More Fistfuls of Lead

Black Sheep Miniatures, available from Warbases, have added some new Wild West figures to their range including a band of Pawnee braves and a posse of Pinkertons. These were so nifty that I couldn't resist ordering a set of each of them, despite having more than enough 28mm lead of the same ilk. The holidays are just around the corner, so I will have some painting and modelling time to kill, which is as good an excuse as any!

Fistful of Lead Last Man Standing Shootout

 

I had a good game of Fistful of Lead: Reloaded at the club yesterday, although it ended up dragging out at the end as the lawmen hunted down the last of the bandits and finished them off. This was a simple last man standing scenario, with five figures for each posse, the lawmen aiming to stop the bandits escaping on the waiting railroad train at the far end of the town's main street. The game swung too and fro with both sides well matched until the last few turns of the game. The highpoints included a lawman using his shotgun to shoot upwards through the roof of a saloon at the bandit on top, another lawman smashing through a window, doing a forward roll and attempting to shoot a bandit, who promptly shot him stone cold dead with his pistol, and a long range rifle shot which picked off another lawman as the attempted, very badly, to shoot a prone and defenceless bandit, yet again fluffing his shooting roll not once but three times at point blank range. It was good fun as always but next time I'll have a time limit!

Fistful of Lead Club Game

                    

I have a couple of games of a Fistful of Lead: Reloaded at the club tomorrow, with a player who hasn't tried the rules before, so I've rolled up two new gangs and filled out the rosters. While doing this I thought it would be a good idea to actually produce a set of character cards including all the relevant details and traits for my usual posses, so I'm going to have a go when I get some free time over the holidays.

What's next on the workbench?

I'm coming towards the end of the Knights of the Sky 1917 model building project, with the two Esci Nieuport 17s I was building now scrapped as surplus to requirements and the Airfix Roland CIIs just needing decals to be finished. I'll be glad to see the back of these, to be honest, as it was only supposed to be a January project and it's run over time.

I'm now a bit adrift, in terms of my next project and in danger of the dreaded doldrums if I'm not careful. The 15mm Picts rebasing and painting would pass the time but it's not inspiring me that much, while the Red Actions Freikorps would be quite a lot to bite off and chew in the time I've got up to Easter. 

One thing I could do is have a go at some 1/2400th Tumbling Dice ships for Mad for War, which I could nibble away at over the next four weeks or so. I've been reading the 'how to' on the League of Augsburg blog and quite fancy having a go at a French privateer squadron, as described in the Mad for War rule book.

http://leagueofaugsburg.blogspot.com/2020/02/painting-12400-scale-ship-model-for.html?m=1

This would also give me time to finish off some things that have been hanging about, including the 1/2400th Argentinian pre-dreadnoughts and the 1/600th Battle of Britain RAF and Luftwaffe fighter squadrons. I could even paint a couple of 28mm figures for A Fistful of Lead, who knows? 

I think a mix and match of things is the way to go to avoid getting bogged down in another big project, with the inevitable over runs and log jams. I've got the weekend to mull it over but I think I'll just pick up something to do that won't take too long to complete and will tick off some things on my 'to do' list at the same time.

Old West Posse Project

 

With What a Cowboy riding over the horizon soon, I've been adding some extra figures to my old west lead pile, with a view to painting at least one and hopefully two new gangs. The first of these will be bank robbers, using both Artizan and Foundry figures, while the second will be ranch hands, again using the same sources. 

I've also added some of the relatively new Artizan mounted and dismounted character packs to give me the option of using horse riders in my games, something I haven't done before even though my lawmen have mounts. I'll fit this project in somehow, as I do like a bit of western action and enjoy a decent gunfight game of Fistful of Lead, even if the What a Cowboy rules turn out to be wonky?

A Portable Fistful of Lead

 

This is an idea I've been kicking around for quite a long time but brought into focus by the game of Fistful of Lead I played at the club recently. This was a small game involving some basic desert terrain, a couple of adobe buildings and a railroad track with a train, but it took two of us to carry all the boxes into the club. 

I'm thinking of a much more portable way to play some games, especially the scenarios set in town which require even more boxes of buildings, so have revived an idea I had ages ago to do a 25mm version. This would use the Peter Pig Hey You In the Jail range, which includes character figures in mounted, foot and dead poses, as well as packs of townsfolk, gunmen, bandits, native tribesmen, cavalry and and cattlemen. 

The advantage would be scaling down the game area to a two or threefoot square board with some custom made terrain. The laser cut buildings from the likes of Blotz, Empires at War or Sarissa Precision, which feature lift off rooves, rather than solid resin buildings, so that figures could be placed inside. The movement and ranges would be in cm not inches so that it scaled down to the board size, but otherwise the rules would stay the same. 

I think this would work really well but it's just an idea at the moment that I may have a go with later in the year, possibly as a summer holiday painting and modelling project?

Fat Frank's Desert Roads

 

After much prevarication and futile thoughts of 'I could make that myself one day', I got round to acquiring some desert road pieces from Fat Frank, which you see being used a lot for various wargaming purposes. These are homemade from black plastic material coated in glue and sand then dry-brushed in a suitably arid shade of what looks like magnolia emulsion. As such, they are pretty simple but no less effective, plugging an obvious gap in my 28mm scaled desert terrain. I chose the 70mm wide version which works as a single lane track in 28mm and a double lane roadway in 15mm, so pretty handy for skirmish games in both scales. I'm quite pleased with these as long as they don't curl up or fall to bits, but I may do a little bit more painting and decorating with some tufts to blend them with my existing terrain. Now, where did I put that stagecoach.....?

Fistful of Lead Club Games

 

The lad and I had a great Fistful of Lead back to back scenario session at the club last night. In the first game, we set up the head hunting scenario which ended up with the lawmen posse all but wiped out but winning by a whisker, with the gunslinger shooting the bandit gang leader in the back on top of the building!

The second game was a mash up of the stagecoach, train robbery and hang em high scenarios, with a train replacing the stagecoach. The banditos had blocked the railroad track and had to rescue a gang member held in the wagon, while the lawmen had to stop them. It was a shane that we ran out of time with this game, as it was going really well, so we'll definitely do a replay. Great fun!

Fistful of Lead Stagecoach Shootout

 

The lad is heading back to university in a few days time so wanted a final game at the club before he leaves, his first choice bring an old favourite, a Fistful of Lead. We haven't played this for ages and although I would have liked to have painted a few more figures for a game, we'll be using my old Mexican posse and Lawmen for a proper old shootout. The plan is to try a different scenario from the selection in the rule book, so that we don't go over the same old ground again, a stagecoach hold up being the top option. I haven't actually got a stagecoach but I do have a bank bullion wagon that I can use instead, so we're ready to go! 

Pulp!

I'm a sucker for a free figure special offer, so a 28mm Biggles bundled in with a pre-order copy of the new Pulp! rules from Osprey was a no brainer. I've played quite a lot of games in the Pulp interwar skirmish genre using a variety of rules including, for example, the excellent Fistful of Lead, so already have some suitable figures and terrain. I am thinking of using the new rules as a substitute for Saurian Safari, one of my favourite pulp style games, so I'm hoping it will include rules for big game hunting, specifically for dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties!

What a Cowboy

                     

There's a new set of rules based on the What a Tanker system currently under development and in playtesting for Wild Western gunfighting, aptly if rather unimaginatively titled What a Cowboy. As I am a keen Western wargamer and also play What a Tanker, this looks really interesting and would require no extra costs for me to set up, bar the rules. I won't be ditching Fistful of Lead any time soon but will definitely give this a go. There's now an FB page dedicated to the rules if you are interested as much as I am in the project. Excellent! 

That's 2021 Done

I've decided not to dwell on 2021 that much, for obvious reasons, so my yearly review will be a bit shorter than usual this time round. In brief, I played a lot more games this year than I have for a long time, including some memorable Dahlgren and Columbiad, Fistful of Lead, Broadside and Ram and AK47 games, a full solo Naval Command campaign based on the Indonesian Confrontation, which I really enjoyed devising and writing up, as well as a Bag the Hun solo campaign and, last but not least, some games of MiG Alley and my own Wings at War variant for the Football War, Corsairs and Cavaliers. I also played a few games at the club, notably a multiplayer Cruel Seas game and some AK47, but these were few and far between as you might expect. 

As well as the actual wargaming, I also wrote an article based on the Bag the Hun Khalkhin Gol series of games that I played over the summer, now published in the 2021 Lard Mag, successfully finished play testing the Corsairs and Cavaliers rules and wrote a conversion of the club WW1 aerial rules to the modern era, aptly titled Jet Knights of the Sky. These haven't been tried out at the club yet, however, so remain on hold until things go back to something approaching normal. I also continued to support International Naval Wargaming Day, with a game of Broadside and Ram, later followed up with a couple of Dahlgren and Columbiad War of the Pacific scenarios that I devised for my 1/2400th scale ironclads.

In terms of projects, apart from the aforementioned Bag the Hun Khalkhin Gol project and the modern ships for Naval Command, including British, Indonesian, Chilean and Chinese forces, it's been a less successful twelve months. I had a lot of stuff on my 'to do' list and started on a couple of projects, such as 1/2400th scale Napoleonic French ships and a 1/3000th scale WW2 Italian fleet, but these stalled early on due to a work overload in the latter half of the year. I wish I'd managed to get these shifted as I am still keen on both of these projects and have some excellent rules to use with them, but supply work got a bit busy due to teacher absences so they are still on the metaphorical slipway. I also had some inevitable dead ends, most notably an ill judged attempt to get a 28mm British platoon painted for Chain of Command (what was I thinking!?)

I managed to avoid too many distractions this year and so did a little bit of painting rather than just adding more lead to the pile. This included a single 28mm mountain gun for my Back of Beyond expedition army, a handful of extra ironclads for my War of the Pacific Chilean and Peruvian fleets, some Royal Navy coastal monitors for my Victorian ironclads, a load of 1/3000th scale post war and modern warships (see above) and a complete flotilla of E Boats for Cruel Seas. I also painted all of the 1/600th scale Japanese and Russian aircraft for my Khalkhin Gol project and some extras for the Football War and MiG Alley projects as well. I even scratch built a railway for AK47. Not too bad, if not a massive inroad into the lead mountain.

That's all folks!