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.

What a Cowboy AAR

 Managed my third game of What a Cowboy this afternoon.  Doug, Gord, Mark and Peter dropped by for an afternoon of gaming.  This time Arthur set the table up for us, building a nice little Western town.  With the way these rules work, I made sure that was lots of scatter terrain to provide cover for the characters.

We played the Highway Robbery scenario, with the attackers required to inspect 4 locations to find the treasure.  The blue tokens marked the locations to be searched.  Here we see Gord's rifle-armed greenhorn sneaking up to ambush Mark's sheriff.

Peter's very short shootist uses the white house as cover as he watches the approaching bandits.

Gord's second bandit moves up to the barn.

Peter's short shootist moves back to avoid being flanked.

By these two, as it happens!  

Gord's ponchoed bandit pins Peter's ex-German officer behind the wagon. 

My greenhorn rushed the short fellow and bashed him with fisticuffs, before finding himself facing both the short one and his one-armed friend.

Meanwhile Gord's bandit managed to take out Peter's German.

Doug's character Morgan takes a long-range potshot at the one-armed lawman.

My greenhorn finally finishes shortie.

Ultimately the attackers managed to find the hidden treasure after searching all four locations, after taking out three of the defenders, the fourth exercising discretion and hightailing it out of town.

It was a fun game, but a bit unbalanced with 3 on 2.  I didn't put much planning into the scenario - I should have upgunned the defenders a bit.  Also missed the chance to use Bonanza chips and Desperado cards.  Lessons learned for next game!

Partisans from Wargames Atlantic

 Wargames Atlantic plastic kits are turning out to be great fun.  This is a set I've been wanting to pick up for quite a while, Partisans (1) French Resistance.  The title of the box creates hope that there will be more variations on the theme coming!  The box includes 8 frames with 4 torsos each, but with loads of head and arm options, the variants possible are extensive.  Here are the first 16 figures.

I had an idea that I could use this kit to make unarmed civilians for either my 1943 Sicily or 1940 France campaigns, as bystanders or refugees.  The 1940 campaign in particular has great opportunity for civilians as refugees clogging the roads or as fifth columnists.  I experimented a bit with the arms and heads in the box, and feel they have potential but I'll need to work on them a bit to come up with a bit more variation in how they look.

The Bren gun came from the box, but the MG34 (or MG42,I can't tell the difference) came from the bitz box, I think it's from a Warlord Games frame.

As these are meant to be 'French' partisans, many of the heads provided are wearing berets.  As I have a great start on forces for the campaigns in Italy, though, I decided to make some of the figures a bit more Italian by giving a couple of figures Alpini hats from the Wargames Atlantic Italian Infantry box to make them look like some Northern Italian farmers - and so raising questions about what they're doing in Sicily or Calabria!  The chap with the red scarf and the Italian red devil hand grenade is meant to reflect the red scarves of the Communist-alligned Garibaldi Brigades. 

And these two have Beretta submachineguns, also from the Italian Infantry box set.

And then here are the rest of the first batch.

All in all, I'm quite happy with this set, and will probably be picking up another box depending on how many more civvies I want to build.

Kindred - WWI Halflings

 Another treasure from the lead mountain!  These wee fellows have been patiently waiting for me to set down and finish them for somewhat more than 15 years.  I got them from Hasslefree Miniatures, but I understand the line has since been sold on to CP Models.  Obviously, these are for a fantasy WWI range.  As I've only got these 7 British-styled halflings, I don't know when or if they will ever get on the table, as they have no opponents and 7 aren't really enough except for the smallest size of skirmish game!  On the other hand, they are pretty darn cute.

The officer and Lewis gunner definitely have 'Frodo and Sam' vibes.

Plus 5 more riflemen to fill out the squad.

What a Cowboy - second game!

 Arthur's friend Oliver usually comes over on Wednesday evenings for a game of D&D, however we just finished an adventure at our last session, and the DM wasn't ready to start a new adventure.  So instead, we decided to try out What a Cowboy.  And it went well, even with a pair of 10 year olds!

I stripped the game down to streamline play.  Each player had a shootist armed with a 6-shooter.  No Bonanza chips, no Desperado cards.

I made a point of providing each player with different size dice for the action dice and the shooting/moving dice.  I also picked up some counter dials to track ammunition.  That combination worked out well; the players didn't mix up the dice.  I'd like to procure some more of these dials, ideally that go to 6, and with some sort of click/lock so the dial doesn't slide around.

I used my Sicilian church and a few buildings to represent a small Spanish mission somewhere in New Mexico.  Lots of scatter terrain so soak up spotting dice.  Arthur complained about the lack of civilians; I just said they were hiding from the gunfight.  I was a little inspired by the opening scene from Tombstone, but with a slightly different group of protagonists.

Oliver's character Gunshot spent a good chunk of the game using this building to keep away from the others.

Tyler's character Eagle Eye Eddie advanced to the centre of the board from behind the church.

My character Ramblin' Bob approached the town centre using the outbuildings for cover.

Eagle Eye used a hand with lots of move dice to circle around the church to flank Gunshot.  

Gunshot escaped from Eagle Eye, only to end up facing Arthur's shootist, who he called 'Dad'.  

Eventually, Eagle Eye and Dad ended up in the village centre, fighting over a table, while Gunshot and Ramblin' Bob approached from the sides. The clouds of dust are pinned markers.

The game ended with Eagle Eye taken down by teamwork between Gunshot and Dad, while Ramblin' Bob sensibly stayed back at the edge of the action.  By the time he was finally hors de combat, Eagle Eye had suffered a couple of critical hits, on top of "normal' hits, stripping away all his action dice.  This was a bit of a difference from the first game, where characters were killed outright by the criticals.  Ramblin' Bob meanwhile spent most of the game blasting away and missing near every shot.

It was fun to introduce a couple of new players, and Oliver and his dad Tyler both enjoyed the game.