15mm - A Few Cowboys more

 

A fistful of 15mm cowboys and girls ready for action

Pinewood Creek Street Furniture

 

Some of the extra terrain for the Pinewood Creek.

15mm - First Pinewood Creek Denizens

 

I've had this selection painted for a while in preparation of project progress, but now that I've buildings finished I set about changing the base colours and here they are!

15mm Wild West Town - Pinewood Creek

 

This has been hanging around for a while, and as I was delving in ,y 15mm corner for my Aquans it struck me that I should really get my bare Wild West buildings painted to play with.

I've Got Worms!

 

After that brief break it's back to the Critters - this time some Worms.

Building WIP

 A quick WIP post.

After being away on Holiday to the lovely North Wales coast, this last week hasn't seen me n the mood for painting, but I have been doing some easier focus work in the hobby shed in the form of putting together some mdf buildings that have been sitting around for a while.

Desperate-ados

 

At the moment, along with a few new figures, I've started trying to finish off some of the miniatures that have been sitting about the paint table half done. This pairing fits into the second category, moping around for longer than I can think of. Definitely a table top "need to get these off the desk" quality but those big hats will hide many sins when on the playing surface (just couldn't get that Bandits beard right!) and will make a welcome addition to the pose options. 

Dead Man's Hand : Bloodbath @

We had meant to be playing the next Act in our Dead Man's Hand Campaign last Monday, but it was postponed due to dreaded Lurgy. MacSver had a casual game instead, playing one of the "All in!" scenarios. This was basically a grand battle with the added complication that some of the innocent townsfolk had barricaded themselves in the buildings. This meant that at test had to be made to enter a building, and a figure could even be shot at by the occupant !

Dead Man's Hand Campaign Starts

Monday at the Falkirk District Wargames Club saw four of us start a Dead Man's Hand Campaign using the official "Legend of..." expansion. 

We have my Outlaw gang, Lawmen, Seventh Cavalry and Bandits. 

First game up for me was against MacSver's Lawmen playing the "For a Few Models More" act. 

Pretty familiar ground we thought, but the tweaks for "Legend..." brought a good bit of confusion to the gang compositions, leading us to forget special rules and field incorrect line-up, to my (unintentional)  ultimate advantage I must say. I have offered to replay, but MacSver has set the standard for friendly casual play to say the we'll keep the end results and put them down to learning. 

Everything will hopefully be smoother for round 2 in a few weeks time. In the meantime I really need to get some more figures painted up! 

No Paint City Construction

Update on my new pieces for a Wild West town. After showing you the Mine Wheelhouse building  I became a bit enthusiastic and ordered up the Burlesque and Shacks kits from TT Combat as well, but more of those later.

The Baron's Defiled Gang

As mentioned on my "returning" post, my plans for the year were slightly bushwacked by "The Curse of Dead Man's Hand". I've actually looked round the interweb a few times speculatively trying to seek out undead cowboy miniatures with little luck, so I knew I had to jump when this came out, picking up the biggest gang of undead (the pre-order scheme even gave me an extra Cursed Reverend).

One problem I did have though, especially after reading through the "Curse of..." rules, was that I wanted to get playing with the new gang as soon as possible, but with quite a few other projects on the go I knew I'd be pushed to get them painted any time soon with the proposed Zombie paint scheme. So I've done a quick "Revenging Spirits" paint scheme for the majority and only painted properly the three character pieces, the armoured "Juggernaught", Witch and of course Baron himself.

Actually this is a lie, as after starting I thought the ideal foe would be the Black Scorpion Tombstone Reverend that was sitting bare in the pile. With his beard and long coat he happens to almost fit in with the extra Cursed Reverend. Don't you just love serendipity?

Wild West Work

Look like I've some building to be getting on with! A fine addition to my Wild West mining setup. It'll get painted up at the same time as my TT Combat W.W. town.

Outlaw Gang

DMH Stranger second from right

There are a lot of low brims in this set.

At long last my first Wild West figures are complete. 9 are from Black Scorpion Miniatures "Tombstone" set and one is the resin "Stranger" from the Dead Man's Hand \ Wargames Illustrated Civilians set (the rest obviously sitting waiting in their box). I keep hearing people on forums going on about how huge the Black Scorpion figures are, but they don't look too out of place with the DMH figure (or the others I have).

Basing was a bit of a challenge. I was using Vallejo Desert Paste for the first time. I have their Black Lava paste which is great, but the desert sand one is much finer, more liquid.and quite (too!) bright. In the end (and this is more for my future reference than any recommendation) I baes the base with GW Desert Sand, brushed the paste on and gave it a dilute wash of Vallejo Sepia. Then a patchy application of diluted Army Painter Dark tone was applied, a dry brush of a couple of patches mid grey and then dry brushed the entire base with Army Painter Skeleton Bone.

It is good to have my own figures to play Western games with now. I still have the citizens, some Mexican Bandito's and some Cowboy Orc's in the pile, but they will have to wait their turn.

As a side note, this group goes to show how depressing parts of my year has been. They are my first painted figures since the end of April and first 28mm figures of 2015. Hopefully next year allows for more energy and opportunity!

Gunfight at the Battleshed Coral

This week I had the pleasure of attending MacSver's Battleshed with an additional first time visitor in the form of Jimboba from Warchest, who had decided to take a break from updating his excellent solo wargaming\collecting\painting blog to travel down the road and play a game of Dead Man's Hand.

No great scenario, just a 3-way shootout (Lawmen, Outlaws and Desperados) with the vague (and pretty much ignored) objective of the central town gallows. Having fun and introducing Jimboba to the game were the main objectives of the evening, and I think they were achieved all round. Jimboba didn't even grumble about it not being 15mm (too often).

3 Outlaws prepare to fire out the windows
at an exposed Lawman.

Outlaws desperately try to defend the Undertaker's
from the advancing line of the Sheriff's man.

"Grandpaw", the oldest Desperado in town, shows his
experience by sneaking up to the saloon bar doors and
blasting the outlaw within with his shotgun. Ouch!.

DMH - A Three Way Draw

At the Battleground Livingston club last Saturday I had a very enjoyable three-way game of Dead Man's Hand. As you may be able to tell from the silence, I've been struggling to reach the blog keyboard over the last few days, but fortunately MacSver was one of the players and has chronicled his version of events on his blog. So I'll gratefully (and lazily) pass you over to him....(click on the link or picture)

Battleshed Diaries: Careful as a naked man climbin barbed wire

DMH - Shootout at the Old Mine

MacSver was down again again this week for the first game of Dead Man's Hand at the hobby shed. He has corners the Western Town with his "Obsession" town board, my shoot-outs are in the mountains when the gold is in "them thar hills!".

As we've not played for quite few months, the scenario was a straight forward gun fight with REP 15 gangs. MacSver went for quality with his familiar Lawmen : Sheriff, Marshal and 2 Deputies(1 shotgun, 1 repeater), where as I decided to test out the effect of more quantity with the Outlaws: Boss, 4 Dudes (3 pistols, 1 repeater), 1 Varmint (shotgun).

With the mine set up as above, the Outlaws cam in from the bottom left corner, an the Lawman moved in to handle them form the top right.

Industrial Wild West Part 6 - Extras & Final Pictures

Nearly there now.

The ramps are still outstanding. A simple bit of construction and bare wood paint job as the other pieces. I had thought about taking the foot off one of the sections to bridge a river I have (keeping the bridge surface level) but decided it was more flexible as it came. If I really want to I can snip away in the future.

The whole kit comes with various extra bits'n'bobs but the only ones that I made up were the crates. I glued one of the lids askew to remind use that they are crates not old Terrahawks Cubes.

All done, so here is a hastily arranged set (with not ground sheet!) to show coverage, etc. I embarrassingly don't have a painted cowboy yet, hence the unwelcome colonial intervention.

The entire industrial zone isn't finished yet. I still have a sawmill to construct and some workers tents to craft, but this is the Troll Trader set. I have to say it was great fun to do.

Industrial Wild West Part 5 - Water Wheel System

Time to give my water works some attention (I'm not getting an younger!)

The main challenge with the water wheel is the painting. All sides are visible, but not very accessible once built, so it was a double sides paint job before construction, using the same bare wood technique as the mine entrances.

Once painted the construction could begin. Pretty straight forward as long as you notice the there are 2 different sizes of parts to form the internals of the wheel. The joining of the two halves is a bit of a fiddle with so many tabs looks to be housed, but manageable.

The finished construction.

Now the waterway that feeds the wheel has always looks a bit flat and 2-D for me so I thought I'd build up the sides to stop the water running out. Out came the lolly sticks and coffee stirrers.

Strangely the water section of the piece is laser cur all the way through with only 4 small tabs to hold it on. I don't think it is maens to come off at all (no instructions remember) so I added a couple of stirrers to the underside to cover the gap. It also adds to the constructed look to the piece which is good.

Coffee stirrers to the flat and lolly sticks to hold the water in. I didn't run the "planks" as a single piece down the length to give a more constructed feel again. The small joining board halfway down the side is really only cosmetic, but helps with the strength. The whole thing was then painted as the wheel above.

All this extra work had made the already narrow based scenery more top heavy, so I glued it to a wider piece of plastic. nice and steady now.

For the water I mixed a little blue paint with PVA and gave it a couple of coats. Before anyone starts to make a fuss, water is blue, OK. Ask any small child!;)

Industrial Wild West Part 4 - Track and Carts

The main attraction of this set has to be the Mine Carts and Track. These are the pieces that shout "Industry" here. I didn't expect them to take quite so long however...(hence the delay in update)

There are quite a few track pieces included in the kit split up in the ground boards and separate rails to go on top. The wooden sections were painted just as the Mine Entrances. I flipped over a couple of the tight turns to make sure that all my tracks didn't have to turn to the left.

I only put the final "sandy" dry brush on the outside of the tracks to leave a darker, "well trod" section down the middle.

The rails were seperately painted black and brushed with gunbolt metal before being glued to the bases.

Once dry I gave the rails a weak wash of rust and a light drybrush of chainmail. These tracks will be in use, so not completely rusted over.

The cart pieces are over quite a few sheets, so I thought it more useful to lay the required components out as above.

The carts go together nicely, but it takes a couple of drying time breaks to allow the undercarraige and the wheels to become attached. The wheels are just flat surfaces gluing onto the assembly so its best to have the cart on its side and attach one side then, once dry, the other.

I also decided to sand down the lips the cart side.

I've read many times in painting articles how painters use salt crystals to add a chipped paint effect to their vehicles, etc. This seemed like a good opportunity to try it out for myself. The carts were undercoated brown and then gunbolt metal. They were then sprayed with hair spray, sea salt crystals stuck on, and another covering of the hair spray (i found the crystals fell off without this second spray).

The carts were then painted using the same 3 base colour technique as the office building and a weak brown wash. I used yellow as the base to match in with the building. Once all that wash dry I brushed off the salt crystals to expose the metal surface underneath.

I then mixed up some weak rust mix, dotted it under the chipped areas and smudged it down the cart side with my finger. Sometimes a couple of applications looked best. I also did this on the cart rims and gave a dry brush of chainmail for recently exposed areas.

The final touch was some white glue soaked tissue paper in the bottoms of the carts and glue over that a couple of layers of Javis Coal scatter that I had. This was given a quick dry brush of brown (we're not mining coal)

Not that I have a picture of it, but for those that are curious the cart wheels snugly straddle the rails so they won't be falling off during gaming.

Industrial Wild West Part 3 - Mine Entrances

Next up in the build are the 2 Mine Entrances. These come from sheets 4 & 8 of the kit.

These were given a rough base coat of Burnt Umber. As you can see there is some of the MDF still showing through. These shacks should be looking very worn as far as I'm concerned.

As per the set technique, here is the result after the 3 lighter shades have been added. Note that there are a couple of support pieces for the doors in this picture, as looking at the website photo I realised I'd missed them out at the start. They are on Sheets 1 & 5.

Continuing down the technique list, I've assembled the huts and given them a weak wash of black and brown. After a bit of a debate I decided to take the doors off as well (before construction). The felt hinges worked well in the Prospectors hut and although I don't plan to have the interior accessible to figures, having the flexibility to have the entrance open for mining carts or just shut was better.

The finished Entrance Shacks. All pieces were drybrushed with a mixed up dusty colour again and the doors attached.

And here they are again alongside the Prospectors Office.