For a Few Dollars More - The Storyboarder's Cut

What would the movie 'For a Few Dollars More' look like and how would the story go if the Storyboard was to be influenced and created based upon the results of a tabletop (war-) game where the scenario was based upon the original script??

 

Starring:

Our Hero:

His Competitor:

The Bad Guy:

-And the rest are just the background actors:

Directed by: 

The storyboard is directed by the ruleset 'Once Upon a Dice in the West' (3rd Edition) with some minor modifications. Being a classic spaghetti western I think the heroes needs another +1 'hero-point' for shooting and fighting H2H than just being a 'Gunfighter'. The main villain are just treated as a 'Gunfighter' though. Bad-Guys usually dies when being hit in the movies, except for the main character villain, so no wounds for 'bad guys' except for the main villain in this game. Besides I think the heroes should get to activate first in those scenes and scenarios from the movie where they actually acts first. It seems like the Good-Guys gets a lots of benefits in this game, but they are fewer and are facing a large number of outlaws. -Besides they usually does in these movies anyway.

Location: 

Dinner Tabletop Movie Ranch and False Front Town (wifey was away this week)

Screenplay: 

The game are played and the Storyboard created through several chronological small key scenes and scenarios from the original movie, where the outcome in an earlier scene/scenario will influence the next.

Music: 

By Morricone of course. Open this YT-clip in a new tab and let it play in the background on your PC for the right ambience, while reading about how I played 'For a Few Dollars More' key-scene by key-scene as long as possible and how it evolved... 

Chapter I - Mortimer's Bounty Hunting  in Tucumcari

Colonel Mortimer halts the train and did get off in Tucumcary:

Guy Callaway tries to run away...

...but Mortimer place a bullet in the horse and stops the fugitive. 

Callaway starts shooting and actually mange to daze Mortimer for rest of the turn...

...-but as Mortimer activates first in next turn, he just finish Callaway off. A success for Mortimer except for he got dazed and almost hit by the murderer.

Chapter II - Manco's Bounty Hunting in White Rock

Meanwhile Manco are in White Rock looking for Baby (Red) Cavanagh...

-And finds him in the local saloon. This game doesen't go Cavanagh's way...

...and they get into a fistfight for 2 turns.

When our hero gets the upper hand in the fight, he are interrupted by friends of Cavanaugh.

Manco turns and fierce fanning his gun against the newly arrived gunmen...

...hitting just 2 of them. The last of them shot back at Manco...

...and missed (!). This gave Manco an opportunity to finally finnish him off as he activated first the next turn.  

Cavanagh tries to regain the initiative and fire his gun at Manco...

...and misses. Manco did not. This was a success for Manco, but as he didn't hit with all his shots he got fired upon twice. Luckily they missed.

Chapter III - Indio's escape

Meanwhile a rescue party approaches the jail to free their leader, Indio...

The first guard are taken by surprise...

To sneak upon the second prison-guard, the badguys tries to divert him, but he must have heard them coming and gets into a hand to hand fight with one og the badguys and manage to kill him...

The strength is in the number, and the diversion shoots the prison-guard in the back.

Finally finding Indio in his prison-cell.

They really need to fight their wayout of the jail again.

When almost outside of the jail Indio's gang are caught in a firefight with 3 guards, and the guards manage to kill another member of Indio's gang.

But the Villains finally manage to finish of the rest of the guards. They let one of them live as a witness. The freeing was successful, but the gang lost two members doing so.

Chapter IV - Indio's revenge

Indio feels courageous and seeks revenge on the bounty hunter who got him arrested.

Famous last words (!) Tomaso actually manage to draw and hit first and kills Indio in the duel initiated by Indio in the first place.

This surprises the rest of Indio's gang, and off course they opens fire and shoots Tomaso on the spot.

End Credits:

With the suggested storyboard, this version of For a Few Dollars More would be finished after just 27 minutes on the silver screen. Our main villain got killed before he managed to tell the rest of his gang his master plan involving the bank of El Paso, so there would be no further backstory to this film. And there would be no reason left for the bounty hunters to hunt him down either.

-And that's too bad actually as there were scenes that never got realized in this 'storyboard'. Personally I would liked to have played the now deleted scenes where Manco fights 3 members of the gang before the planned robbery of the bank in Santa Cruz, where Mortimer duells Wild and the final scene we never got to see in this cut:

On the other hand, I don't think this version of the movie would have been the success Sergio Leone actually made with his own storyboard. But this game was good fun game though. 

Ostpommern Summer of 1944 - The Dawn of the Red Offensive

When doing some research on a wagon I plan to modify for my G-scale Heeresfeldbahn later this year, it came to my knowledge that the German Heeresfeldbahns did not only operate trains close to the front, but that they probably also operated trains on the more domestic Pommerschen Landesbahnen in the province of Pomerania. The wagon I was doing some 'studies' on was also used on the Pomeranian State Railway (PKB), and eventually there will be a future blogpost update on the model.

So Wehrmacht was operating military trains on German regular narrow gauge railways between towns and villages in the province of Pomerania until the end of the war. Actually I've seen disbanded and disused tracks from this railways during visits to northern Poland. The German service on these narrow gauge railways seized when the area was occupied by Soviet forces in February/March 1945 after the East Pomeranian offensive.

What did the situation look like in East Pomerania in the the period before the offensive was launched?
I have no idea, but I expect that the military railway traffic was increased on the civilian narrow gauge lines to start the preparation to meet the advancing Soviet forces from the east. The defensive line Pomeranian Wall/ Pommer Wall/ Pommernlinie was renovated in the summer of 1944. They didn't manage to draft enough personell to fully man it, so it could be an efficient barrier against the upcoming offensive though.

Pomerania was generally considered to be a 'safe area' in Germany for a long time, but after 1943 it was targeted by allied bombing raids.

The railway lines were still operating regular services for both passenger and goods transports...

...but the military traffic got priority.

The military presence must have been evident. 

At the same time, troop-trains was coming from East and the other side of river Oder. With hospital-wagons...

No mass evacuation was ordered by the Gauleiter from the province of Pomerania (before it was too late), but some residents chose to 'visit'  family in other parts of Germany when the hospital-trains from the east startet to show up and revealed what to expect from the coming offensive. Therefore regular passenger service would run as long as possible.

Räder müssen rollen für den Sieg, but it was too late to change the tide of war. The Soviet offensive would eventually hit Ostpommern and open the way to Berlin  for the Red Army. 

This was a slightly different 'day out'-report than I use to write them. The weather was nice and my friend and fellow MRC-member Gylmer invited to a running session on his very German-looking and scenic garden railway. -Actually this was the 4th garden-meeting in just 11 days hosted by members of our MRC, so our club is a very active one. With so many running sessions over a such a short time I thought there was an occasion to do a little different report this time. 

Thank you very much for your invitation and hospitality, Gylmer. Luckily one of those military supplies did not fall in Russian hands, as it were ment for you:

The weather forecast does not look so good for the coming days or week, so there should be time to catch upon some indoor activities and wargaming again soon. Please follow this blog for coming updates.

A July Workbench update - Concluding some miniatures, and starting some new ones

I'm really impressed when I see fellow bloggers and wargamers just paints a lot of miniatures in a short time. Due to nice weather and 3 garden railway running sessions within a week, my recent painting projects has actually taken quite long time to finish. Here follows some updates on my Airfix Cowboy knock-off since my last blog-post. Here they have finally got their basic colors. I've taken 'liberties' with the painting scheme, but perhaps you can see where I got the inspiration from?

I think they looks good this way, but I prefer to give them a 'dirty - brown wash', and bring out the details with drybrushing in lighter colors. The details were not so crisp on these knock offs. I also added sand to the bases.

Then they're sealed with another coat of ModPodge as this will give them a though surface which alow handling during games without the paint coming off again.

Even if the ModPodge is flat I prefer to give my miniatures an even more 'dead flat' looking, so I give them an overspray of flat varnish.

When the final layer of flat varnish dries, I think they are about done...

Click on image for larger photo

I think these miniatures are ready to see some action on the tabletop now. I like my home brewed 'Wild West' rules, but perhaps any of you recommend some other free, fast and easy to play 'Old west' rules as well?

More Knock-offs

A while ago I fond some really cheap Army Men in my local toy store. In the blogpost I asked if someone knew the origin of these knock-offs? - I found an answer to that on an excellent (new?) Army Men website and blog called Toy Soldier Central. The 54mm soldiers which looked like WW2 paratroopers, was originally knock-offs of Forces of Valor's WW2 82nd Airborne miniatures:

This photo is from Toy Soldier Central 

This made me think if the more modern Army Men in the same bag perhaps was Forces of Valor knock-offs as well, and probably they are:

So, what's next?

I've had a bucket of 'The Force' 'Starship Troopers'-looking  space marines for years and haven't quite decided what to use them for. Now I've finally got around to start painting a handful of them for an upcoming wargame.  I really hope that I'll not use 'a billion years' to paint these miniatures as well. 

I don't think a bayonet is needed on a blaster rifle, so I removed it. I also added visors to their helmets.

Another thing hitting the workbench this month is this 3D-printed model:

Even if they are printed as 'kits', the fit are usually far from perfect. In this case sanding was needed...

...followed by a good portion of filler.

I'm excited to see how this turns out.

Now I'm eager to use my recently finished 'Cowboys' in a game soon. Please stay tuned for updates.

How to spend a sunny Sunday?

In Norway summers are short and intense, so hot and sunny weather really invites to outdoor activities. -Like when a friend on short notice invited to 'coffee & trains' (...and waffles) in his garden today.

I brought both my German Heeresfeldbahn...

...and British W^D trains

My other friends brought their new acquisitions and somewhat more colorful trains:

Today's last train on the timetable with a 'load' for the host

When coming home and placing my trains away, I could tell that my youngest son had 'played' with my Winter Pizza:

Looks like there will be time for some workbench-projects tonight as well...