There are two kinds of people in this world...

...those who keep up with their blogs and those who don't. It turns out, I'm the latter.

I have managed to keep with with various bits and pieces of building and painting, but family time, results day and then preparing for the new year got in the way of keeping this old thing up to date.

I finished one major project - which I'll blog about this week - but then I've dabbled a bit before starting on something new. Or rather, old.

Here is the start of the new project:

Yes, my return to Ratwater and Old West gaming. These are the Artizan versions of Angel Eyes, Blondie and Tuco from Leone's masterpiece*. They're fabulous sculpts but alas the Lee Van Cleef was marred by a horrible miscast on one side of the face that I simply didn't see until after priming and basing. As long as you don't look too closely, it's fine. Certainly not enough to put me off buying more.

I am actually rather proud of these; they're pretty screen accurate - matching the green/brown of Clint's poncho was a cast iron sod.

I've also treated myself to some more scenery to expand the town of Ratwater so watch out for those in the near future.



*Yes, I know everyone is supposed to think Once Upon a Time In The West is the best; it self evidently isn't and it's my blog, so suck on it.

Prison Break - A Fistful of Lead AAR

Had our first game of Fistful of Lead in the town of Ratwater.

The scenario was as follows:

Al Swearingen has fallen foul of the law in the little town of Ratwater. The Marshall has locked him up wait the pleasure of Hizzonner Judge Roy Bean. But Al is not without friends, up in Dakota. And they’re comin’ to bust him out…

Al starts the game in the Marshall’s office in a cell chosen by the Lawman player. As far as possible, the Desperado player should not know which cell.

The sides were:

Rooster Cogburn’s men

Rooster and 3 lawmen. Rooster is a Gunslinger. All are armed with a pistol and rifle. One may be armed with a shotgun if preferred.

·         50 points if Al is still in custody when the Judge arrives

·         5 points for each Desperado killed.

·         10 points if Al is killed while trying to escape (i.e. outside the Marshall’s office)

The Deadwood Desperadoes

4 men – each with pistol and rifle. One may be armed with a shotgun if preferred. One of the them (probably Dan) is a Gunslinger. One has 1 stick of TNT – write down on the bottom of a rock which.

·         50 points if Al is off the table before the Judge arrives.

·         5 points for each lawman killed.

·         20 points if Rooster is killed.

If the TNT explodes next to the jail, the windows are blown out. At that point, Al becomes a character under the control of the Desperado player and can try to begin his escape.

Track turn numbers on a D12.

The Judge will arrive at the beginning of a random turn. The player controlling the Law will roll a d10 at the beginning of each turn (new deal) after the 2. On turn 3 he will arrive on a “1” or less. Turn 4, a “2” or less, etc. The game ends at the end of the turn when the Judge arrives. 

I set the town up and then my pardner - let's call him the Duke - picked sides. He decided to go for the role of the Lawmen. 

The sleepy down of Ratwater, unaware of the carnage that awaits...

I got to bring these cards out of retirement for the first time in years which was an added bonus!

The Mysterious Stranger who turned up to the help the law. The first couple of turns saw the Desperadoes head into town, shooting the deputy hiding on the roof of the Gem saloon. 

My desperados started sneaking round the side of the Marshall's office. This is the guy carrying the TNT. We're going to call him Joe Albatross. You'll see why in a bit. 

Marshall Rooster dodges across main street and takes down one of the desperadoes with a crack shot. 

Silas Adams  - the Desperado gunslinger - cracks off a shot through the window of the Marshall's office and knocks Wild Bill to the Floor.

The Stranger takes cover beside the general store and pins down the desperadoes behind the Marshall's. 

Joe Albatross is sneaking round the corner unaware that Wild Bill Hickok, recovered from the earlier shot, is lying in wait...

I just love this shot. It screams spaghetti western. 

Joe Albatross tosses the TNT  - which lands at his feet. He is knocked out by the blast - I'm assuming. He spent the rest of the game trying to recover from being Pinned, so it must've been a hell of a shock. Regardless, the cells are open and big Al makes a run for it - before being shot in the back by the Stranger.

Wild Bill then decides to shoot Al where he is lying on the floor. Luckily, Al survives. Wild Bill, we discovered, deserved to be shot in the back. He's useless. 

Meanwhile, Adams, not being the charitable sort, doesn't shrink from shooting Rooster in the back. 

Twice.

Al runs for the edge but runs out of movement here.

Luckily the next round sees the King of Spades and Al escape. The Desperadoes win!

A sadder and Wiser marshall Rooster patrols the town

Where quite a few of these got sold. 

 Basically, a great time was had by all. We enjoyed it so much, in fact that we reset and played again immediately. This time, the Judge arrived on Turn 5 so the Law won. I thoroughly recommend A Fistful of Lead - it's cinematic, entertaining and really, really easy. Although I beleive Jaye the author is a Damyankee it is very Oldhammer in attitude and its joy in narrative play.

As a postscript we finished off the evening by playing Condottiere. It's small, cheap and incredibly good. Buy it.

Welcome to Ratwater

From Preacher

And from Deadwood:

Is born my new town:

The proprietors of the General Store are named after two of my favourite poets (and also my sons' middle names). 

The posters are a mishmash of real posters from the period; one for land in Idaho, one of Stetson hats, one for the funeral parlour in Tombstone... The signage was a bit of poser. I did fancy doing something quite ornate and then reconsidered. The town of Ratwater is currently a tiny little outpost and, when and if it grows, these will become sidestreet buildings. So it seemed a little more fitting to go with the rough and ready frontier look of the towns in The Outlaw Josey Wales. 

The signs were done following the lovely simple method suggested by the marvellous Mason of Lead Adventure fame.

And Friday will see the christening of Ratwater when I play my first game of the good Baron's Fistful of Lead rules. I have Morricone cued up and I've broken out my old Deadlands deck. I am ready. 

"Skin it. Skin that smokewagon and see what happens."

Mosey into town...

No Western is complete without a town; Big Whisky, Laramie, Dodge or, of course, the grandaddy of them all, Deadwood.

Of course, funds are always tight; so how is one to establish a townstead? 4Ground is, obviously, the best possible choice but oh, my lord, it surely does cost.

I therefore sent smoke signals to the good folks at Sarissa precision; after all, a frontier town will have small buildings. And the Pony Express was as good as its reputation suggested:

A swift construction - they are very easy to slip together - and we have two false fronted buildings. 

A simple slap of watered down paint gives a look which matches quite closely with the descriptions I've been able to find that give you some idea of the colours you would find in the frontier boomtowns. 

Mr Al Swearingen is looking at opening a new business venture. 

There's a handy lookout point from the roof; just the place in which to keep watch over the showdown on the main street. 

I'm overall rather impressed with these; they're not as good as 4Ground but then they're half the price. For buildings to fill out the town they're prefectly satisfactory.

More importantly, we now have enough scenery to make a proper game of Fistful of Lead a possibility, so watch this space. 

....ah, but we're not done yet, are we? For, most important of all, a town needs a name. So what do we call this newly founded township? Any suggestions gratefully received below...

"..and Hell's comin' with me, ya hear? Hell's comin' with me!"

Continuing my current Wild West phase - and pardner, I gotta tell ya, there ain't nuthin' as restorative as watching Deadwood and paintin' some desperadoes - I've finished off the cacti:

I think they turned out well enough for something that cost me nothing. A useful bit of scatter terrain. 

I also slapped a bit of paint on those fearless lawmen out of Dodge, the Earp brothers.

A lovely set of sculpts from Artizan but with a touch more flash than I'm used to from them. But still an imposing trio I'm sure you'll agree.

Next up I have three more mercenary sonsabitches and some more scenery and this phase of the project is done. 

Posse

Hello to my new followers!

Had a bit of fun finishing off the basing of the last few cowboy miniatures so I now have a complete posse:

Of course, I say complete... I might have wandered on to Artizan Designs to treat myself. After all, there is surely no such thing as too many cowboys...

As it happens, I found one that I had forgotten about, so painted him up as Sy Tolliver from Deadwood.

This is a slightly different style to my usual paintjob, mainly caused by my trying to get a handle on the new brush. I've also noticed that the most recent sculpts I've bought have tended toward much sharper edges, lending themselves more toward the harder edge highlighting you see here. Has anyone else noticed a slight change in sculpting style over the last few years?

I also, heartened by my success with the standing stones, decided to make some scatter terrain. In this case, cacti:

Simple sculptures from super-sculpey (in one case Fimo) and a quick paint job. Quick, simple and fairly effective.

I done nearly lost my nerve, Bill...

Painting mojo is a mysterious thing. One thing I've learned from reading other people's blogs and hanging around on the LA forum is that your drive to actually get stuff painted needs to be nurtured and protected.

So imagine my disquiet when a batch of figures more or less wiped out my mojo at a stroke.

The guilty parties are these Mantic Orcs.

They were cheap enough but when I came to paint them there were some horrific blanks where detail should've been behind the legs and under the arms. Obviously this is the price you pay for cheap, one piece body plastics but dear god it was a struggle to get anything out of them.

So what now? I was disheartened and depressed and really didn't want to pick up the brush again.

A change is as good as a rest. So I did the one thing guaranteed to bring a sense of wellbeing; stuck on a western and painted some cowboys.

In this case it was starting over with the Deadwood series and finishing off the last few Black Scorpion resin miniatures I had left. 

A world of difference; full of character and detail and fun to paint. 

I'll take some proper pictures next week if I can get some decent light. 

This also means that I have more or less enough figures for a decent western skirmish. Although... is more or less actually enough? After all, I get paid tomorrow...