After some discussion, in true Skirmish Wargames chaos-style, Mike (Bell) hastily rewrote them on the train on the way from Birmingham to Reading on the morning of the game, somehow managing to reduce several volumes of rules intelligible only to him to one side of a medium sized file card. Any of you who know the sort of rules he writes will realise that this in itself was no small achievement. This feat was followed by something even more miraculous the rules actually worked, and we have used them or a derivation of them ever since in all our games.
Umpire’s Briefing For The Game
Even as Mike, as Umpire, described the scenario the other Mike [Blake] and Ian [Colwill] began to look doubtful. They had been “volunteered” to take the part of the Dalton gang, which was about to attempt to rob two banks at the same time in their home town of Coffeyville, Kansas, in October 1892. Of course Mike and Ian volunteered before the setup had been described to them. There were just one or two tiny problems to be overcome. To start with, gang leader Bob Dalton had not done his homework. All the hitch-rails around the plaza where the banks were situated had been taken down by workmen who were paving the area. Thinking as fast as his brain allowed, Bob led his men down an alley, hitching the horses at the far end one hell of a long walk from the banks. Just to add to the element of farce, the Daltons were wearing stage whiskers in a feeble effort to disguise themselves. All this did was attract attention as they went into the bank. By the time they tried to leave the whole town was up in arms. At this point the game began, or at least it did once Ian stopped muttering about rigged games and Mike stopped laughing hysterically.
The umpire then broke the good news to the players about the Control Rules. No Godlike player control of figures in this game, folks. We were going to use the dice to determine reaction, wound noaction times, whether movement and firing orders were obeyed and all sorts of other imponderables. By this time Mike had started laughing hysterically again and Ian was telling anyone who would listen that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell. Of course, Mike [Bell] knew better, he’d played this game several times before and it has always been a good one.
The Game As Played
His confidence evaporated almost immediately. Two of Ian’s characters, Grat Dalton and Texas Jack Broadwell, burst out of the Condon bank (careful how you pronounce that, chaps ) in the centre of the plaza and headed towards the entrance to the alley. Within a couple of moves they had both been hit by fire from an umpire controlled group of townsmen in a store opposite the alley entrance, a group known collectively as ‘the wall of fire’. Well, there were ten of them! To make matters worse Ian’s third character, Bill Powers, took one look at what had happened to his colleagues and refused pointblank to leave the bank. It looked like being a very short and very boring game. Nevertheless we pressed on, hoping against hope that it would improve.
Sticking to history, Mikes characters, Bob and Emmett Dalton, went out of the back door of the First National Bank, shooting down store clerk Lewis Dietz as they did so. Scratch one of my characters. Then, still sticking closely to the historical script, they headed north to 8th street and across the plaza. Here they came up behind a few of Chris Felton’s townsfolk characters. At this point the good. old control rules managed to cause chaos. Two of Chris’s characters who were supposed to be brave failed their control tests and ran for cover, while the coward passed. his test and rushed towards Emmett who only just managed to shoot him down in time. Meanwhile Bob Dalton, rapidly becoming Mike’s alterego, was walking backwards across the plaza, passing Control Test after Control Test and firing at anything that moved. Things were looking up.
Inside the Condon Bank Bill Powers was still refusing to obey Ian’s orders for him to leave. Down the stairs behind the outlaw crept another of Chris’s characters, Luther Perkins. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Perkins yelled ‘Hands up ‘. Powers turned round and at the sight of a real live outlaw Perkins fled back up the stairs just as Powers panicked and fled into the street. Well, at least he was outside at long last.
Meanwhile Grat and Texas Jack had picked themselves up and made it to the alley side of the plaza, narrowly missing being run down by several stampeding wagons whose teams had. been panicked by the firing from Les Tipping’s townsfolk figures at the south side of the plaza. Texas Jack scarpered up the alley, but Grat, acting in character, strolled southwards down the plaza looking for a victim. After a nasty exchange of fire he shot down one of Les’s characters, F D Benson, and then staggered up Death Alley after Texas Jack.
Confusion Reigns
At this point events become more than a little confused in everyone’s minds, if they hadn’t done so already. Put it down to mythmaking. The ‘wall of fire’ was living up to its name, sweeping the plaza with rifle fire. Powers was hit as he fled from the bank. By this time it was being suggested, somewhat uncharitably, that the Umpire was using loaded dice as he had managed to hit everything he had fired at with a bunch of characters who normally could not hit a tent from the inside. To make sure that everything was above board Mike [Blake] pinched one of his dice and gave him one of his. He promptly rolled 07! Somehow Powers stayed on his feet and kept going, managing to avoid being hit again by the wall of fire as he ran for the alley.
Meanwhile City Marshal Charles Connelly, controlled by Les, had run to the building where he had left his rifle that morning and gone on to the alley. Stepping into the alley near the outlaw’s horses, the marshal moved down the line releasing the animals one by one. At about the same time another of Les’s figures, liveryman John Kloehr, stepped into the alley and faced Grat as the outlaw ran for the horses. Kloehr shot down Grat and then pumped a round into Texas Jack.
Chris was still in the game. Luther Perkins had recovered his nerve after panicking in the Condon Bank and now rushed into the street, drawing fire from Les’s figures at the south end of the plaza who didn’t recognize him. That has never happened in a game before, but then lots of things were happening that had never happened before. Perkins was scared but unhurt and ran for the alley in pursuit of the bandits. As he charged up the alley he passed Bob Dalton, coming into the alley from a different direction. Bob [Mike] fired four rounds at the rapidly retreating form of young Mr. Perkins but managed to miss every time. As each shot missed Mike’s language got worse and worse, plumbing new depths of obscenity listeners didn’t know that some of the things he suggested were physically possible. Perkins finally scuttled around the corner of a barn half way up the alley and out of Bob’s line of fire. Here he stopped to catch his breath, wipe the sweat from his brow and the adrenaline from his underpants.
By now the alley was thick with gunsmoke, dice and tape measures, but Bob could see John Kloehr standing in the middle of the alley between him and the horses. Both Bob and Emmett fired, seriously wounding Kloehr. The roar Mike let out when he finally hit something after having missed Perkins four times nearly brought the convention hall to a standstill.
By now Bill Powers had reached the relative safety of a barn from which he could see the marshal untying the horses. Four times Ian ordered Powers to fire and four times he refused either he was too badly shaken by his wounds or he couldn’t bring himself to shoot a man in the back well, that’s one way to see it. Disgusted, Ian sent Powers back to join Emmett . Hearing somebody coming up behind him, Emmett spun round and fired, missing Powers by 1%. Wonderful things the control rules. At this point Ian suggested that Mike should do something which is definitely physically impossible. Another of Les’s characters now got into the action barber Carey Seaman raised his shotgun to his shoulder and blew daylight through Emmett.
The Final Moments In Death Alley
Bob was still on his feet and unhurt. He saw Grat struggling to get to his feet and ran across to help him. Playing his character to the limit, Mike ordered Bob to help Grat [Ian] to his feet. Together the two brothers staggered down Death Alley towards their horses, now released and moving towards the pair. On and on they staggered, ignoring the wall of fire from the plaza behind them. They kept going passing a barn to their left. Behind the barn Luther Perkins raised his revolver and fired, putting a bullet into Bob’s back. Although seriously wounded, Bob did not fall. He swung round, still holding onto Grat with his left arm and fired a onehanded shot at Perkins with his Winchester. When Mike rolled 01 his howl really did bring the convention hall to a standstill. Perkins crashed against the wall of the barn, coughing plastic blood.
And now the game entered into its last epic moves, a cross between the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch. The first horse thundered past the wounded brothers but Bob managed to grab the reins of the second one. Using every ounce of his strength, he began to push Grat into the saddle. As he did so Carey Seaman took careful aim and emptied his shotgun into Bob’s back, slamming him against the horse and onto his knees in the dust. Grat was pitched out of the saddle to lie beside his dying brother.
Freeze the frame as Bob is hit for the last time, fade from color to sepia, roll the credits and play out with a mournful tune on a honky tonk piano ....
Reprise
We all agreed that this was among the best games we had ever played. The control rules had worked pretty much perfectly and the ending could not have been better had we planned it that way. Almost from the start it was obvious that the Daltons were not going to win, but every step they took which brought them closer to their horses increased the tension until the last nailbiting phases. Everybody’s characters were fully involved from start to finish and there was plenty of movement and firing, albeit a lot less predictable because of the control rules. All in all I think Steve would have loved it. You never know, maybe he did.
And who won ? We didn’t even think about that until the following morning over breakfast. We decided that it was impossible to judge as the control rules had pretty much made it impossible for a player to use his figures out of character, the very goal we had been aiming for. In the end we made a decision in the timehonoredway; we rolled the percentage dice among the coffee cups, toast and marmalade - and Chris Felton won, to become 1995 Steve Curtis memorial Game Winner once again.
The Reality
So, for those readers who are interested, and who might want to try the scenario themselves, what actually took place that fateful October day? It actually didn’t turn out much better for the Daltons than it did for Mike and Ian.
Coffeyville, Kansas was a small mercantile town in the southwestern corner of the state that has found its niche in western history as being the site of the Daltons’ last robbery, the infamous double bank job of 5October 1892. At ninethirty on that Wednesday morning, the three Daltons, Grat, Emmett, and Bob, together with two other members of the gang, Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers, rode their horses down the wide main street and into the town’s plaza. Their intention was bold – bold and downright foolish with the benefit of hindsight! Nothing less than robbing both the town banks, the Condon and the First National, at the same time. Right from the start things began to go wrong. The hitching rails, which the gang had expected to find outside the banks, had indeed been temporarily removed by workmen who were busy working on the streets, and so they were forced to leave their horses somewhere and chose an alley that was more than a block away from the banks. This was a serious mistake, as will become clear.
Splitting into 2 groups the outlaws entered the 2 banks at around 9.42am; Grat, Broadwell, and Powers into the Condon Bank, and Bob and Emmett into the First National, which was no more than fifty yards away across the street. All were armed with Winchesters and handguns, and Bob, Grat, and Broadwell were wearing false whiskers. The whiskers couldn’t have been a very effective disguise, for a Coffeyville resident named Alec McKenna had already made a tentative guess at who the men were as they came out of the alley, and when they entered the banks he watch on the two banks.
Inside the Condon bank, under the guns of the outlaws, vice president C T Carpenter and two of his staff were waiting for the vault’s time lock to operate at 9.45. unfortunately for the Daltons, during this short wait McKenna looked into the bank and saw the gang’s weapons. this was enough to make him raise the alarm. Residents grabbed guns and pandemonium broke out in the sleepy streets of Coffeyville!
Disconcerted by the noise outside, Grat decided to forgot about the vault and the three outlaws rushed empty handed from the bank with guns blazing. Across the street Bob and Emmett spilled from the First National with more than $20,000. Lucius Baldwin became the first fatal casualty in the battle when he tried to intercept them and was cut down by Bob’s Winchester. Seconds later two more citizens [George W. Gubins and Charles T. Brown, partners in a shoemaking business] died as the gang made their bloody journey to the alley, which was to become a death trap.
Amazingly, all 5 members of the gang made it to their horses before the barrage from the aroused citizens was to take its toll. From then on it was a confused montage of swift and deadly gunplay. Marshal Charlie Connelly charged into the alley and traded shots with Grat, and both men fell dead. John Kloehr, a livery stable owner, killed Bob and Powers with some fast Winchester work. Emmett and Broadwell leaped into saddles, but Broadwell was cut to pieces as he thundered from the alley, and Emmett was swept from the back of his mount by shotgun blasts. The Coffeyville fight lasted about five minutes, but in that short space of time four of its citizens had been murdered, and the Dalton gang had been reduced to a shambles. Emmett survived and was later sentenced to life in the Kansas State Prison.
Re-Fighting The Action
As will be clear from the account of our re-fight and of the historical reality, playing the events as a wargame is fraught with problems. The odds are very heavily stacked against the outlaws if the citizens get their act together fast enough. But given the armament and abilities the gunmen have, they do have a clear superiority over the townsfolk in “morale” and “fire power”. It’s an odd one to do, but can be a lot of fun if approached with an acceptance that its not an evenly balanced game. Make the gang quite high factors, and the citizens low, but have plenty of them. Some suggestions are included, based on our Old West rules – adapt them to suit the abilities/factors used in whatever rules set you play with.
Some form of control rules are essential if the townsfolk are to be stopped becoming a highly organized and co-ordinated force, which they weren’t of course. They need to be made to act in a pretty much random way, and indeed getting in each others way. Playing against the game, ie the umpire can work here. The players take a Dalton gang member and try to get out of town, whilst the umpire/gamesmaster tries to stop them, generating townsfolk randomly. Friendly fire casualties are a distinct possibility – simulate this by having characters throw for reaction when other townsfolk come into sight – failure to pass the re-action test results in the chance of a shot being fired “by mistake”! Bravery is also important here – movement towards the outlaws requires citizens to pass a bravery roll, and if the outlaws head their way, another test to stay put.
To those who were there and played in the Dalton’s Raid On Coffeyville game at the Reading Wargames Club’s Annual Show [at that time called Armageddon, now re-named Colours, but still one of the premier UK conventions] in September 1985, the 10th year since Steve Curtis’s death, it was considered without doubt the game of the decade – and is still fondly remembered as probably the best game we have ever played! We used a version of the Control Rules which had made their debut in a limited form at Armageddon the previous year, and which appeared some time ago in this very magazine.
The Annual Steve Curtis Memorial Game 1995
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