Wild West terrain, figures and game aids

 I am continuing to have fun with TFL's What a Cowboy.  I've been adding to my collection to expand my opportunities for gaming.

First up, I realised that I need more scatter terrain to make the game interesting.  More terrain means that players will need to put more effort into spotting enemies and also means more difficult terrain to slow down movement.  I made these fence pieces from thin dowels glued to tongue depressors.  Pup Figures 'vaquero americano' added for scale.

Each section is 6" in length, a very convenient size for planning scenarios!

WaC has of course encouraged me to look at the lead mountain and finish up some long-neglected figures!  Three on the left are from Artizan Designs, and the two on the right are Pulp Figures.  I had fun making the ponchos a bit more interesting.

These two Pulp Figures are gringo mercenaries, roughly from the time of Pancho Villa - a bit later than the late 19th Century of most Westerns, so the Lewis LMG and the broomhandle Mauser are somewhat more advanced weaponry than is typically found in a wild west game.  I think the bloke on the right looks a bit like Omar Sharif!

Two of the three Artizan Designs figures are from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly set.  Tuco is already elsewhere in my collection - no doubt he'll show up in a future game.

Finally, here are some ammunition markers that I prepared to keep track of revolver ammo.  I wanted to have something other than dice to track bullets, as it is far to easy to pick up and roll a die if it is on the table!  Unfortunately, in our game last night I realised an error:  I didn't include a 'zero' measurement for when all bullets have been fired!  Oh, well, live and learn :^)

Their use is quite simple.  Just drop it on the profile sheet in the 'ammo' box, and track with the arrow.

Red Army Support Weapons

 A couple years back, I tried to unload my WWII Red Army onto Doug.  He recently returned the army to me, as he isn't particularly interested in WWII, but happily took my army of Tsar Alexander I in its place!  Getting the Red Army back has inspired me to finally finish painting the infantry support weapons, including Maxim machine guns and 50 mm and 82 mm mortars.

These models are, like most of the Red Army I painted back in 2019, are from Plastic Soldier Company.  As I noted when I first purchased them, the figures are very low price compared to other 28 mm figures, but are still nicely sculpted.

The Maxim machine guns look kinda small compared to MMGs from other manufacturers.  The Maxim gun is one of those iconic weapons that are so closely tied to a particular army - still in use today more than a century after its introduction.

The box set includes two pairs of soldiers pulling the MG being moved using its wheeled carriage.

Here are the two pairs of mortars, the 50 mm PM-41 light mortar and the 82 mm PM-37 medium mortar.  The kneeling crewmen aren't holding the mortar bombs quite high enough to drop them into the mortar, but I can forgive them; maybe the crewmen are just in the process of lifting the bombs.  ;^)

To finish up the crews, here are 5 assorted crewmen.  Since I'm unlikely to be using all the MGs and mortars at the same time, these blokes will be assigned to crew weapons as needed!

So my Red Army finally has some of the basic infantry support weapons one would expect them to have.