Rules of Engagement 19th Century - Another Shootout in a 'Coffeyville-scenario'

Rules of engagement in the West

I've made a home brewed house rules called 'Rules of Engagement for Wargaming' based on my experience by playing a lot of other free downloadable wargame rules for toy soldiers, which my own rules also are heavily influenced by. Now I wanted to tweak my home brewed house rules further to see if they could be adapted for other periods as well. As I'm found of westerns and 'Old West'-gaming, I've tried to make my rules more '19th century friendly'.

So I decided to replay the same scenario as I played with Thor Sheil's OMOG - One Man, One Gun 19c and my own homebrewed 'Once Upon a Dice in the West' in an Old West scenario, based upon Dalton gang's robbery i Coffeyville in 1892; An Outlaw gang had to tie their horses slightly away from the bank, while a couple of the gang-members looks after them when the other members robb the bank. Can they robb the bank, get back to their horses and leave the town without getting caught??

The bank is further down the street from where the outlaws placed their horses

The 'Forces'

Playing the same scenario, I decided to use the same forces; 2 members of the gang are watching their horses while 4 gang members has gone for the bank. These have been recognized on their way to the bank, so the town sheriff and 2 of his deputies are alerted and also on their way to the bank. 4 citizens have armed them self, and are ready to try to stop the robbers from stealing their savings. A small Army-detachment of 2 is also located in the outskirts of the town. My rules are not entirely based upon 'units', but on 'characters' as well, so I treated the Sheriffs deputies and the Army-detachment as 2-men units, and all the others as single characters. The Sheriff and one of the robbers I made 'elite characters' to give them the skills of professional gunfighters.

The Game

The robbers were totally ruthless an very offensive when leaving the bank, shooting in all directions...

...and quickly gained the initiative in the shootout. Managing to wound the Sheriff and one of his deputies, the robbers got an advantage and could start on their 'retreat' towards their horses and to the escape.

When exchanging fire with the ruthless robbers, the townsfolk realized that they lacked the necessary marksmanship, and after a failed morale test the citizen in the house on the other side of the street just had to retreat inside and shut the door. He didn't come out again before the robbers was about to leave the town and it was 'safer'. 

One of the robbers who were guarding their horses, rode quickly down the street towards the gunfight to cover his fellows retreat. - And succeeded. He was taken out when the law regained the initiative, shot in the back when trying to catch up with the other fleeing robbers later on. But then they were by their horses already.

3 of the robbers managed to ride away with the loot while 'Pedro' gave them necessary cover to do so.

Due to the townsfolk's poor marksmanship they didn't manage to hit him behind that wall, but they proved them self better in fistfight instead and was able to knock the last robber out so the deputies could arrest him. The rest of the gang had already left the town with the loot. I suppose the Sheriff will have to arrange a posse when he can find members with better marksman skills.

The Conclusion

This game lasted about the same time as a 'good western movie' and 12 turns. I think using so many individual characters made the game longer, and it would have been more fastplay with smaller 'units' instead.

I think the rules are so general that they will easily fit other conflicts in the 19th century as well, either being Napolonic, American Civil War or Colonial wars. I think they can be used for some 18th century wars as well, just omit the most modern weapons in the charts. -So I've labeled the rules as such;18th and 19th century.

There was one thing I was not quite satisfied with the core rules in the 'Rules of Engagement', which I decided to change. Off course it's more difficult to hit targets on a distance, and even harder on even longer distances. But in the core-rules of ROE it only gave a -1 penalty for targets further away than 'Long Range', meaning that on distances over 'Long Range' all different weapons would have same accuracy and hit probability. That is not so in the real-life so I've updated the the rules so this only applies for distances between Long Range and double Long Range depending on the individual weapons. For distances over twice the Long Range, the hit probability is so low anyway that I've just given a general penalty of -2.

Another thing I updated in the core-rules is that a unit that fails a morale-test and are moving back two full moves, are considered fleeing and are less likely to fire in this panic.

I provide the Rules of Engagement for Wargaming with miniatures for 18th & 19th century warfare here on my blog, so you can have a try at it as well if you'd like to. If you do, I really hope you had a good time as I did playing these rules. Please feel free to post your conflict, scenario and experiences here if you'd like to as well. 

Link: Rules og Engagement for wargaming with miniatures for 18th & 19th century warfare