Let's make a bet

One of the sub-challenges in this year's Painting Challenge was for Gamblers and Risk takers. Handily this also matches Curt's fee model as well. Following one of my themes for the challenge, Curt is getting one of the most well known gamblers in the Old West... Wild Bill Hickok

The model is from Great Escape Games and their Dead Man's Hand range.

Defensive Terrain

Defensive terrain was a very subjective and ever so vague title for a bonus round and caused some pondering. Inspired by the Epic Fail entry, I decided to keep this one fairly simple and add to the Old West project at the same time.

The cowboy is from Great Escape Games as part of their Dead Man's Hand range with a few pieces of terrain from various places.

From this angle it looks like a fairly big base for him, or a small diorama. Turn it around a bit and it starts to make more sense...

He pops off the base to be useful elsewhere, or allows someone else to take his place behind the barricade. I forgot to paint it up, but there is a second stack of grain bags on a base that fits into the gap so it can be used as pure terrain.

Epic... fail!

One of my aims for this year is to build up a small Old West project. With the kind present of some Black Scorpion models in the Secret Santa this year, the project had it's starting point, but the subject of one of the side-challenges this year gave me an interesting idea...

What could be more of an epic fail than a western gunfight with no survivors?

These six are all from Great Escape Games. Now I just need to find matching standing figures for them all, otherwise they are purely terrain or markers.

Shadows of Brimstone

While browsing Kickstarter I came across yet another rather excellent looking product called Shadows of Brimstone from Flying Frog Productions, which means it should get loads of support in terms of expansions, miniature packs and free scenarios. Shadows of Brimstone appears to be a Warhammer Quest-like game set in the wild west... with gribbly cthulhu-like monsters. So far, sounds pretty damn awesome.

There are two core games for sale, each with its own heroes, monsters and tiles, all of which look like they will be brilliant for pulp or western miniature games as well as actually playing the game they are meant for. At 35mm they should fit well with Black Scorpion miniatures.

In terms of the campaign progress... its only a couple of days old and the $150 level currently breached 17 stretch goals totalling an additional 2 sets of adventure cards, 10 extra/alternative heroes, a mutant outlaw gang (6 mutants), 6 serpentmen, 3 large lava monsters and a ton of extra board pieces as well as everything you're supposed to get for the pledge.

I'm kind of on the fence about one of their pledge levels (or set of...). I can't decide if it is a brilliant idea, or not. They keep releasing groups of 50 early bird pledges that net you both boxes, all of the normal stretch goals, another set of all the miniatures from the boxes and every single paid-for add-on for free. Each time they release another batch of early-birds they up the price and announce another round of add-on characters, monsters, quests or tiles. Currently the list of add-ons is looking quite impressive, but the current batch of early-birds is sitting at $475! To be fair, that's still a bargain if you wanted to get everything, but still... it'd be nice to have caught one of the first round that was a mere $325 and gets exactly the same stuff.

There's also the age old issue of them not having sorted a European distribution channel, so there are the hidden costs of import taxes to add onto whatever you buy as well. Shame really as it is looking like a fun game... not if only they would say more about how it actually plays or show more of the models they may get another massive spurt of backers.

I promise I'll get back to some painting posts soon!

Gold mine discovered!

We had a look through the Oxfam book shop today and came across something that just couldn't be left behind, especially for £3.

This book is full of short articles that cover true facts that are weird or downright strange.

The book is divided into 18 chapters that start off with science and nature related items and moves on to the main reason I bought the book... there are chapters on hoaxes, unsolved mysteries, world explorations, strange customs and legendary beasts. From just a quick flick through the book so far, it looks like ideal fodder for pulp style adventures, even if the science chapters are 37 years old and out of date.

Each article is less than a page long, so is perfectly formatted for plot ideas and easy to flick through for inspiration.

Who knew that the world's largest nugget of gold was almost as tall as the man who found it and weighed nearly 187lbs? Useless? Maybe... but fascinating none the less.

Another example, also involving gold is the tale of a gold mine in Arizona where you could tap the wall gently and bars of solid gold would tumble to the ground. There are official records to show a number of prospectors all claiming to have found this mine and made quite a lot of money, but each time one of these prospectors returned, they were killed by the Apache tribes in the area, who believed that the prospectors had become greedy and tainted. You can't get more pulp than a mysterious gold mine protected by Apaches can you?

I may pull out (metaphorically speaking) any good ones and post them into the Plot Hooks section.