Gold Rush Town - MDF Madness!

 For my Old West skirmish gaming, I've had a general preference to set the games in a more of a Northern climate, rather than the dusty, spaghetti-western inspired setting where the games more often end up.  Inspired by our Epic Arctic Adventure Epicness, I have decided to make sure that I can set up a northern table for gaming. One of the key elements will be to be able to set up a gold rush town.  A feature of gold rush towns is that they are built very quickly, so there will tend to be many tents, and many improvised or quickly built shelters.  So I placed an order with Sarissa Precision for their 'Tent Town', a set of 5 buildings.  I combined these with the saloon that was already in our collection, and a Sarissa Precision cabin that we picked up at Imperial Hobbies' recent customer appreciation sale. Here is the start to the gold rush town, new buildings up front and some older items of the collection (Renedra tents and cabins from 4Ground and Pegasus Hobbies) in the rear.

An image of front street.

Compare to a historic photo!  Check out more photos at this website:  https://westernmininghistory.com/gallery/538460/historical/towns/

Two MDF cabins, which are not completely dissimilar from the Robert Service and Jack London cabins we saw in Dawson.

Jack London cabin.

Robert Service cabin.  I'll have to source some 28mm moose antlers!

The roof of the cabin is currently corrugated iron, but I've seen older photos showing a verdant, green sod roof.  I chose to do neither!

All of the buildings have removable roofs to allow figures to be placed inside.

Here are the two smaller tent buildings - they are not actually small, compared to the rest of the buildings!  These have optional signposts to put in front of the tents but I left them off thinking that they could be homes, but I've reconsidered and I'll recast them as businesses.  The only difference between the two is the extra window space for the tent on the left.

This one is similar to the two above but with a leanto at the rear.  Signage is from a free PDF provided by Sarissa.

Rear view of the general store lean-to.

I added signage from the Sarissa old west signs PDF.

These are slightly larger tents, with an internal wall to break up the internal space.

Another find from the Imperial Hobbies sale was this set of walls from Xolk.  Xolk has sadly and suddenly stopped trading, which is a pity as I rather like their product!  

These walls fit in quite well with other walls in my collection, like the walls from 4Ground MDF and Italeri/Warlord Games.

Starship Boarding Action including more Xolk terrain

 A few weeks ago I was able to host my spaceship boarding action at the local tabletop gaming convention, Trumpeter Salute.  There were six crews battling for control of the ship including two ship's crew - the bridge crew and the engineering team - and 4 teams of boarders.

Action was fast and furious.  The defenders started out in the main cargo hold, and the boarders needed to enter through the side doors.  The engineering team ran straight to the engine room while the boarders focussed on the bridge crew. 

A fierce firefight took place in the hold, with a bridge crewman (crew-alien?) distracting the boarders as his colleagues dashed to the bridge.  The poor fellow was thoroughly suppressed, as shown by the plethora of shock markers!

Left to their own devices, the engineering team easily made it to the engine room to start the engines.

The battle moved to the corridor outside the bridge.  Post-it tabs have replaced the smoke markers to indicate shock.

Finally realising that their teammates are strong enough to capture the bridge, the remaining boarders decide to storm the engine room.  Many of them fell (literally!) for my little ruse, as they ignored the 'Slipper Floor' sign and fell to the ground.  No injuries, except to pride, but shock markers and delays in their advance.

Ultimately, the engineers held the boarders from capturing the engine room, but to no avail as the boarders captured the bridge and thus managed to keep the ship from escaping.

In the photos above you can see the extra Xolk containers in the cargo hold.  My mail order arrived a few days before the convention, enough time to assemble them and prime them - good enough for the table but I found some time after the con to splash a bit of paint on them.

The collection now includes eight containers in two styles, 2 larger cisterns and a bevvy of smaller crates.

Two styles of containers.  These can be stacked, adding to their versatility.

The cisterns are fun - the kit provides a frame.  The cistern itself is an empty 355 mL pop tin which fits inside the frame.

The cisterns are slightly larger than the containers.

As a bonus, the cistern kit includes a bunch of smaller crates.  Instead of making them deliberately sci-fi, I painted them in a basic wood brown so they can be used for a variety of eras.

Medieval clergy, cargo containers and a mock vargr

 Arthur and I visited Imperial Hobbies last week, so of course I made some impulse purchases.  First up, I picked up a pack of early medieval clergy from Bob Murch's 1066 line.  Although they are intended for 1066, I will take advantage of the timelessness of their garb to use them in more modern settings, whenever a monk or nun would fit in.

I slightly modified the Mother Superior - she has a greenstuff veil added on top of her wimple (hopefully I got those terms correct!).

My other purchase was a pair of MDF containers from Canadian company Xolk.  I liked them so much I sent in an order to the company for more!  They go together very quickly and paint up easily.  They will do nicely as scatter terrain in the cargo hold for starship boarding actions.

Our recently started Traveller RPG campaign includes a vargr NPC, so I decided to convert one of Fletch's 3d printed werewolves to represent him.  This is clearly not an accurate representation, as vargr are typically shorter then humans, with an average height of only 1.6 m.  So this is a particularly jacked vargr, as he is notably taller and bulkier than Captain Handsome!

Conversion was minor, I replaced his arms with a flamer and a left hand from the bits box.

3D printed resin is regrettably a bit brittle.  You can see that this poor vargr was dropped and his ears were chipped!

As you can see, the Xolk containers have nice detail on the ends.  They can be built with the doors open, but I chose to keep them closed.

 Next week is Trumpeter Salute - I'll hopefully fit in lots of gaming :)