Hotz Game Mats - It's Here!

I came home to find my Western Town Hotz Mat had arrived.  Wow that was quick!  As expected it came folded but from laying it out on the table I can tell that it will only take a light iron to get it nice and smooth.  The mat feels nice and light so it's not going to be a pain to carry around or roll up but it feels heavy enough to stay on the table when you lat it down.  It looks a bit rough in the photos below because I didn't take the place mats and a few magazines off the table before I laid the mat down.

This photo shows the side with just the rock scatter pattern. 

Here's a shot of the western town side.  The flash makes the streets look a lots less defined than they are in person.

The rock scatter pattern is a little bigger than I thought it would be and at first glance I thought it wouldn't look very nice but the effect looks nice over the whole table.

I can't wait to get this onto a table this weekend.  I think this is just the kind of inducement I need to pull my finger out and get the Wargods stuff painted, oh yeah and the western stuff too.

Seeing how good this mat is I think I'll look at getting one of the european hex mats for Bag the Hun, possibly a plain blue one for Bag the Hun or any naval games I may... um buy, in the not... um too... distant in the future :)

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.

Em4 Tokens and Dice

I found my order from Em4 waiting for me in the mailbox tonight. These should be rather useful for Bag the Hun and the reaction based games from Two Hour Wargames (Nuts!, Six Gun Sound and so on).

The 7mm blue dice will be rather used as altitude markers in Bag the Hun.


The coloured tokens are also the right size to be used as a reputation marker in the Two Hour Wargames systems. This should make games of Nuts pretty much record sheet free.

Also some of the coloured discs will be used for Bag the Hun as squadron markers.

I just need to find a case/caddy big enough to sort these out, another trip to the thrift/hardware store methinks.

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.

Whitewash City

I've had the starter set for Whitewash City from Hotz Stuff for a little while now and haven't had the time to start it. With my Artizan Cowboys getting some attention on the painting table I decided to splash out and grab set 8 and actually start putting them together.

I needed to go down to the thrift store to pick up some stuff for Bag the Hun (pipecleaner smoketrails) so I added some glue and cardstock to the list.


A quick spray of glue onto the paper and the cardstock, wait 30-40 seconds and then stick together. Once dried it should make a nice sturdy card-laminate-type-of-thing that should make a pretty strong cardstock building (with internal floorplans too boot).

And after 30 minutes of fumes I ended up with this:

I'll put some heavy books on top and give them a few hours to dry then later tonight I'll start putting some of them together. With around 15-20 buildings (if you count the tents) I'm aiming to put a couple together each night and I should be done and all ready by this Saturday.

But you know that old saying: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Wargamers...

Tiddlywhatsits and Teeny Tiny Dice

I just ordered around 240 odd of these things from EM4 Miniatures . The idea is to use them under the clear base of my flight stands for Bag the Hun and they, at 22mm, should fit nicely under the base of my 28mm minis for Nuts! and Six Gun Sound. The concept is to use colours to mark flights/schwarms in Bag the Hun and for Nuts!/Six Gun Sound the colours will represent the reputation value of the miniature (eg none for rep 3, White for 4, Red for 5 and Yellow for 6).

I also ordered 40 7mm six sided dice to use as altitude markers in Bag the Hun. Should stop them getting mixed up with the hand fulls of combat dice getting thrown around. At that size they could possibly stuck on the base with be blutac.

It's all great in theory... more info and photos after they arrive, which fingers crossed, if before

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.

Artizan Update

3 hours after I placed my order with Artizan it was confirmed that the miniatures would be shipping that afternoon. That is hands down the best service I've had from any online miniatures store, even the local ones here on Oz. So to Nick and everyone at Artizan: I tip my hat to you all.

So with a little luck I should have these early to mid next week. Hmmm if I start building some terrain now then I could run a few games of Six Gun Sound at the next Badga meet.

Artizan Cowboys

I actually went online to buy an airbrush and ended up getting these... how do I explain this one to my wife?

Each pack has three minis which should give me more than enough for most Six Gun Sound scenarios.

The Good
AWW009 Lawmen II, The Earps
AWW016 Doc Holliday & Wild Bill Hickock

The Bad
AWW007 Bandito's I
AWW012 Bandito's II
AWW008 Desperadoes

The Misunderstood ?
AWW001 Ill Buono, Ill Brutto, Ill Cattivo (which translates to... ah I'm sure you can work it out)
AWW002 Gunmen I

So the race is on, my Black Tree Design order has got a little over a week head start on this one so it'll be interesting to see which gets here first. I'll post pics of the winner when they arrive.