Fistful of Lead Batman

A month or so back, Bruce introduced me to Fistful of Lead, a quickly set of rules for the old west. We had a very good time with the rules and I wondered if they could be adapted to low-powered superheroes. I finally got around to buying the core rule book as a pdf from Wiley Games and then pointed out some character cards (I tried to upload them, but blogger freaked out).

I use the bank robbery scenario in the book and pointed up two five-person teams. The Joker had Harlequin, some regulars, some grunts and also picked up two more regulars as a result of a team trait. He had to get five bags of loot off the far table edge. 

Opposing him were Batman and Green Arrow and some Gotham cops. These teams were pretty balanced and included a leader, a specialist, and some regulars. I adapt the jumping rules to allow leaping and climbing for the leaders and specialists that approximated what happens in comic books and away I went.

Turn One saw the Joker try to overload one side of the board while sending Harlequin to tie up Batman on the other. Green Arrow managed to wing one of the bad guys as he ran along the top of the building with a bag of dosh.

Meanwhile, down on the street, a bunch of grunts tangled with a beat cop who knocked one out. Melee is very bloody and high stakes.

Batman swooped off the water tower and then threw a beatarang at Harlequin, KOing her (pretty lucky shot, although Batman is a bad-ass character).

On turn two, the street fight continued and the Joker ran out, hoping to slip past. Green Arrow took him out with a single shot! I figured the game was over for the bad guys with both of their big players out.

Meanwhile here comes Bats through the park to bail Gotham's finest out of a brawl they were losing.

On turn three, Bats jumps in and attempts to melee three baddies.

He immediately gets his ass handed to him and is down. Suddenly, things are looking better for team Joker.

One turn four, one of Joker's henchman recovers automatically, jumps up, empties a Thompson drum into a patrol sergeant, and then scarpers with two bags of loot towards the board edge. There was no way for the good guys to catch him so Batman concentrated on bottling up the remaining baddies and hope to grind-out a 3-2 win.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, Batman recovered while Gotham coppers kick the hell out of the Joker's street punks. Over on the far right side of the board, a shocked gangster has two bags of loot and Green Arrow misses an easy shot. The gangster decides to just run for it.

On turn five, the gangster barrels out of the alley, KOs a beat cop (!), and then gets into a foot race with Batman, Both are pretty beat up, so it is slow going. Green Arrow moves to get a better angle.

Green Arrow misses, the gangster fends off a wounded Batman, and then ducks into an alley.

The game ends with him out running Batman and Team Joker getting off the table with four of the five bags of loot. I still need to roll what happened to all the casualties.

Overall, this worked well. The game was done in an hour (so you could play two games in a night easily) even with me learning the rules and having to look stuff up. Things were dramatic. The board was  bit big at 4x4 feet. But the game could also have easily accommodated two more players (each playing a team of specialists (e.g., Robin, Batgirl, Black Lightening, and Black Canary).