Indiana Jones and the sword of Cortes part 1

After concluding the Star Wars campaign, I thought of a new campaign to game with my son. We viewed the Indiana Jones movies together so I suggested to go for an Indiana Jones campaign. I played one years ago with 7TV rules, but decided to convert it to Fistful of Lead because my son learnt those rules during the Star Wars campaign.

The story so far:

1938. The Spanish Civil war rages on. General Franco is winning with German support. The German high command is preparing plans for conquering Europe. The Führer is looking for possible allies.

Meanwhile in the jungles of Central-America:

Indy is searching for the lost temple of Hoaxcoatl together with his friend El Pacino, interpreter Kate Miller and British agent Rupert Jenkins. The fabled sword of Cortés is is said to be hidden somewhere in the temple complex. The sword was a gift from the Spanish king to Hernán Cortés. It was captured by the Aztecs and vanished without a trace.

With the help of Indy's arch enemy, Doctor René Belloq, the Prussian baron Otto von Drüben also found the lost temple. Von Drüben is a fanatical party member who wants to offer the sword to the Führer, so he might secure Franco's support in the upcoming war.

The game:

Indy's team and the group led by Von Drüben enter the table in opposite corners and must explore four locations: the tower, both temples and the square with statues. One of these locations contains the sword. It takes a succesful difficult task roll to search for the sword and find out if it is in the searched location.

The card deck contains two hidden trap cards, one dangerous animal card and a card for the natives and also one card for their chief. Once they are on the table these cards are removed from the deck and the natives receive standard activation cards. The dangerous animal just moves towards the nearest character, intending to attack it.

The natives move in a random direction until one of the explorers enters their line of sight. Then they will attack. Kate Miller speaks their language and may attempt to persuade (regular task roll) the natives to help Indy's team.

My son wanted to play the bad guys this time, so I got to play Indy and friends.

The first turn immediately reveals the natives card. They enter from a random table edge, which happens to be right next to the edge where Von Drüben and his men are.

Indy and Kate move to one temple entrance while Rupert and El Pacino move to another entrance.

The Germans cannot enter the temple from where they are and have to move around it to get to the entrance on the other side.

The natives are spreading out and moving towards the explorers.

They've spotted Indy!

Kate searches the temple, but the sword isn't there. Rupert and El Pacino move around the temple towards the second location: the square with the statues. Von Drüben and his evil assistant Kotzbach are closing in fast.

Leutnant Brantt and the grunts are ordered to deal with the natives.

Before the grunts can assist, Leutnant Brantt is charged by three natives with really big clubs! 

It turns out that clubs are no match for an MP40.

Three other guys with really big clubs are charging Indy over at the other temple. Kate must have overestimated her language skills because she failed her regular task roll when she tried to convince the natives to help them.

Indy is unable to stop them. He and Kate are both knocked out of action!

Kotzbach searched the square with the statues and found no sword. He did find a very angry jaguar.

Von Drüben left his assistant to deal with the jaguar and went for the two remaining locations, followed by Belloq.

Heavy fighting between the German soldiers and the natives take three more natives out of action. Leutnant Brantt is down, pierced by two arrows.

The native chief card emerges and he enters the table to lead his warriors!

Unfortunately he is shot immediately by the grunts.

Leutnant Brantt's recovery roll succeeds and he gets up, firing wildly at the natives, missing them completely.

The soldiers move forward to support their leader and trigger a trap!

Two of them fall down in a deep spiked pit. The leutnant goes down with two more arrows in his body. 

He fails his recovery roll: it's game over for Brantt.

Kotzbach has dealt with the jaguar but is now charged by a machete wielding El Pacino.

Despite his point of shock, Kotzbach easily parries the blow and inflicts a wound on El Pacino. He even has time to search the area for the sword: nothing. Two possible locations remain: the tower and the temple where Brantt met his end.

Von Drüben has gone around the temple and snuck inside, onto the roof.

Again: no sword. Belloq is now on his way to the tower where the sword must be.

Supported by fire from Rupert, El Pacino recovers from his wound and cuts down Kotzbach.

Rupert hurries to the tower in an attempt to stop Belloq, who has almost deciphered the glyphs at the top of the tower.

El Pacino covers Rupert's getaway by taking on the three natives that took down Indy and Kate, soundly beating them.

Rupert has almost reached Belloq. He fires a wild shot at Belloq. Missed. Belloq disappears into the jungle with the sword of Cortés. He is joined by Von Drüben who managed to evade the natives. The surviving German soldier escapes into the jungle, but is never seen or heard from again.

Rupert and El Pacino patch up Indy and Kate and bring them to a hospital. Both will need time to recover and can't take part in the next game.

Stay tuned for part 2!

After Curly Billy shot down Crazy Sam McGee Part 3

After their narrow escape through Dry Gulch Canyon (read all about it here), Curly Billy and his gang go into hiding. With the information from Broadstone's bookkeeper Curly is planning a raid on Broadstone's silver mine. Broadstone's men are closing in however. Curly, the bookkeeper and the gang disguise themselves and board a stagecoach in an attempt to slip through and evade the Law.

Broadstone has people spying for him everywhere and his men are waiting for Curly Billy at the Livery. 

Part 3: Ambush at the Livery

Everything seems business as usual at the livery. While his horse is provided with a new horseshoe,

Doctor Spitzenfinger is trying to sell his Miracle Elixir to one of the workers.

When the stagecoach appears, Broadstone's men prepare themselves to spring the ambush.

The stagecoach moves up the road and bullets start flying.

Broadstone's goons are trying to stop the stagecoach by unscrupulously firing at the driver. Hans "Arizona" Huffheins and Paddy O'Malley are returning fire, forcing Charley the "one-armed snake" to dodge behind the fence.

The One-armed Snake gets up but is shot dead by Arizona!

Arizona then uses his Desperado card to hurl a stick of dynamite at Johnny "the Duke", inflicing several points of shock.

Having passed the first line of defense, the guys in the stagecoach are now taking fire from Davey Kroket and Thomas Brown. The driver is losing action dice fast.

Paddy takes a critical chest wound and falls off the stagecoach. He survives the fall, but the driver's luck has run out. He is out of action.

Grasping the opportunity, Davey Kroket advances towards the stopped stagecoach. Despite his severe chest wound, Paddy manages to blast Davey at point blank range, killing him instantly.

Arizona takes the reins. Unfortunately he isn't able to move the horses more than a few inches before he is killed by a bullet from the winchester of Thomas Brown. Paddy stumbles forward, trying to take out Brown.

With only a few action dice left, Paddy is no match for Brown, and Paddy collapses after a few more shots. This allows Curly Billy however to exit the stagecoach (he and Mad Jack had been firing rather ineffectively from inside the stagecoach) and take the reins.  

Curly Billy almost immediately takes a wound. Fortunately this is downgraded to a shock by playing a Desperado card. After several nailbiting turns without move or wild dice, Curly Billy is finally able to drive the coach off the table, winning the game.

Although at first I thought that with a little luck I could move the stagecoach quickly to the other side of the table, it took almost all Bonanza tokens and all Desperado cards to get half the gang off the table!

Both sides have taken casualties in this game. The Law loses the One-armed Snake and Davy Kroket. Curly Billy's gang loses Arizona and Paddy O'Malley who died of his chest wound in the post game wound recovery dice roll.

New recruits are available for both sides and after rolling for their background and traits Curly Billy is joined by a rancher with the eagle eyes trait and a native american with the stealthy trait.

Certain Dutch readers of a certain age will know that there is an obvious name for these characters: 

Bob "Eagle-eye" Stanhope and White feather.  

Eerde 1944

We played a Chain of Command scenario (Attack & Defend) my friend based on the fighting around Hell's Highway near Veghel (more information here).

The Germans are trying to stop reinforcements from reaching Arnhem by trying to cut the road north. The Americans (101st airborne) intend to stop the attempt with agressive counterattacks.

My Germans are defending the dunes near Eerde against my friend's paratroopers, supported by two British Shermans.

I read about the German Panthers taking out lots of Shermans during the historical battle. This led to the  assumption that I would be able to take out my friend's Shermans with my Panther. I was wrong.

A preliminary barrage prevented me from deploying anything, while the paratroopers were already moving towards my jump-off points. Fortunately the Panther did get through, but failed to hit the Sherman during the entire game!

The Sherman on the other hand, kept hitting the Panther. Not hard enough to destroy it, but enough to force the commander to spend his actions preventing the shock from reaching bail out level.

I was finally able to deploy some troops and slow the US onslaught. This included the German forward observer. My plan was to pin the paratroopers under a mortar barrage.

After the first volley, my friend used his full chain of command dice to end the mortar barrage by ending the turn. Trying to start a new barrage failed because I failed the battery available roll required after the first request for a barrage.

By this time I had my own full Chain of Command dice and used it to ambush the other Sherman with my Panzerschreck team.

But they missed (a double 1)!!!

The paratroopers and Shermans were now chewing up my Germans and things went from bad to worse for the Germans.

Luckily I was able to repeat the Panzerschreck ambush. This time with success. The Sherman which had been relentlessly shelling my troops was out of the fight.

This wasn't enough to turn the tide however. I had to withdraw the remnants of a squad behind a dune in order to prevent them breaking. The paratroopers quickly moved to the other side of the dune. With their superior numbers they threathened to close assault and wipe out the reduced German squad. So I decided to flee.

This sealed the fate of the German squad. The paratroopers marched and fired over the dune, wiping out the German squad, which couldn't get away fast enough.

The German force morale was reduced to zero. Victory for the Allies!