Fantastically Quick Service and my What A Cowboy Project

I placed an order to Sarrissa Precision a few days ago and already received the product. It was delivered extremely fast. The buildings came with a nice painting guide as well. Very pleased with the service.

I ordered some row houes, row house gardens and a cantina. The first two are for some Normandy games I have been thinking of and the latter to prepare for What a Cowboy whenever it releases. At the same time I ordered from Sarrissa, I also ordered a Mexican force for What a Cowboy from Peter Pig. I have the makings of a nice little Mexican village. I have a church and a few low buildings. But the cantina looked really nice and I thought it would make a great addition. They have a few other western buildings that I would like but I held off for the time being.

What a Cowboy is really interesting to me due to the low figure count. That and Peter Pig's western offerings are interesting. They have big man packs that include mounted, dismounted and dead figure. Their minion packs have mounted, foot, dead and now a wounded pack. The dead and wounded are generic figures for the type. The foot and mounted come with either pistol or rifle armed. Some packs have shotguns. I have a few of these figures already. The plan is to have small forces that I can swap out figures for depending on their current state. Since the figure count is rather low (3 or so figures per side) this would work out well.

I have enough to play but I have wanted to field a Mexican force. I picked up the pistol armed figures and the Big Pedro figure. My existing force has a few lawmen and some bandits. My western terrain, besides the Mexican themed terrain, is all paper buildings from the wonderful White Wash City line. The price was right at the time and it didn't take too much effort to make terrain to fill a table to play a few games with my son. Now, though, I am looking at some of the options for MDF terrain and rethinking that strategy. I may have to revisit it. But for now, I have terrain to use.

For paper terrain, I have almost the entire set from Eric Hotz's Whitewash City. I know of 2 buildings that I am missing in his existing set but I only have about a dozen of them built. I think my other terrain are old JR Miniatures buildings.

In going through what I had completed, I pulled out the miniatures that I have. As it turns out, I have more painted figures than I thought. I have the makings of four groups and a group of civilians. The civilians were a gift from a wargaming friend in Canada (Thanks Mike!). I have not really based them yet. They are glued to a piece of computer motherboad material. I want to finish them off at some point. The signs and railings behind them are also from Mike as well.

The gangs will eventually be used for What A Cowboy. I have them painted in schemes where they will more or less match one another. I have one gang painted up with a leader in mounted, dead and foot poses. He then has 3 minions with two of them with dead figures. In the picture you will see that there are multiple basings used. This is because the tiny based ones were purchases off of ebay years ago. The ones based on US Pennies are the ones I painted up.

My second gang has five figures in it and one has a dead pose. The mounted leader figure is still on its painting stick. I also have five more dead figures to paint up. The third gang has two painted figures. I have two more unpainted figures for this gang. The last gang will be treated as lawmen. I have five of them painted with no dead figures... yet. The mounted leader figure is on the painting stick but not even undercoated.

I found someone's campaign game that they had set up using Whitewash city buildings. The doc they made had maps of various cities in fictional Fromme County, Nevada. https://www.iandrea.co.uk/wargames/resources/W3G/FromeCountyMaps.pdf is the location of the maps. The site is well worth checking out for some canned backgrounds to start a campaign. They did a great job with it.

Trees and More Trees

I am not sure if I posted about a recent Etsy order. I found a person selling tree bases. These seemed useful and I placed an order. Here is what I received from them.

I had some of my existing pine tree bases laying about and had some time over the past couple of weeks to get started on them. I have completed 3 groups of trees so far with many more to go. One pine tree base is complete as well as two of the new bases. I am playing around with how to make the trees. I have several articles and youtube videos I am trying to emulate to varying degrees of success. I have these finished beyond this but only took a picture before flocking the pines and the other set.

I am starting to run into storage probelms with the trees. But the trees are getting better than my original efforts glued to a washer. I hope to get some more work done on them next week.

Happy Valentines Day

Been a rough weekend and the week is hopefully going to be looking up. Dealt with a little Covid in the house over the weekend to keep things exciting. But the worst of it seems to be behind us.

I did get to finish a Game of Sharp Practice with my son over the weekend. Bending the rules a bit (because I lost my rulebook!) we combined what I could remember with my copy of the first edition of the rules, that I could find. My son managed to get both of his war canoes across the river and won the game. The Scout Boat took enough shock that they fled off down the river before I could manage their shock.

The scout boat is my 3d model printed by a friend with swivel guns attached from Thoroughbred Miniatures. They recently updated their website. The gallery shows some 15mm models but the store does not have them listed. They probably just haven't gotten to it yet.

It was a fun game but I really need to improve my swampy grount terrain. I have the plants to do it, I just need to spend the time.

I will work on some more trees before I run my next game. I bought some packs of MDF tree bases from Etsy. It is amazing the stuff you can find there. I have enough to cover about 3 square feet of table. Hopefully that gives me time to find the rulebook. Fortunately my opponent is both patient and a good sport about these things.

I have made some changes to the map for the Battle of Bloody Marsh based on my trip to Cumberland Island. I wish things were moving faster but such is life.

New Terrain Stuff from Game Craft Miniatures

This is the first time I had ordered from GCMini.com since thier move from California to Tennassee. I placed an order from them and WOW was the service quick. They had an ad going on Facebook fro the Gamers Grass products. I ordered some of the lazer Plants. The Elephant Ears and Bracken. I also ordered some of the basing mix and the Spikey Green Gamers Grass.

I received the package in record time. But instead of the Spikey Green, I received a second pack of Elephant Ear. I emailed them and got a response in an hour. They had the replacement on its way. Fantastic service. The replacement Spikey Green Gamers grass arrived along with some GCMini.com dice and candy. All in all, I couldn't be happier. If they only sold trees.....

I plan on making some terrain items that are difficult going terrain. I have never used these products before so we will see how it goes. I am excited to try out the basing mix. If I end up liking it, I will order more. The tub is small so it will be used for miniatures and not covering terrain.

I have plans for the weekend but if I get a chance, I will try to work with this stuff on Sunday. Check out Game Craft Miniatures. I really like their stuff.

WOJE Playtests

I was able to do some work on my game room to get organized. I installed some sliding shelves in a couple of cabinets. I have added a folding table to the painting area. All good changes but nothing that moved me closer to completing the WOJE book. But I was able to set up a couple of tests.

First I did some small scale actions with the Scout Boats. I have a scenario that honestly can be run with either To Covet Glory or Sharp Practice. Spain's Indian allies have stolen a scout boat. They are escorting it with a couple of war canoes. The Georgian's are in hot pursuit with a pair of scout boats. I was playing around with it and noticed that the plastic sheet that I use gave a slight reflective surface when placed over the blue felt that I use for naval games. I place some small sand colored circles under the plastic for sand bars. Then can place other terrain on top of that to show the shore line extended under the surf. This led to a fun picture.

I had trouble with the river I created. I made a thin plastic river that I painted the underside of. I was pretty happy with the results but put the river in storage. While in storage, the paint stuck to itself and peeled away from the sheet. I had to throw it away. Was very disapointed. I had a home made ground sheet that I was curring up to use for various things. i cut a large section out of it for my new wide river. It looks OK but I may get some more plastic sheet and try to adhear it to the cut ground cloth to get the look I want. Who knows if that will work or look right. But to my colorblind eyes, it looks OK for now. Would love to get some comments on it.

I will be running a scenario with my son on this table soon. Hopefully it will go off well.