A brief encounter with a larger scale

Purchased the below 9 packs this past Saturday and hoping to find out some more information on the range which I believe is Out of Production. 

The below image shows a figure (inside the unopened package) as being 25 mm from bottom of foot to eyes.

edit: unrelated to above but I have today adjusted the Pages options to the left side of the Home page so that only Pages that work are there.  I did a little renaming to accommodate the eventual topics I want to fit under the Pages 'umbrella'.

Cacti Revisited

Took some time to sort my cacti - now have 190 - and was able to sort them into groups of 3 and every group of 3 (63 of them) has all different models, plus one lone and unique metal sculpt of a cacti.  However, I am going to still go with groups of 9, 6, and 3 cacti so the larger groupings might duplicate a little bit.  Breakdown will be:

11 groups of 9 - 99 cacti, around 12 square inches, 132 total

10 groups of 6 - 60 cacti, around 9 square inches, 90 total

10 groups of 3 - 30 cacti, around 4 square inches, 40 total

1 'group' of 1 -  1 cacti, around whatever it turns out to be, undecided

That will be around 262 square inches of cacti, not quite two square feet - however, by spreading them out a bit can cover a much larger area in cacti.  And important to note that the bases will not be square at all but irregularly curved bits.  The 'eleventh' group of 9 cacti will definitely be a multi-level base, some of the other bases and sizes might also be but this one will be a prominent terrain piece.

Oh, and courtesy of the 3D printing phenomenon, I have some 15 mm rattlesnakes to add into the mix!

Just adding up those civilian on foot additions

 Anachronism               34 groups (408) (64 dead)

Lodgepole Creek        13 groups (156) + 1 group (168 + 28 dead)

Alkali Wells                13 groups (156) + 1 group (168 + 28 dead)

Muleskinner Canyon    6 groups (72) + 1 group (84 + 14 dead)

Mescalarilla                  6 groups (72) + 1 group (84 + 14 dead)

Dork's Claims               2 groups (24) + 1 group (36 + 6 dead)

Bull's Butt                     2 groups (24) + 1 group (36 + 6 dead)

"Environs"                   22 groups (264) + 1 group (276 + 46 dead)

105 groups = 1,260 + 210 dead (and those six prospector mules) (1,476 pieces including babes in arms)

Might remove the 'more modern' film crew and just leave the 'old fashioned' film crew as the 'roaming' group

Over half of the above is primed and ready for painting

Vehicles and more ready to paint

While working on another project I got a bit more done - all of the Peter Pig Mexican Revolution cars and pickup trucks are primed and ready to paint (some assembly of wind screens and adding heads still needs to get done).

Primed all 49 teepees and their associated pieces.

And primed one unit of armed men and women - with casualties - for Anachronism which I believe means all of that town's civilians are ready to paint.

Also primed a bunch of dead horses, saddle and draft, as well as horse skeletons and human skeletons.  Mostly meant for Old West but useable in other settings.

And got the 14 dead buffalo plus 6 'hunted' buffalo and two solo horseback riders hunting the buffalo primed for painting.  The 'dead' are just models removed from their bases.  That means a total of 140 buffalo!

No photos at this time.

A little evidence of progress

 Prepped a couple of units for Mescarilla today:

A 'sombrero' unit from Bluemoon (Old Glory 25s) - from one of the Mexican Wars ranges, forget which.

These are from Peter Pigs' Mexican Revolution range, again in Sombreros.

Here is a side-by-side comparison, Bluemoon on the left, Peter Pig on the right.

And a little better angle to show the distinctive size difference.  Workable in separate units.

Just wanted to show this project is not abandoned, not by any means.

A bit of a drought out west, I hear

Yup, not much happening lately on the Old West front but I did place an order today for some items that may jump start my long languishing scratch built town.  And you'll have to trust me on this - this period is in no way abandoned.  If I were to roll back to the maximum on miniatures there are three for sure keepers: my American Revolution, My Slightly Cracked Colonials, and the Old West/Pony Wars.  Lately the first of those two have gotten the greater part of my attention.  And with my wife retired the end of the last year I've had to spend time getting her adjusted and feeling valued and useful and not just watching television - and that accursed shopping channel.  

So, absolutely expect more here, just be patient in the waiting.  I do have my courthouse on the workbench when time allows, hopefully soon.  Expect it will be quite the reveal - especially the name that goes with it.  We'll see,

Towns and their populations

[One of the challenges with more than one blog is that sometimes it is possible to post to the wrong blog - which I did with this post over on my Pirates of the Carob Bean Sea blog back in July.  Just fixing now.  Also, I have added some new groups, a few, based on recent figure releases - they are not in the listing.  Hard put to justify adding more unless it is a purpose designed horse drawn hearse, mud wagon, or tumble weed wagon.  Oh, and each group of civilians - other than the 'specials' not listed - are 12 figures plus two casualty figures, 1,372 figures including the dead.  Already made a start on reassigning the White Hat/Black Hat mounted/dismounted/dead groups (see earlier post) - those below in this post all being on foot.]

I have been working this week to assign, or sometimes reassign, the various civilian population groups to all those towns and other population centers.  A detailed list eventually but for now, it is working out this way:

Anachronism               34 groups (408)

Lodgepole Creek        13 groups (156)

Alkali Wells                13 groups (156)

Muleskinner Canyon    6 groups (72)

Mescalarilla                  6 groups (72)

Dork's Claims               2 groups (24)

Bull's Butt                     2 groups (24)

"Environs"                   22 groups (264)

That is 98 groups of civilians (1.176), a considerable ballooning upwards from 60 groups.  Much more important change is that some groups are actually painted and many groups are primed - almost all of Anachronism and Alkali Wells groups are primed and all groups are washed so just need minor filing work before gluing to the also prepared bases (primed on the underside for labelling) and, once the glue is dry, priming.

Environs refers to, mostly, groups out in the hinterlands like farmers and ranchers, trading post and stage station, prospectors and miners (Dork's Claims being a gold mining area located in the Pyrite Hills and Bull's Butt, home of a 19th century type copper mine).  The 'mostly' also includes my photographer group and a recent addition, an Old Fashioned Film Crew - can fit that into the tale end of the Old West.

There are more civilians but they are in smaller groups and meant as 'personalties' and 'characters'.  Need to count this up.

Why so many?  No good reason but no bad reason either, just somehow I have gotten to that point.  Oh, all of the above are on foot with the only animals included being the pack horses/mules for the prospectors (6). 

And the above doesn't count the two wagon trains of 25 people each (plus 12 dismounted armed men for any fights - who replace the seven men wagon drivers).  This also adds 28 draft horses and 28 draft oxen to pull those wagons.  It also doesn't count all the wagon, cart, or stage drivers (and passengers, shotgun) or the cowboys tending the various herds (18 of the latter, both mounted and foot versions, plus the 18 horses they ride).  I guess I need to count up the drivers and passengers, too, and the associated animals pulling those vehicles.

I suppose now I need to do some reassigning of the mounted civilian figure groups, the white hat/black hat groupings.  Those now 27 groups add 324 more men to the total civilians.  Finding mounted females for the Old West just doesn't seem in the cards.  (And each of those 27 groups include 12 mounted, 12 dismounted, 12 dead, and 4 standing horses - so a lot more than 324 figures to paint.)

All told, that means at least 1,500 but probably closer to 1,650 civilians in my fictional Old West county in the equally fictional Joetanazona Territory.  The county has a name to be revealed when I am ready to do so.  Plus there are some uncounted 'babes in arms' for some figures.

Anyway you stack this up, that is a LOT of figures.  My towns are not the improbably sparsely populated towns of Hollywood's Old West towns due to the costs of hiring extras but more like 'normal' towns - though even my numbers are small compared to many towns, especially some of those boom towns of the era.