Fistful of Lead: Gangsters

In early September, Bruce put on a game of Fistful of Lead with his 28mm gangsters. His table was amazing.

The coppers had learned Mr. Big was going to move out a large shipment of illicit hooch and were determined to send him a message. Mr. Big learned of the raid and decided to use it as a chance to send the coppers a message of his own.

The coppers set up on the far side of the table while the gangsters set up anywhere to about the halfway mark (roughly the bridge in the shot above). 

There was an early rush up the table and two cops went down. That pushed play (other than sniping) out to the wings. The right-hand wing saw some indeterminant gunplay and the cops beat a retreat.

 

The majority of the cops rushed the left wing, eventually pushing back the gangsters and searching one of the six potential spots where the booze was hidden.

The gangsters started to shift their remaining troops to stop this push. Granny with the shotty was first on the scene, wounding and suppressing cops and even KOing one in a fist fight.

In the end, the coppers, who had a very difficult tactical situation, just didn't have the weight to finish the job. Bruce thought maybe increasing the number or possibly the quality of the cops might have evened things up, which makes sense. Another option could be to have most of the gangster start on the boat so they would have to move into position, rather than just snipe under cover.

A different tactical approach might have been to have the cops set up (which was done in secret) to rush the left side of the board, which would have caught the gangster short on manpower, overwhelm them and hope for some lucky searching. Hard to say if that would have been effective.

Overall, the game was a ton of fun with a good narrative developing from the card play and tough decisions to make on the table.