Just a few short comments from last night’s Gangbusters Braunstein. We had only one combat last night. O’Bannion sent his best hit-man after Johnny Caspar.

I decided the hit-man would go after Johnny at home. After taking out the guards and setting the living room alight, the hit-man proceeded, with his Tommy gun, upstairs to catch Johnny in bed. Or, he would have had Johnny not succeeded on his observation roll and was not surprised.

Johnny, smelling smoke and hearing footsteps on the stairs, grabbed his pistol, and jumped out of bed to take a position next to the door. The hit-man kicked open the door and ripped bullets through the bed, but Johnny was not there. Instead, it was the hit-man’s chance to roll for surprise. No dice, the hit-man made his roll too so he was expecting Johnny in the room. Johnny attempted to smash the door into his opponent but since he wasn’t yet in the room, the door bounced back ineffectually.

Then the thug moved into the room to try to get a shot off at Caspar. This is where the rules really shined. One can shoot of course, but in close proximity all shooting gets major reduction in effect. It was in Caspar’s interest to stay close. The Gangbusters fistfight allows to specific sets of actions: fighting fair, fighting dirty, holding, breaking free, maneuvering, and disarming. The hit-man tried shooting again, but missed due to Caspar’s proximity. Caspar decided he needed to control that Tommy gun before he got plugged, so decided to go for a hold.

Caspar grabbed for the gun and was successful. The assassin fought to get free for a couple turns while smashing up the mirrors and furniture. All the while the killer took modest but ongoing damage while being held.

Eventually he did break free. The two faced each other across the room. Caspar dived for cover into the hall outside the room. The hit-man walked forward and made another burst from his machine gun. And, missed due to Caspar being out of sight.

Caspar got up just as the thug made it into the hallway. He had him dead to rights. The Tommy gun blasted away. But, bad luck for the hit-man, he rolled a 98 and missed despite his advantages. Now it was Caspar’s turn. Closing the distance Caspar pistol whipped the heavy. This was a good move. The pistol added significantly to the damage. This knocked the man to less than half hit points meaning he now would wrack up even more negatives to his rolls.

The next turn, the hit-man gave one last burst to empty the drum. The massive negatives from being in a fist fight and his wounds led to another miss. Caspar knocked the killer out with another pistol whip.

Caspar dumped the unconscious body of O’Bannion’s man out the bedroom window. then climbed down himself to make off with his captive in the trunk of the car.

All in all, it worked pretty darn well. Both sides had tactical decisions to make. Both could have lost. It was tense and cinematic. Simple rules, simple choices, pure bliss. My only concern was, I suppose I could have let the O’Bannion player run the his own hit-man. But then he wouldn’t have the mystery of what happened that night. So that’s a judgement call. With good players like I have, one can trust they won’t act on information their character wouldn’t know. But, the fun of playing in the fight versus the fun of having a mystery, well, that’s a tradeoff.

Gangbusters, what a game. More elegant than it’s ever been given credit. Rick Krebs hit it out of the park with this one.