Bath day in Alkali Wells

There are tales of an annual bath day in certain parts of the Old West.  Now, whether that is true or not - and, mostly, I suspect not - the first ever bath day has come for Alkali Wells.  Every man, woman, and child in and around Alkali Wells took a bath today - excepting some of the Apache who are not always friendly to European ways it seems.  Not saying they don't like to be clean, just that they did not attend today's event.

The specific meaning here being that all 252 living souls in the shape of miniatures to populate Alkali Wells and environs got washed today in preparation for getting further prepped through filing and knife work to be glued to their bases prior to being primed.  Heck, even the 'necros' got washed meaning the 42 dead figures to attend the 21 groups of 12 got into the clean up action.

And keeping the momentum going, I also washed 10 buckboards, 6 buggies, and four grain wagons - with horses and drivers - to be ready for the next steps ahead of basing for priming.  That will add 20 more wheeled vehicles and bring me to the half-way point of having 100 wheeled conveyances for the Old West, at least 100 pulled by livestock - not counting wheelbarrows of which there are a few in the collection.

Of course, all those figures will need their bases so I did preliminary prep for them to:

That's all the bases for the groups of people and the buggies, buckboards, and wagons cleaned today - and a few extra for some unrevealed items as of yet.  I figured a shot of them unprimed would be easier to see - I prime one side and then glue the figures to the other side when ready and, once the glue has dried, prime the figures and the other side of the base at the same time.  It does take some extra work and paint but I really don't like the look of bare metal bases showing on my gaming tables when someone chooses to knock over a stand to indicate it's been shot (though no real need for that because I have at least two casualty figures per group).

Oh, and I did get some work done on the kit-bashing railroad cars - did some work on the six cattle cars, the one horse car, and a tiny bit on the three tank cars which was just shortening the core for the tanks.  And all the manufactured pieces, resin and metal, also got washed today.  But progress is progress so a good day.  Until it got too hot to work out in the garage!

One thing I didn't prepare were dead horses or bases for dead horses but I will be using them as markers, along with the destroyed wagons, to mark damage to wagons and their teams.  Hmm, I don't have dead oxen.  Dead cows and dead longhorns but no dead oxen.  I think I can live with that - just use some of those dead cows.

Another good day - less likely to make progress tomorrow because the wife is desirous of a day out of the house which I could use too.  Alas, she probably means shopping but I like nature.  Maybe we can do both.

A Train or Three at Play in the Yard

The equipment below is painted but no where near finished but with the sheer volume - and the possibility of adding a few more items even - means a rather large investment of time going forward above and beyond the time already invested before it can all be called done.  Most of the equipment is from Peter Pig, some modified, with a few locomotives from Glencoe Models (see earliest posts on this blog).

 A closer shot of one of the Glencoe locomotives with a Peter Pig tender.

Two identical Glencoe tank engines.

Two of the three Peter Pig locomotives with their tenders.

An overall shot of the "Eight Track" yard.  This image shows all the currently table capable pieces - even if not 'fully dressed'.

From a different angle.

And another angle.

The core 'basic' freight train: locomotive with tender, three box cars, and a caboose.

 And the core 'basic' passenger train: locomotive with tender (this is a Glencoe), a combination baggage/passenger car, and two passenger coaches.

 A close shot of the Peter Pig locomotive and tender - after I heavily modified the 'clunky' square base.

 And one of the other Glencoe models.

 And the other Glencoe tank engine.

Another close up of the Glencoe 4-4-0 with a Peter Pig tender.

Coach on the left modified into a full baggage car, coach on the right modified into a parlor car - note the large window at the back.  Might need to use some filler on many of the modified coaches and then sanding before final painting - and then lettering of course: Tentacle and Monopoly Western Rail Road or T&MWRR.

 The basic combination car - modified - and the two unmodified coaches.

 A trio of flat cars.

 A shot of one of the caboose.

 And a shot of one of the box cars.

And this last shot of the yard empty before I put it away.  Doing this layout caused two realizations: I actually need more straight tracks for future plans and I also need a much larger background piece for doing these photographs.

The seven stock cars await completion still, as do three tank cars and three gondolas - none of which are pictured, all modifications on top of flat cars.  It is possible, but by no means certain, I might order some more cars and maybe another locomotive or two (at least one of which to be a crashed locomotive).

Now, we'll see if having these photos up will encourage me to work on those unfinished cars.  Maybe I will require myself to at least get them built and painted as items here before determining whether to buy more or not.

Wagon Park

In rather boring brown but exciting in another way, at least to me.

No idea why the above image cuts off the way it does at the bottom left.  But I have a precise idea that there are thirty wheeled vehicles in that photograph.  The right hand column of wagons are my horse drawn wagon train with settlers to go with it essentially as with the ox drawn wagon train on the left - see earlier post. I also put bases under all of the army supply wagons and the chuck wagons.

A casual observer might not agree that there are thirty vehicles but a closer look - with just such a shot below - reveals 14 prairie schooners, 8 army supply wagons, 2 chuck wagons, 2 'crashed' wagons, and at the rear of the long center line 2 each limbers and gatling guns mounted on wheeled carriages.

This is just a shot from above.  The items near the damaged wagons are a skeletal man and horse.  Many more skeletons now in my possession so I can actually have a full team of horses in skeletal form - as well as the crew.

And here is that shot where it is easier to see the limbers and wheeled carriages for the gatling guns.

So, that means 30 out of 100 of my wheeled vehicles for my Pony West collection are primed and ready for painting - a pleasant surprise to be almost one third of the way there.  Of course, with stage coach number five on the way I can retire a cart or keep it and call it 101 vehicles.  Again, one of the soon to be five stage coaches will be a 'destroyed' stage coach.

Perhaps next up I will prep the buggies and buckboards.  That will get pretty close to the half way point.

I find myself being drawn back to working on the kit-bashed rolling stock for my railroad - stock cars, tank cars, gondolas.  I should at least get some photos of the partly painted items to include here to help inspire me forward.  Too late to do tonight but soon.

Wagons West, um, woah

Well, not too bad, only washed the second train of an additional seven wagons for the horse train.  Small step forward.  Too hot for too many days and just ran out of energy.

Wagons West, Yo!

The ox drawn wagon train is ready for painting - except the two Frontier ladies already painted, probably late eighties.  There are seven wagons pulled by a total of 28 oxen.  Each wagon has a 'driver' at the back of the wagon - these things travelled at a man's easy walking speed.  There are also six stands of pioneers, four of women and children and two of men. (some of the women are cast as woman and child or babe in arms but there are three people per stand)  That adds up to 25 people - one more than the original planned 24, the result of adding a seventh wagon to avoid the hexagon shape when 'circling the wagons'.  Since all of the Peter Pig settler's wagons come with four horses, somewhere I have an additional 28 harnessed horses to put to good use.

Just some closer shots, stand on the right has one lady with a babe in arms.

 And the stand on the right here includes a woman and child as a single casting.

The man stand on the right includes the Wagon Master on foot.

A different angle of the full wagon train.  Of course, in reality, these wagons would be spaced much farther apart from front to back and, terrain permitting, perhaps traveling abreast rather than one behind the other.

When the wagons do get circled (a Hollywood cliche perhaps but fun to include) I add four stands of armed men to represent the drivers (still glued behind the wagons, of course) for added fire power in defense.  Looks like some of the pilgrims didn't get inside the circle fast enough!

Not sure what to do with the harnessed oxen when circling the wagons, maybe keep half in place to increase the size of the circle and perhaps have room for the other half inside?  

After typing that bit above I just had to go out and set it up and see if it would work.  Here it is.  Might work better - though I am going to have to go back and check up on how it was really done, been a long time since I read up on that.

Here are those four added stands - only used in defensive mode (though available for other scenarios if desired.

This is my 'bonus' herd of oxen because of how Peter Pig packs their oxen, I wanted all of my wagon pullers in full harness, so I bought several extra sets.  There are four additional oxen models here, the smaller ones from a different source.  Probably have this travel along with the train as 'extra' oxen or as meat supply if necessary.

And that same bonus adds an additional full team of harnessed oxen, probably pull a freight wagon, and a pair of unharnessed oxen waiting to get harnessed.

And, last photo, an overall shot of recent progress on my Pony West collection, the wagon train in the back left tray, the Town Marshall and Outlaws along with the mostly painted Apache in right rear tray.  The front tray is the mounted Hunkpapa Lakota along with the foot groups and the village groups both also for the Hunkpapa Lakota.

Perhaps next up I will prepare the horse drawn wagon train, essentially the same as above but without the extra oxen.  And then several more Lakota/Cheyenne 'commands'.  Followed by preparing a half dozen each of the unarmed civilian groups for Lodgepole Creek and Alkali Wells.  It will take a while before I run out of figures to prep for painting for this period.  There is a lot more to go.  When I get back to the cavalry, probably the Buffalo solider battalion first and then the figures dedicated to the fort.  And somewhere in that mix, keep prepping more of the vast numbers of wagons - though I am up to 21 wheeled conveyances so far.

I did include a stagecoach in my most recent order to make number five - now I have to pick which one will be the "ruined" coach.

It feels great to be making so much progress on this collection!

A grand moment of musing - or is it some sort of plan?

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.

Evidence of Progress

Above reveals one full "set" of the Lakota/Cheyenne native Americans, 4 x 12 mounted warriors with 8 dead, 3 x 12 foot warriors with 6 dead, 3 x 12 villagers with 3 dead, and up front on foot is the Big Man and 2 companions with 1 dead.  There are a total of 8 such sets - though two of the sets have villagers on the move with travois so a bit different, mostly those travois and horses with villagers mounted.  The Crow and Shoshone, army allies, and others are structured differently - such as the Apache.

This shot shows two sets of the White Hat/Black Hat sets.  The primed grouping is the Town Marshal with 12 mounted men, 12 men on foot, 12 dead, and 4 standing horses to mark points of dismount.  Beyond doubt, some will quibble (even mightily) that basing figures as I have before painting will result in a lesser paint job.  Very true.  But I have to compromise between getting things done and a reasonable paint job.  That unprimed group - with some of the mounted figures not yet glued into their saddles has 19 companions waiting to get prepped.  With those sorts of numbers, speed matters. A lot.  So, I compromise and accept lesser paint jobs in favor of greater spectacle through quantity.  Or, that is the plan.

Last is a group of Apache acquired painted to which I've added 2 unpainted figures to make 36 total and 6 dead.

The standard grouping for all 'units' is twelve figures plus any dead with the exception of the Special Figures.

Next target to work on is one of my civilian wagon trains.