I have been wondering about my White Hat/Black Hat groupings for a while and how to allocate them in my planned Extravaganza Game. Well, I believe I have sorted it out and to do so I just placed an order from Bluemoon for some additional figures to add three more groupings (marked **) besides the three I already recently added and sorted (marked *). I have also decided that some of the groups will be Brown Hat/Gray Hat groups - not quite all good and not quite all bad. I have tried, as best I can, to form the groups into logical associations of 'factions' but I am first to admit that a few of them test the limits just a bit but it is all for fun so I will just live with it.
So, here are the factions and groups, three per faction, as now constituted and the towns they will be associated with:
Anachronism:
White Hats - Town Marshal, County Sheriff, Posse**
Brown Hats - Pinkertons, Territorial Rangers, “White” Scouts
Black Hats - Outlaws, Robbers, Comancheros
Gray Hats - Desperadoes, Regulators, Rustlers
Lodgepole Creek:
White Hats - Professional Gunmen**, Cowpokes, Mountain Men*
Black Hats - Range Boss, Gun Hands for Hire, Hard Luck Cowboys
Alkali Wells:
Brown Hats - Magnanimous Dozen, Reservation Police, Mexican Federales*
Gray Hats - Mexican Banditos**, Mexican Armed Peons, Apache Renegades*
As a reminder, each one of the groups is made up of 12 mounted men, 12 men on foot (the mounted men dismounted), 12 dead, and 4 standing horses to represent where a stand dismounted. And, of course, 3 figures to a stand. Thus, counting men and horses, there are 52 miniatures per group and, with 24 groups, a total of 1,248 figures to paint, representing 288 men in various states of play. Yup, that is a few. Or, how to redefine what an Old West game is.
Some will object to the three figures per stand but with that many figures, it really is a necessity.
Previously, I just had 18 groups and hadn’t planned where they would be used. And I had the three towns. And that never quite divided up right for me. The above groupings divide up nicely among the three towns. Of course, the groups can also be active within the region of the town, not just in the town itself. And they can be realigned at will for a given game - especially range wars, I expect to run that type of game rather often.
There is another ‘benefit’ for me. Each faction of 3 groups can be run by a single player which means 8 players. Since my army figures can easily accommodate 8 players (6 battalions of 4 companies each, plus the infantry and high command, plus the fort with its dedicated figures), and the Northern Plains tribes is also designed to accommodate 8 players (4 mounted bands, 3 foot bands (not dismounts!), and three villager groupings, plus leader), that gives a nice balanced 24 possible player positions for the Extravaganza Game. Plus more players for some of the other groups I have that are not in the mounted/foot/dead groupings, though they might be subgroups run by the core 24 players - a for instance would be the "Denver" Free Militia from Hallelujah Trail but maybe I'll call it the Anachronism Free Militia. The great challenge is getting that many players in a game. Twenty years ago, no problem. These days, quite a stretch. I guess I’m operating on the assumption, if I build it, they will come.
And if they don’t come, the 24 players, I can still do the grand spectacle set-up and just run smaller games with fewer players (perhaps each running more figures or each running the same as planned) in multiple scenarios that are run on different parts of the overall setup.
When not running the extravaganza, I can always run small scenario club games or host such games at home. Another option is to use the figures and associated paraphernalia to set-up and photograph to tell narrative tails here on the internet - which can be a solo activity and appeals to the story teller within me.
Besides all the combatants, I have that vast array of civilians to ‘decorate’ the game and because I study the real old west, not just the fiction and the cinematic, I have included plenty of freed men and women of color, peaceable Hispanics, and numerous Chinese folk (though I get a bit cinematic with the latter by including a Shaolin Temple - a place to host Kwai Chang Caine, of course). Alas, not only do these figures help my collection reflect the true nature of the Old West, they also allow for a variety of scenarios where these poor souls become targets - maybe even targets of the White Hats, sad to say. But mostly my civilians will just be peaceable folk that sometimes have to dodge out of the way.
One last thought for the moment, I expect I will have the two white hat factions separated by a different color of wash and shading so each stands out. And do something similar with the black hats though a bit of a challenge to get a darker and lighter black but I will figure it out, maybe use colored hat bands. The brown hats are easier since one can be brown and the other tan. Same with the gray hats, one can be darker gray (but not close to black), and the other a lighter gray (but not close to white). When mounted each group will be easy to see because I plan to paint all horses in one group as the same color - but with varying distinguishing marks like points, think bay, dun, black, brown, etc. And when dismounted each group will get a defining color on its clothing, say all wearing white dusters (for those so modeled) or all wearing a particular brown coat - and then paint the other items of clothing in varied tones to avoid any uniformity. Of course, the mounted and dead men within the group will need to be painted to match as close as possible. As a safeguard and for ease of sorting, I am also marking the underside of all the bases to make it easy to distinguish a group.
Quite a grand plan. Now I just need to put in the effort to make it “real”. I have a good start with perhaps sixteen hundred pieces already primed and ready for paint - plus some painted and ready like the buffalo and pronghorn antelope herds. Yee-haw, get along, little dogies.
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