So I’ve been writing some rules for skirmish Wild West battles.

Why? Well, because I wanted to paint some cowboys and I wasn’t quite pleased with the games I was finding. After a while, I realized… I could just write my own rules. Then I came up with an activation system I loved using cards to effectively bid on every action.

See, I have this dumb problem with skirmish rules: I want them to be simple. Really simple. I want a side game that I can remember, but which inspires difficult decisions and fun battles.

In looking for cowboy rulesets, I realized almost every ruleset could be your main game. They want to be your main game. Even the ones that were simple still felt clunky to me. I wanted fast, lethal, and simple.

Enter my Unnamed Cowboy Project. The name is in Flux. At the moment, I like the title of those post the most.

The system runs off of a standard deck of cards (uninspired, I know). Each time you activate a model, you play a card from your hand. Your opponent can interrupt and shoot you if they play a higher valued card.

Then you can play an even higher value card to negate their interruption. It goes back and forth until one player wins and gets to shoot, then play resumes. You can’t refresh your hand until both you and your opponent are out of cards, ending the turn.

The end result is a game that encourages back and forth risk taking. You could use three cards to secure this shot, but then your opponent has an activation advantage on you.

Add to this that you can subsequently activate any miniature inside the same turn, so long as your activating cards increase sequentially. This encourages you to use low cards early, despite the risk of interruption.

Boom. Fairly simple mechanic to play, but allows for complex decision making and interaction. This is my ideal.

Every match I’ve played so far has been great. I’m ironing out the details of guns, ranges, etc as well as board size, but the core activation mechanics are set and solid.

More info and the ruleset itself will be released here in the future. It will be free and should be 4 pages or less. Happy shootin’, boys.