Pulp Alley AAR - On the Trail of the Despicable Debutante

This week's Pulp Alley game was a learning game at a new local store called Round the Table, a nice little spot that touts itself as a gamer pub and offers cold beverages, locally farmed ice cream and even beer along with deals with the pizza place in the strip mall to deliver orders placed in the store.

As this was a learning game, I didn't bog down too much on lots of story and theme and the terrain was a pretty add-hock arrangements of ruins and jungle terrain. There were several areas of perilous terrain marked by terrain mounted on round bases. The scenario was a trail of clues. The leagues involved were my daughter's Mystery Ranch versus my Countess Velasco league. The two leagues are pretty evenly matched, both including multiple sidekicks and lesser members.

The story in this scenario picks up with the Mystery family having tracked the Countess and her minions to the jungles of South America. We played it as a Trail of Clues scenario with each league is trying to locate the truck, following a trail of supplies...

Opening moves saw both league moving toward their starting plot points with little in the way of direct action against one another. Once the second minor plots points were revealed, they moved into more direct conflict with one another with more than just Fortune Cards being played.

As Ma and Pa Mystery moved toward the collection of barrels after securing a crate of goods, the Countess' men moves into position among the ruins, ready to fire on them when they came into view.

Ma and Pa moved to provide cover for one another on either side of the lane between the ruins. If this was going to be a shooting match, they wanted to have something more than twigs and brush between them and a hail of bullets.

A strange sort of mystical showdown developed on the far side of the board as Eva and her pony totem moved toward the truck (major plot point now placed) and was met by Velasco's own gypsy mystic, Zelda.

Meanwhile, Ma had gotten herself tangled up with Bronzini and Theo as the two mercenaries laid down a hail of heavy caliber fire. She responded in kind with her pistol and shotgun. Holding her own, for the time being.

The countess had beat Eva to the truck and was working on getting it started as Ma finally lost the gun fight (below), going down in a hail of shattering branches and sputtering turf.

With Ma out of the way, Theo rushed forward to take hold of the goods she was carrying around. He took first one and then later would take the second minor plot point she carried.

In the end, the Countess won the day. She held all five of the plot points and sped away in the truck, laughing in that way that only a truly wicked and aloof villainess such as herself could.

Once more it was, "Arrivederci cowboys," that echoed through the trees.

We also managed to get another game started and half way through before the night was over and a second player learned how to play Pulp Alley. This time it was Dr. Mentallo and his miscreant mooks versus The Investigators, a new league i had put together just that day using a new experimental league organization.

That scenario ended after turn two but already saw some heated combat.