Teaching my students Fistful of Lead

One of the many, many reasons I moved back to Canberra was to get bit of work/life balance back in my life, especially after years up in the tropics working long hours, away from my family for lengthy periods...

I'm a High School teacher by profession, and it's a profession I left a number of years ago to pursue other things. On my return to Canberra I found teaching work fairly easy, due to the fact that there's a huge shortfall of experienced teachers in the sector. It's a tough & challenging job, but I am am enjoying it at the moment.

We run a popular lunchtime D&D club at my school, and I'm one of the teachers overseeing it. It's incredibly popular, with well over 50 kids coming up to the classrooms, rolling their D20s and doing their thing.

A good opportunity to run a lightning quick introduction to Fistful of Lead for a few of my Year 7 students. There were two of my students that were a bit curious about wargaming, so I told them to come along and bring a mate.

I decided Fistful of Lead would be the perfect introduction. It's scalable, easy to learn to teach, and great for larger multiplayer games. I brought my old green cloth, a box of terrain, some counters & dice, and a box of figures. It had to be a quick & simple set up and take down, as time was limited.

It was a four-player game, the four students would duke it out while I adjudicated. It was very stripped down, bare-bones style game, as we only had our 40 minutes lunchtime to play. 

To summarise:

*Each player had two figures - no special weapons, just shooting & hand to hand combat

*Card draws for player activation as per usual, but only vanilla - no special cards because I just didn't have the time to explain every single rule

* Move ranges with the tape measure

* No shooting ranges - all weapons were in range

*Trees blocked line of sight

*Only light cover for terrain -1 to shoot

*Students roll for wounds, and we kept the critical hit roll

*We used the shock counters & the effects of shock on movement & fire

*We used the stoppage rules, but the players were warned that time was tight, and if a player got a stoppage, they'd be best to run the gauntlet and go toe-to-toe in close combat.

The Scenario.

The Soldiers had to be get to the house first - without dying - and search for the hidden gold. On a D10 roll of 8, they would find the gold and win the game. Of course they could stop, smell the roses, and try and double tap the opposition into oblivion if they wished, but if they got to the house first & found it, they'd win. 

Simple & straight forward.

And would you guess it? A bunch of Year 7 kids... what did they just want to do? slot each other. On almost every activation. 

'I'm gonna shoot at...'

Poor young, H- was the first to drop. A head shot..then a quick turn later, another. Oops, I forgot how brutal Fistful of Lead can be.

It was a teachable moment. 'Use cover, if you've got it.'

The lads were cacking themselves and giving each other heaps of stick, just having a good old time. 

Well the game went on for a few more rounds, with a few more dead & dying. Only two players managed to reach the house. One player searched one his activation, and rolled badly.

Leaving good old B_, the player they'd all ganged up on, blasting away at him, killing off one of his henchmen and giving two wounds on his sole survivor.

B's last card, stand up, search the house, roll a 9!

Then the bell went. 

Perfect timing, off to class.

Of course, they all want to play again, and heaps of students and teachers wandered by to see what all the fuss was about.