Some painted figures and a scenario in development

 

Figuring out a stock yard - got the size I want, need to base of course.  And not shown but at the bottom of the yard I'm going to add a loading ramp to get the cattle in to the stock cars - which I have in the wings waiting to get finished, conversions/scratch builds on top of Peter Pig flat cars.

Newbie Pauls - mounted, on foot, and dead.

Eldred Gregory

Picky Slim

Bren Walters

Buckskin standing horse and dead horse - another character due on buckskin horse, three characters form a group and each group gets a standing and dead horse.

Palomino group - another character due on a palomino horse.  These are painted by a friend - and if all goes according to plan there will be a total of 24 characters as well as a dozen each unarmed men and women from him on foot only.  The twelve figure foot only unarmed groups only get two casualty figures for the whole group.

The First Old West Scenario:

 

"Incident at the Van Vittles Ranch Stock Spur"

 

George "The Dude" Van Vittles owns a spread about the size of Rhode Island and has his latest shipment of longhorns ready to board trains and head out to meet an army contract.  Kettle Kelly, the ranch cook - and the best in the west: as George says, "With a name like mine, I've got to feed my men the best I can and 'ole Kettle sure cooks a fine meal" - is preparing to put on quite the spread.  And some of the 'neighbors' are traveling to enjoy the festivities, the ranch's spare rooms are among the finest in the territory so why not and George always puts his guests up overnight given the travel times required.  Why, heck, there just might be a few surprise dignitaries showing up on the noon (well, noonish) stage that runs near the stock pens.  Or maybe they will be making a whistle stop at the station nearby that serves the ranch; it is a huge ranch.  

 

What isn't known on the ranch is some of the recently hired cowhands have acquaintances in that nest of thieves Muleskinner Canyon.  Word has made it to the worst of the worst that there will be quite the pay day for the cowhands and a plot is brewing to 'borrow' the strong box, no interest to be paid.  A few of the old timers warn that tangling with Van Vittles is asking for several wagon loads of trouble, serious trouble.  The young guns intimidate them into keeping that nonsense to themselves.  And since it's been a while since the last score, there is no shortage of 'volunteers' willing to ride out for the promise of so much loot.  Naturally, the local soiled doves - denizens of The Pig Farm - egg them on in the hopes of getting their own share of ill gotten gains.

 

The sun has risen on what promises to be a glorious day.  At least until it isn't.

 

A whole lot of horses are getting saddled up over in Muleskinner Canyon.  A whole lot of appetites are whetted near the main ranch house given the delicious smells emanating from the cook house.

 

Never know what might result if a lot of gun play goes off in the presence of a lot of cattle - even if they are all penned up.

 

What will sunset see?

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In preparation for that scenario and in addition to what is being painted for me, I have the following items in process - hopefully get it all for the event but don't strictly require it all to get done:

An overall shot of some of the items.

Water tower from Blue Moon with modified spout, small train station from Stone Mountain (?), grain wagon from Blue Moon's Napoleonic generic wagon range, buggies and buckboard from Blue Moon's Old West range - with swapped out drivers except for the doctor in his buggy.

Stagecoach from QRF/Freikorps' Yellow Ribbon Range.

The two outhouses - one with door open! - are from Peter Pig as is the well.  The six figures represent George van Vittles and two of his formidable side kicks - Johnny 'Forest' Blue and Clark Twilight.

Windmill is from Woodland Scenics (?) acquired from an estate sale.  Chuck wagon on the left is from Peter Pig as is the sign just to its right - and the longhorn head (from Peter Pig) will be attached to the sign.  The figures in 'yellow' at the bottom are certain women of the Old West: Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Belle Starr - no mounted versions though I wish there were (not designed at such, just figures I've designated as such).  The two dead on the right belong to Sister Veronica aka Veronica Veloputous who also has two mules which can be seen in the overall shot above.

The 18 ranch hands (or whatever they need to be) from various sources including some Frontier Miniatures figures I've had for decades and then hitch racks and water troughs from Stone Mountain and Peter Pig and others.

The, mostly, unarmed and multi-based civilians, five groups - two of women, three of men.  The bottom group of men is armed, a few other figures have a few weapons but don't count as armed groups.

This box includes what has been painted for me and much of what remains to be painted for me.  Painter, John W., has eight more characters to paint and those twenty-four unarmed individually based figures plus four dead.  So, at least - I hope - will have twelve characters ready for the game from him.  Perhaps the civilians, too.

I will be painting the balance not being painted by John.  The train and tracks are already painted enough to be in a game but could use some additional work.  A variety of additional buildings to be included in the scenario also already painted.  May pull out a bunch of tables primed and ready to paint to represent that spread from Kettle Kelly.  As of now, planning to run the game in early to mid-December so really need to push to get all of this done, or as much as possible.

Single Bases Arrive! No need to panic.

Almost from inception, I've planned to multi-base my Old West figures.  Recently, however, I've toyed with doing at least some on single bases - in large part from having found some nice round steel bases which work a lot better than square bases for me both for stability and aesthetically.  So I rummaged through the 'periphery' of the collection and found 24 mounted figures which I matched as best I could with 24 foot figures and added in 24 dead figures to make 'sets' of matched mounted/foot/dead.  Didn't have enough 'extra' saddled horses to mark dismounts, only eight, so I made eight groups of three, did have enough dead horses so each group will also have a dead horse.  I plan to make each group of three mounted on similar colored horses, all three on roans for instance with a matching roan saddled horse and dead horse.  One of the 24 is a woman, the rest are men.  

Since I'm so fond of games with unarmed civilians roaming around, I also dove into the unarmed figures on the edges of the collection and found a dozen men and a dozen women - but with too many duplicated sculpts (leftover figures more or less) so I went into the 'main collection' and swapped out figures from various groupings to reduce that unwanted duplication.

So far, the metal is only cleaned up and primed and that is what the images below show.  However, I've named all 24 of the 'sets' figures and the unarmed civilians.  The 'sets' are inspired my western movie actors, the unarmed civilians have character names from various western movies.

The first image shows the 12 unarmed women and two dead to go with them.  There are still a couple duplicates but just paint differently (dress and hair colors) and live with it. 

This second image has the 12 unarmed men.  Again the two dead.

An image of the eight standing saddled horses and eight dead horses.

On the right in front is group 4 and in the back is group 8.  

From right to left is group 1 through group 3 in front and group 5 through group 7 in back.

And just a shot of all the figures, 140 total pieces counting people and animals, alive and dead.

The above is really a small fraction of the total Old West collection but should be more than enough to get the period onto the gaming table this year.  Might add in some young folk, adolescents, and smaller children, a dozen of each, just not yet.

Here are the "Sets" by name:

Set 1: Willie Chiller, Picky Slim, Bren Walters

Set 2: Livy Landsalot (the lone woman), Eldred Gregory, Newbie Pauls

Set 3: Elm Jackeye, Wynn Keen, Boon Dickie

Set 4: Flint Haymaker, Mitch Roberts, Bron Carlitos

Set 5: Wayne Morris, Stew Jameson, Ford Glenburg

Set 6: Coop Garrulous, Lance Burtman, "Fondles" Henryson

Set 7: Maquerie "Mac" Stevens, Marvin Leafie, Eli Samuels

Set 8: Duvall Bobman, Arney Jimmer, Cob Burnjim

The unarmed men:

Nathan Burdette, Charley Hecker, Emmett Quincy, Mose Harper, Charlie McCorrey, Dalton Peabody, Cassius Starbuckle, Peter Ericson, Byron McElroy, Sam Fuller, Chris Calloway, Jack Wilson

The unarmed women:

Debbie Edwards, Hallie Stoddard, Emma Nelson, Alice Evans, Amy Kane, Mildred Fuller, Marian Starrett, Kate Nelson, Penelope Cushings, Lucy Mallory, Kathleen Yorke, Jill McBain, 

More thinking

 27 x 3 = 81 - that's how many individually based figures I'd have if I go that way for all 27 'units' of 12 mounted/foot/dead(standing horses, 1 for 3 only).  But I really like 90 a lot better.  So, I'll have to see if I can come up with an additional 9 foot/mounted/dead.  Pretty sure I have enough to make that work - except maybe additional standing horses.

Bigger challenge is going to be horses to mark dismounts.  Easy enough when just using the individually based figures, if I go that way - and getting more likely, just use three of the four standing horses for each 'unit'.  But when I want to mix the individual based with the 3-to-a-base, not so easy.  No way am I going to add that many additional standing horses to the total (at 2 x 27 = 54 plus probably a few more); might have enough additional to get part way there.  Or, maybe I am nuts enough to get that many more standing horses!  Resistance must rush in!!

Well, at least I know I can do whatever level of 1:1 figure gaming I'm likely to ever want with what I already have.

Possible change

 Giving thought, considerable thought, to doing some single figure basing - at least with the 27 sets of mounted/foot/dead figures.  If I make the jump it will only be one stand of three becomes three stands of one and the other three stands stay at three figures each.  And I would have the individual figures get one die each and the three stands with three figures would only get one die per stand - that would yield a mximm of six dice for a unit.  Need to do some more thinking on this.  

The painted railroad track

Here are some shots of the railroad track after painting it all to match, may go back and do some additional dry brushing but it looks a lot better than it did before getting painted.

Just a quick shot without any other terrain.  If you hunt backward you will find a whole set of photos where you can see the unpainted track. 

This was a nice piece for showing damaged track - all stop!

And a nicely done system for the switches/turnouts with that adapter piece from the turnout to the two straight sections.  

This track was sold by QRF but I don't know if they still have it.  Too bad if not, it is a good system.
 

For a look at lots of animals...

 ...visit the Critters page.  Over 100 photos added showing both painted and unpainted domesticated and wild animals.  I think of this as a visual record of what I have, with some omissions needing to be photographed and added later.

An overhaul of sorts

Been moving a lot of my collections into a rented storage unit since virtually every possible nook and cranny around the house - and the shed - and the side yard - and the outdoor cabinets - was overflowing with no possible place to stick anything else.  Still a bit more to move out and over to the storage unit but the process gave me a lot of room to 'realign' my Old West collection and get it all on one shelf - about eight or nine feet of shelf stacked about as high as possible, say 15" or more.  Well, the Old West trains are still in their old location but not too far from the rest, another cabinet on the same wall.

So now I have a stack of just buildings, another of just detail parts and scatter terrain, a stack of all the townsfolk and another of the environ folk, with a short stack of the "specials".  Almost all of the wagons are now in one stack except for the wagon trains in a larger container and the army wagons and such.  Then there is the just natives (Indians), and then the almost all army stack but including the buffalo, cavalry remuda (remounts), pronghorn antelope, and buffalo, and - last - the "main" folk, the 12/12/12/4 sets of mounted, foot, dead, horse to mark dismount spot sets; well, the two of these that are primed and ready for painting are over near the scatter terrain since the box they are in is a bit too large for the other area.

Maybe this will help propel progress.  This collection is up near the top of my 2024 miniatures priorities.