It's not just a number: the cards combine in thousands of ways to creature unique characters that ... [+] will help you grab the high tech goods the Traveller left behind.

Halloween is year round for a few of us, but fall is when it gets more intense for many people. The colder weather and rainy days put folks in the mood for stories about mysterious strangers, lonely ghosts and tall tales told by a campfire. One of my favorite genres of this type of tale is the weird western.

The American West is a big part of modern mythology and weird westerns mix those classic heroes and villains with elements of supernatural creatures or science-fiction twists. Everything from Supernatural to Wild, Wild West have tipped their caps to this classic genre mashup (though if you can catch the TV series instead of the 90s movie of the latter, I’d be much obliged). This article explores some of my favorite expressions of the weird west on the tabletop and I hope you add them to your rotation as we take the plunge into the dark part of the year.

3000 Scoundrels sets down a juicy premise that feels like an amazing B-movie pitch. The Traveller came to a dusty Western town with all sort of strange technology claiming they were going to build a utopia. But now they’ve up and disappeared, leaving factions within the town to squabble with each other and grab those devices for their own purposes.

The game is gorgeous with a cinematic design that winds through everything from the board to the faction mats that tell the story of the Traveller. That beauty extends to the scoundrel cards, which combine characters and jobs to create unique gang members that change every time the game hits the table. The bluff and build gameplay is compelling but its seeing a new town full of scoundrels every time players open up the box.

Cult classic TV show Firefly might be on the sci-fi end of the weird west but it still has some elements of horror, be it the strange beings known as the Reavers or the conspiracy horror linking River with the Hands of Blue. Gale Force Nine created an excellent board game that lets fans fly around the ‘Verse in the same way as their favorite crew. They’re back again with Firefly: Misbehavin’ which brings the world of the show to the popular deckbuilding genre.

Players choose one of four factions at the start of the game: Eavesdown, Niska, Serenity or the Alliance. Each of these factions suggests a play style with specialabilities awarded by faction tokens. The game ends when one player reaches an adjustable amount of victory points.

Mines are often gateways to the weird in these types of stories. Shadows Over Brimstone adapts classic dungeon crawler style play to send Western heroes into a nearby mine to battle against the forces of darkness. The ones who return get stronger, better and can go deeper into the mines.

Flying Frog Productions excels in the amount of options for this game. Different figures, bad guys from other times and places and more really customize the experience. They’ve even opened up a samurai era series of expansions for those fans who want gunslinger and ronin heroes battling back to back.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction and the American West is one of those places and periods that bears out the idea. Haunted West dives into the strange tales of the West to show just how imporant BIPOC and LGBTQ people were to the exploration of the frontier were despite film and TV covering things from a straight white angle. Once players know how weird the real west was, they can start to make the west real weird.

The book offers multiple ways to play the RPG customized to the preference of the table. Players can go for a narrative, light framework or they can get into the nitty gritty of minature combat. They also get the elements they need to make their own weird west if the one included in the book doesn’t inspire.

This game, released in 1996, inspired my love of this genre and a thirst for the historical West as well. Deadlands is a great big stewpot of alternate history, horror, action and science fiction. Simple schoolmarms stand alongside undead gunslingers, kung fu masters, steampunk gadgeteers to battle creatures unleashed by our own fear in the darkness of the West.

The tale of Deadlands has been told through multiple games and time periods, ranging from the stylish Deadlands Noir to the desperate Deadlands Hell of Earth. Deadlands Lost Colony aims to be the final chapter told on a far away planet where the themes of frontiers and fears still play strongly. The company is currently crowdfunding the next chapter, Maw of Oblivion.