Western Skirmish Gaming
a very personal view by
Chris
I suppose that I was raised on a steady diet of Western movies, and I'm glad to say I have resisted any suggestion that I should grow out of them. Needless to say my childhood Airfix collection was full of cowboys, Indians, wagon trains and even the High Chaparral set of distant memory.
I have dabbled in Western gaming ever since in one way or another. Buried at home I even have a half-written set of role-playing rules, although given these days I usually just play with toys instead.
As I have said in connection with Vietnam, I think that individual figure skirmish games work better when dealing with civilians rather than trained soldiers. This, of course, makes Westerns an ideal subject for these type of games, as even the US Army was short of trained soldiers at the time. For skirmish games in general I prefer to use 25mm figures and rules which are fairly simple and perhaps a little more 'cinematic' than realistic. For several years we have played the classic gunfight games set in the 1870s or 1880s, whilst recently I have added some figures for the earlier era of the fur trade and mountain men
.
Of course the whole notion of The West depends on which direction one is coming from in the first place. As far as this page is concerned I'm talking about the area of the plains and the Rocky Mountains in the 19th century. Obviously the area has a lot more history involving people who didn't get there via the Atlantic. It is worth remembering though that what we think of as the classic 'Plains Indian' culture was a product of contact with Europeans, their horses and trade goods.
From the gamer's perspective, life and death on the plains become far more interesting when trade enables the chaps above to transform themselves into something more like this:
I will note a few specific sources below, but it's worth mentioning at the start that the literature on the West is almost infinitely vast, and very varied in quality. As it says at the top, this is page is all personal opinion; if you prefer accurate history to a cinematic flavour, or even if you just prefer Sergio Leone to John Ford, you may very well have a complete different list of inspirations and references.
For a general introduction to the period as a whole I would still recommend the Time-Life Old West series. Whilst some of the text can be a little dubious, the illustrations remain superb.
In keeping with the cinematic influence of this page, my particular fascination with the mountain men can be traced exactly to the first time I saw Jeremiah Johnson. Over the years since I have read a fair amount on the Rocky Mountain fur trade and related subjects, and had always been attracted to the idea of gaming the period. However, lack of suitable figures made this impractical until the recent releases from Foundry.
We have successfully used The rules with no name to play gunfighter games for several years. However, I felt that the weakest areas of the rules were those dealing with close combat and muzzle-loading weapons. As these would be the dominant feature of a mountain man game, something new was called for. The obvious answer was to put together a skirmish-level adaptation of Piquet, which we have now used a few times with extremely entertaining results.
As I have said, the Foundry figure range was the inspiration to actually start collecting and playing in this era. They remain the best for skirmish gaming because they will reliably supply mounted and dismounted versions of identical figures. For some reason most other manufacturers do not appear to have considered the need for this; not perhaps a significant requirement if you are building units for large actions, but absolutely essential for an individual skirmish. Assorted bits and pieces that can add to the collection can however be found from sources such as Dixon and Old Glory.
For more on this period I would recommend DeVoto's Across the wide Missouri and A.B. Guthrie's excellent novel The big sky, both of which are superb at conveying the atmosphere.
For painting information the best sources the works of A.J. Miller (apparently the only person to paint trappers in the mountains), Karl Bodmer and George Catlin; Frederic Remington is of course a great Western artist but has to be regarded as a secondary source on mountain men. Also invaluable is Scurlock's multi-volume Book of buckskinning, which is aimed at re-enactors and full of great detail on everything from beadwork to camp equipment.
Howard Hawks' movie of The big skywas in fact fairly awful as an adaptation, but is worth watching for the keelboat and Arthur Hunnicutt's performance. The best mountain man movie is probably Heston's Mountain men, which is quite superb for dress and equipment as well as the general feel of the subject.
The following sites are also very useful:
Whilst the mountain men are very close to my heart as a subject, it has to be admitted that most people would associate the idea of Western skirmish gaming with the period of cowboys and gunfighters.
One of the advantages of gunfight games is that almost everyone will play them in a spirit of fun without becoming terribly worried about winning or historical accuracy. In addition, even though the genre is now sadly neglected by the film industry, almost everyone has seen enough Westerns to have some knowledge of their conventions.
With this in mind, the visitor to the town of Slim Pickings will find that Marshal John T. Chance and his deputies ensure brisk business for Peckinpah's funeral parlor and that decent women pack their revolvers before stepping outdoors. The precise location and era may be somewhat unclear. If you read the local newspaper you will find that you are in Arizona in the late 1880s; what then of the Texas Rangers, the 'wild' plains indians and 'civilised' Cherokee, or even the occasional recently discharged Confederate cavalryman ? In short, we are in the glorious ahistorical jumble of the Hollywood West.
We have used The rules with no name to run these games for some years, in most cases with great success. At some point, I would quite like to update my Piquet inspired skirmish rules to cover the period, although I must admit that this is a low priority at the moment. There are, of course, a number of other commercial gunfight rules available but I have found most that I have seen to be a little too complex. Whilst I feel that any game system should play as quickly and simply as possible, this seems even more important in the context of a Hollywood gunfight.
The bulk of my urban gunfighters are either Dixon or Foundry. Assorted odds come from Old Glory, Cannon Fodder Miniatures, and the old Space:1889 range by Rafm. Until recently the only manufacturer to provide consistent mounted and dismounted figures was Foundry. Whilst these figures were certainly very nice, they are mainly aimed towards a slightly earlier period (1850s and '60s), and are rather expensive. The result has been that our gunfights have tended to stay in town rather than venturing into the great outdoors. The town itself, by the way, is mainly composed of models from Snapdragon Studio.
The recent release of 'Cowboy Wars' from West Wind has changed this situation considerably. This is a very large range of rather nice figures, almost all of them in both mounted and dismounted versions, and at a very reasonable price. They are also a little more 'cinematic' than the deliberately historical Foundry figures. Combined with a timely special offer on the Foundry range this means we are at last able to "Ride, boldly ride".
As I hope I've made clear by now, my recommendation for further research into this period would start with movies rather than books. Because the choice is so wide and so personal I won't give a long list, but you could do a great deal worse than starting with either El Dorado (because it's the only time you'll see the two greatest stars of the genre together) or Warlock (because it is simply excellent).
There is a simply vast amount of Western information out there on the Web, and I won't attempt to list it here. The links below are just a few personal favourites to get you started
