28th April - 27th April Deadman's Hand Game vs The Wife

Well I finished off The Wife's 7th cavalry gang for Deadman's Hand during last week and have now started up on my entry's for the Across the Dead Earth Facebook painting competition. My gang entry (the Engineers) is almost complete and I've made a start on my single figure (Penny, the nurse from the Sisters of Acquisition) as well as making headway on the rest of Penny's fellow gang members and my State gang from my original kickstarter package.

With her gang finished the only thing to do was to have a game to celebrate! This was the first game of Deadman's hand either of us had played. I picked it up last year as themed Christmas presents for the family after the wild west game at The Uncles last year. The Youngest got Indians, The Eldest Banditos, The Wife as you see above and I grabbed the Pinkertons. I also grabbed a 4Ground bundle to go with it although I've still got three buildings left to assemble, but I'll have them knocked over this week around work hopefully. I just went for a simple theme of "This town ain't big enough for the both of us", although I'm thinking we'll play through some of the scenes from the rulebook for a bit of campaign play.

The rules are nice and easy with a card based initiative and a hand that gives you some limited influence on the game combined with a single die (d20 or d10 depending on action) mechanic for shooting, hand to hand or morale actions. The hit mechanic is simple with a successful shot/strike applying under fire markers with a model able to take so many depending on his profile. An action can be spent to remove markers enabling you to make some risky actions and being able to spend a turn recovering from your bravery to continue on, which encourages some heroic (read desperate) maneuvers at times.

The game started with both of our gangs deployed in opposite corners of the table. The Wife opted to keep fairly grouped for the first couple of turns while I sent my gang running off in pairs in various directions with my repeater armed Detective (base gang member) hanging back behind a hedge to offer some covering fire.

A few turns in and we'd begun to exchange fire with my Special Agent (Boss) heading into a building to take cover from some carbine fire from The Wife's Troopers (base gang members). Another of my Detectives had rushed across the street taking a shot at a Trooper managing to get an under fire token on him then ducking into the Sheriff's office to take cover from any returned fire.


The Wife then started to have a bit of a surge, landing quite a few good hits on my detectives not enough to remove anyone yet, but enough to slow me down. But then she made her only major blunder of the game forgetting I had my Bounty Hunter (adv. gang member) sitting on the edge of the sheriff's office as she ran her Indian Hunter (adv. gang member) into point blank range for me where I quite happily took her offering and gunned him down. Across the other side of the board she did manage to lock me down with some well positioned Troopers, but was unable to land enough shots to put anyone out of action.

I decided then it was time to pull a risky move and sent my Special Agent across the street pistol blazing backed up by a Detective with a shotgun, of course they both missed wildly and ended up out of ammo (requiring an action on their next activation to reload). The Wife took a few shots managing to get a single hit on the Detective but was unable to do enough to make me regret my gamble. Several turns later saw my Detective taken out of the game but with help from the flank I'd managed to take out three Troopers and only had the one hiding in the back to deal with on this side. However this concerted action cost me my Bounty Hunter as The Wife's Officer (boss) gunned him down before he knew what hit him. Her remaining Trooper got a sight on the now solo Detective at the Sheriff's office and began to take shots.

The Wife managed to pass her Big Nerve test so the game continued but it was the beginning of the end for her. My Special Agent finished off the Trooper in the building. The Wife sent her Officer across the street toward my repeater toting Detective and not to be caught out I took a quick shot but both of our shots went wide. The final real activation of the game saw another Detective manage to get three under fire markers on the remaining Trooper. The Wife decided that yes this town definitely wasn't big enough for the both of us at this point and pulled out to lick her wounds and return another day to try to settle the score.

It was a good fun game and I'm hoping to get Toby round with the Outlaw gang we got him for Christmas to see how they play.