supports. Skull Forge doesn’t have a large range of riff-raff/scum to fight but they did recently release a Heist Crew in cobbled together armour and droid masks.

However, inspired by the Imperial Remnant in Season 1 of Mando and the Lemoyne Raiders I’ve been hacking/shooting/dynamiting my way through in RDR2, I’ve some up with some Imperial Raiders – former Imperial Army soldiers who have be stranded out in the Outer Rim and taken to banditry to keep themselves alive. Just the sort of threat a town might hire some bounty hunters to come and sort out. Of course, there is also the opening to have some Imperial Remnant vs Raiders, made worse if the ISB’s finest turn up on world and clear house (aka, I decide to print some Death Troopers).

A new project means it’s time to actually try out some new processes as well. Seeing as I want to get these guys up and running without much delay, I decided to actually give Contrasts more of a go. In the past, I’ve only use Contrast as a technical paint, adding it to metalics for that matt look. For this test figure (referred to as Cousin in the Andor files which made me laugh), I went with the Slap-Chop Prep (also known as Zenithal Priming but with a brush) and then hit the model with the four contrast paints I have. It’s not perfect, and my attempts to contrast the face made me go back over it with Cadian Fleshtone but this model go hammered out REALLY fast. This is a good sign for a certain other project – I’ll definitely be able to get through my Desert Rats quickly when I get around to them.

Moving forward with What a Nerf Herder though, I’m going to start off by playing the game to learn what I can actually break/adjust to fit in new things to make it more Star Wars-y. Off the top of my head, the main things are going to be using the existing tools to make important Star Wars characters – Mandolorians for example need to be very good and with all their toys without breaking every game. I’m also interested in adding droids (probably less shock but less actions) and of course eventually those damn Force Users are going to turn up. I’ve pencilled down a few ideas on how to give the lightsaber swinging lunatics the option although I forsee them being more Darth Vader in the Corridor in most cases.

Next up, time to paint some Mandos. Maybe even THE Mando.