Cowboys and Panzers

Managed to get in a game of both Blitzkrieg Commander and Gutshot at the club last night.  Mick and I started out with Blitzkrieg Commander and we played a fairly straight forward 1,000pt all out battle, mainly because we wanted to blow the cobwebs off the rules and see how the 10mm stuff fared on the table.

Unfortunately almost all of the photos I took last night turned out rubbish as I'd forgotten to switch the macro mode off and in turn all the long range table shots come out... well rubbish.  We both forgot to bring a green game mat so we had to play using my western one so north west Europe looks a little dry in the photos but the rest of the terrain and the minis (the painted ones at least) looked fantastic on the table.

Blitzkrieg Commander (1st edition) was a blast to play.  It's close enough to Warmaster that I don't have to unlearn any of the rules from that game and the extra WW2 stuff fits into the system nicely.  Sadly the Brits, played by myself didn't start out too well against the Germans who were superbly commanded by Mick.  I handed over command to James in turn two who managed to fare better than I did but was still unable to turn the tide.  Well we've got the main mechanics down now and I feel more comfortable that next time we can manage a bigger game.  The German reinforcements will hopefully have arrived by then and I think I'll have to base the Aussies up for use until I can get some more British.

I was too busy painting WW2 stuff yesterday and forgot to quickly reread the Gutshot rulebook, so play was a little slow to start with but move along quick enough, with most players not needing to refer to the rulebook by the end of the game.  We played the Last Man Standing scenario with two characters apiece.  Each player started in a respective corner of the table and very soon the gunfight, and knife fights, began.

Game play is fast, I like the card activation, and characters seem to take a bit of a beating without being bullet sponges.  The game play feels very Battletech-ish in the way the system handles combat modifiers for movement and damage with progressive negative modifiers to movement and accuracy is also very familiar.  This is not a bad thing though.  The game is simple and play is fast, it would get boring if all you played was shootouts week in week out but scenarios run by a referee are where this game shines.  I think I'll bring this may just become our choice of "quick game at the end of the night".

I'm happy too with the cardstock buildings, they've suffered in storage but I can fix that with a little balsa wood and glue.

Cards:  the card activation for Gutshot works a treat but the rulebook does recommend using name slips in a hat of something similar.  I went with cards and just assigned a number to each character.  This worked but slowed things down a little.  I think I'll get hold of some poker chips we'll use those in future.  A white sticker on one side with the characters name in pencil should do fine.  Also removing dead guys from the deck helps and it quickly got to the point of turning four or five cards before we got to a live fella.

My two characters below, Blackie and Ol' Gray, named after their hats of course.  Ol' Gray managed take take two hits from a revolver, got spat on and cursed at (twice), got stabbed in the back with a bowie knife before being shot for the final time  Blackie didn't last much longer but he did manage to take down the gringo that snuffed out Ol' Gray.

I had a few people asking about where to get miniatures from so I think things look bright for Gutshot.  Now all I need to do is find a Marty and Doc mini, I've got an idea for a "Mad Dog Mcree" scenario.

Yeeeeeeehah!

Look what arrived with this afternoon's stagecoach.  My Gutshot rulebook from Hawgleg Publishing.  The quality of the book is top notch and the writing style is both entertaining and easy to read.  One of the authors even signed it for me.  Very much looking forward to giving this a go on Staurday.  I've got enough Whitewash buildings made up for a small town bank robbery, I just need to get some paint on my cowboys.

Whitewash City - First Town Test

With the first lot of Whitewash City buildings completed I thought I should get them all out on the table to get a better idea of how many, if any, more I should be putting together. And here's the results. The blanket is the only sandy/desert one I could find in the laundry and it did not want to lay flat.

I'm pretty chuffed with the look of the table. Maybe a couple more buildings to help fill out the bigger tables at BADGA. With a bigger table I'd go for a layout where the main street branches off to the left and right in a Y shape. Yes it would get rid of the classic western main street look but it would add a few more places to hide.

Now I really should put the cardstock away and pick up the paintbrush, them lawmen and varmints ain't gunna paint themselves now are they.

Whitewash City - Bakery and Cafe

Continuing the trend, I've completed another two buildings for Whitewash City. This time the bakery and cafe.

I've also started work on the water tower for the train station, it's mostly done I only have to add the water pipe on the side. I'm not sure I like the way the design has the pipe sticking out in a gooseneck type fashion so I'll have a think about it and see if I can come up with my own implementation.

I've probably got enough buildings for some small games so I'll put them all out on the table tomorrow and work out how many more, if any, I need to put together.

Whitewash City - Bank and Ranch House

Two more Whitewash buildings tonight, well... actually it was just the one building tonight (the bank) while the ranch house was done earlier this morning. Around 5pm in fact. I woke up extra early and had to choose between this and cleaning up the kitchen... nuff said.

The ranch house was probably the trickiest building to put together so far. The fact that it's three seperate boxes that attach to each other means that if you get one edge wrong then everything that hangs off it is wrong as well. A slower setting glue helped here as it gave me time to jostle the pieces into position.

I'm really starting to get through the buildings now and it just begs the question: where am I going to put them all? I'm really not sure, where I am putting them right now is here:

And up here.

Another solution is needed, I'm thinking of a couple of those 20L plastic storage bins with some form of shelfing. What and how eludes me at the moment, a project for the weekend I think.

I want to get these all out on the table this weekend and run through the Six Gun Sound rules a few times to get a better grasp of the rules before I try to teach everyone else how to play. I'll post photos and an AAR.

Whitewash City - Sheriff's Office and Some More Shacks

Only one building tonight, still haven't gotten over the worst of this cough. Should provide a focal point for many Six Gun Sound scenarios.

With only a couple buildings left in the Whitewash City sets I picked up Set 9 and Set 4 which should give me enough to make a nice looking table. It's not that Six Gun Sound actually needs a lot of terrain but the more cover you have then the longer your characters will live.

I also picked up two sets of Precis Intermedia's Disposable Heroes standees: Western Statix 1 and Critters Statix 2: Domestic Animals. Some cardstock townsfolk and animals should help the town come alive, and you can't go past them at $4.72 a set for 30 standees. The quality is excellent and they offer all the standees in flat, triangle and token formats. They also offer army versions where each character is repeated on a single page and each one is numbered. Should be very useful for my When Chickens Go Bad and Cows With Guns scenarios.

Whitewash City - Train Station and Tool Sheds

Not a large update tonight but I managed to get the train station and some tool sheds finished.

With only 5 buildings, a few smaller sheds and a sheet or two of tents left to go I may have to order those other sets sooner rather than later.

Whitewash City - Grand Hotel and Dry Goods

It's been a few days since I worked on these, work and a cough so rough that it would be just plain foolish to put a sharp blade anywhere near my fingers. With my coughing fits becoming fairly predictable I decided to finish off the Grand Hotel that I started a few nights ago. The veranda on this model is fairly tricky and the whole building took me close to 2 hours this time. The Dry Goods took on 15 minutes this time though as I've worked out a few construction tricks, especially with attaching the roof. I even attempted to attach the chimney to the Grand Hotel. I think I've thrown out the chimney cap with the offcuts from the other night so I'll have to print another one out.

The veranda on the hotel is strong, it took six metal miniatures with no visible sagging or bending.

The bending you can see in the hotel veranda is due to me bending the tabs too short and in turn making the upright struts too long, the uprights are really eye candy and offer little to no real support to the veranda.

I should easily get through both sets of the buildings before the next Badga meet in under a fortnight, I may even grab another set or two and try for a really impressive table.

Whitewash City - Pioneer Hotel & Bath House

Really should have gone to bed hours ago but stayed up and got two more of the Whitewash City buildings completed, the Pioneer Hotel and the Bath House. The railings on the hotel are pretty thin compared to the others I've done. Usually they're a mirror image folded over and glued to give it some strength, these ones however are just one layer of card. I may look at fixing this up in the near future but right now I don't want to waste time fixing something that isn't necessarily broken.

Even the privvy is included, sans the flies thankfully.

Ok now I'll go get some sleep.

Whitewash City - Freight Office & Saloon

Put together some more of the Whitewash City buildings tonight and none of them were the ones I planned to do. Instead I put together the Overland Freight Office and the Gold Star Saloon.

These ones took maybe 40-45 minutes each with a few interruptions from the kids. The saloon in particular took the longest as there are a lot of cuts in the veranda. Very slow going.

I'm happy so far with the progress, two buildings per night with a bit of an all-nighter on Friday should result in 12-15 buildings, just need to find some time to paint the miniatures and re-read the rules.

Hmmmm Saturday doesn't look that far away at all. I'll keep going and reevaluate things on Wednesday night.

Whitewash City - First Buildings

I started out with the tents as some practice as it had been a while since I'd put anything like this together (I really should get the rest of that zombie infested shopping mall done).


All full of confidence I started on the Mail Express building, it took maybe 20 minutes to cut out and glue. The hardware store took a little longer, maybe 30-40 minutes as the veranda was pretty fiddly.

Looks good though, and the miniatures fit nicely too. I had heard some people were having trouble getting miniatures to fit that were based on the industry standard (ie GW) 25mm round bases).

I haven't tried putting on the chimney of either building yet as it looks fiddly, I'll get some more buildings under my belt first. I'm undecided if I'll leave the buildings as is or if I'll mount them onto foam card or MDF bases. Either way will be a bit of work but should add a little heft to the buildings and help them sit on the table better.

Tomorrow night: Sheriff's Office and the Hotel.

Artizan Wins!

My Artizan cowbows arrived today and they were definatley worth the wait. The casting is nice and sharp with little to no flash. The only complain is a minor one and that's that the bases of some of the minis are quite small, may 10mm around for the smallest. This made it a little tricky to mount them onto washers. I was tempted to drag out some of the 20mm GW round bases but the height of those just looks wrong now that I've switched to washers.

One pleasant surprise is that the miniatures all came in blister packs. This is a rarity amongst Internet based suppliers but it mean that all the miniatures came nice and safe in their original packing.

I'm keen to get some games of Six Gun Sound going this week so I think I'll have to get the paints out and get started on a couple of these.