The Wild West begins

At two different conventions I’ve been able to play in Wild West games. Both were cinematic masterpieces of death and carnage at 28mm. The model count was low, the dice were hot, and I was hooked. after the second experience I headed to a dealer table and bought Great Escape Games’  Dead Man’s Hand rules. The basic rules, The Legend of Dead Man’s Hand (campaign and new gangs) plus The Curse of Dead Man’s Hand (horror west, plus more gangs). At the next convention I picked up a couple of gangs. They only lasted 18  months in the paint pile, which might be a record. Well, the first gang did.

I’ve scratch built a couple of western USA buildings in preparation for gaming. all of them languish in an unpainted state. Last week I built two more buildings. I used two different materials for sheathing the buildings. One was a sheet of plastic molded to look like rubble stone construction. I bought that last year at Fall In! but i can’t remember who from. The other was basswood sheet milled to represent clapboard siding. That was from Northeastern Scale Lumber Co., and I love it. I’ll be ordering more. The 1/8 and 3/16 look great. The 1/8 is much too big for my taste, though I might use in on the sides of buildings designed to go side by side, just to use it up.

The results:

This last pair of pics is one of the first batch of buildings using balsa scribed with a board pattern.

Building #1 will be some office or store with an apartment upstairs. #2 will be a bank/assay office for the over-eager bad guy. The last will be a small shop/store.

I also painted the Law gang. Led by U.S. Marshall Matt Buford, the law has shown up in Davis County to put a stop to the open war between the mining tyrant, the powerful ranchers, and the desperadoes willing to trade shots with anyone.

The desperadoes are cleaned and waiting for bases and primer before getting the same treatment. Hats all in black of course.

Once this project gets a little further along I will do another, longer article with them all together. DMH is a fun, cinematic game where anything goes. Want to jump from roof to roof? Or crash through a window to surprise the bad guy? Go ahead and do it. Draw a steely-eyed bead and pull the trigger. And hope for the best.

Along with the Law, I finally finished another 8 empire spears for WFB.

16 to go… this unit seems never ending.

And i have.t forgotten about Dave’s terrain challenge here. This is a first look at the paint so far on the windmill.

I have black washed it, and added some green ink in spots. Next up is to drybrush the stone again, then paint the main body. And build the mill head and vanes. And paint those. Lots to do and more than two weeks gone.

 

That’s it for now. Back to the grind of brush and scalpel. Hobbying without end!

 

BG out