Concept:

Six Gun Sound is a set of miniatures skirmish rules for the American Wild West time period. The game is set from 1875 to 1885 during the height of some of the Wild West’s most well know conflicts. You can play lawmen or outlaws, or something in between. As with the Old West sometimes it was hard to tell even when they wore a badge. This game allows you to recreate the Old West and play in it however you want.

Components:

The rules can either be bought in hardcopy or PDF format from the Two Hour Wargames website. After that you need some regular 6-sided dice, a tape measure, some miniatures and terrain. Two Hour Wargames doesn’t currently sell in Wild West miniatures so you are free to use any miniatures you have in stock or wish to purchase. The same goes with terrain. Some players even prefer to use paper mini’s and terrain and you can find links to such resources on the Two Hour Wargames Yahoo group. Probably one of the greatest “components” of any Two Hour Wargames ruleset is the Yahoo Group, you can get quick answers to any rules questions in a very short time period, often with the responses come from the game designers themselves.

Gameplay:

Six Gun Sound is a skirmish ruleset, meaning one miniature represents one person in the battle. Stats for your cowboys are recorded on a piece of paper and movement is measured using a tape measure. Most of the games mechanics can be picked up from charts in the back of the book fairly quickly so that you don’t have to read excerpts from different sections of the book and slow down your game play. The mechanics for Six Gun Sound are fairly simple and after you play a couple of games you’ll find yourself needing the charts less and less.

Each person has 3 basic stats for determining how well they will be able to handle themselves in a gunfight; Reputation, Toughness and Sand. When fighters come within sight of each other they’ll take “Got a Shot” tests and fire at each other during their activations. The mechanics also include hit locations for bullets and then damage tables if a hit succeeds. There is also morale effects that might cause your fighter to “duck back” into cover or even run away. In addition, there are also melee rules and rules for mounted combat.

Characters are classified as either “Stars” or “Hands”. The Stars should represent the actual players on the table, while Hands make up everyone else. Stars have some extra options that keep them from getting killed off quickly and also help provide some background if you decide to continue a series of linked games or even a campaign. One of the things I really like about the mechanics of this game is that it allows for solo play or even cooperative play. When I play, I generally play Six Gun Sound with a friend and we play cooperatively allowing the game mechanics to play the opposition. It works surprisingly well. If you prefer to play one player versus another the game works just as smoothly.

Campaigns:

The rules also include the option for playing campaigns. You can play a campaign as any of the following professions: Cowboy, Gunfighter, Marshal, Outlaw, Ranger and Sheriff. There’s enough information to allow you to play a ten year campaign with information about places you can travel, approximations of what you’d find in a city as far as people and buildings. There are also “job” and encounter tables to keep you adventures…eventful!

Personal Thoughts:

I like this game. I’ve been playing it with my friend whenever we have time and can get together with enough time to play. It really does take two hours or less, although the first time through we took a while to get all the mechanics down (but that’s about true with any game the first time through). It can be addictive if you like skirmish gaming. Before I bought Six Gun Sound I had no cowboy miniatures, now I have 18! The rules are easy and fun, you can sit down and start a game fairly quickly as there are no point based army lists to build, just figure out how many you want on both sides and write down some stats. It’s that easy. Also, terrain is important in this game and the gunfire gets deadly quick. So be sure to throw some coke cans and books down on your table until you get around to making some of your own. Your Stars will thank you for the cover!