Background:
Miguel Ángel Caballo* was kind of, and kind of not, aptly named, for while he was certainly no angel, he did have a lot of horses.
Miguel ran a cattle ranch and bred horses on land lying at the edge of the Sonoran desert on the Mexican side of the Arizona Mexico border - a dangerous place to make a living, but he had lived there all his life, had good men to help him run it, and if any damned 'Yanqui' or 'Comanche' wanted to try and help himself well they wouldn't be trying twice..
The quality of Miguel's remuda was well know in the lands either side of the border. "Old" Tex had known about it since way back in the day, as the Rangers had sometimes had cause to get remounts from Miguel, and it was that that had given Tex the idea.
Now while horse thieves were treated harshly in the States (where branding, having your ears cut off, and hanging were all common), when the thievery took place across the border nobody cared a damn... "after all, they wuz only Mex's".... and some of those prime horses could ease Tex's current problems considerably!
* Caballo is Spanish for horse.. clever, eh? 😏
Setup:
It is night time - a small remuda (horse herd) is being held in a makeshift corral near a line shack guarded by three Mexican vaqueros (cowboys). Two of the Mexicans are in the shack sleeping, the other one is on guard, armed, and sitting on a chair on the porch at the front of the shack, overlooking the corral. Tex, Zeke and Robbie (for it is they, the Jolly Boys!) enter from any table edge.
- The Corral holds 15 horses (there are actually three models, but each one counts as 5)
- Spooked Herd - horses are nervous so loud gunfire, or sudden movement within close range, may cause them to panic:
- for any gunfire or movement within 6" of a horse(s) roll once on a D10; on a 1 or 2, they move D6 inches in a direction decided by a direction dice and are marked as Shaken (blue pin).
- the horse will recover/calm on their own if there is no firing, or movement within 6" of it, for an entire turn
- Roping & Driving: A figure in base contact can:
- Calm a horse (one action - remove blue pin)
- Put a head collar on (one action - only possible on un-shaken horses)
- Lead the horse at half movement
- Lead or drive 1–2 horses at a slow pace
- The Line Shack is a small building with a lantern on the porch and in the windows which casts light
- Ground is considered mostly good, but:
- bushes/scrub and fences don't block line of sight but provide cover
- rock outcrops, the cabin and the horses do block line of sight and also provide cover.
- It is night so there is limited visibility :
- near the shack, the lanterns provide normal visibility for a radius of 6" all around the cabin.
- outside of this light, all shooting greater than 6" range is at -1.
- To simulate the effects of surprise none of the Mexicans can move until either:
- Any one of the Jolly Boys fires, or
- Any one of the Jolly Boys get within either 6” of the cabin, or 6" of any of the Mexicans, but
-
there is a chance that the Jolly Boys might be heard anyway, so for each
of them, each time they move roll once per turn (D10); on a 1 or 2 they
are heard.
Once the Jolly Boys are discovered the alarm is triggered and they then have 15 moves to get the horses away before help arrives from the main house. They must exit from the point they entered (as that is where their own horses are tied up)
ORBAT:
The Jolly Boys:
Winning/Losing:
At either the end of turn 15, or when all of one side are dead/escaped...
- For every horse either side controls at the end of the game: 5 points
- For every wound inflicted on the other side: 1 point
- For each dead character (an additional): 1 point (ie. count all the wounds, and then add an additional one point if they're also dead)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laters, as the young people are want to say...