The Claim Jumpers

A couple of weeks ago we had another Old West shootout.  Usually we use Desperado, but this time we tried Six Gun Sound since we used NUTS! a few weeks ago for the battle for the Hornet and I use ATZ for zombie gaming.  Seemed to work fine - all we did was sit there and shoot at each other 'til one side was dead. 

Perry took this very nice picture of my Dixon wagon

(used with his permission). 

 

Basically, two miners were hanging around outside the mine, waiting for the wagon to return from town with supplies when three claim jumpers rode up and tried to finish them off. 

 

 

One of the claim jumpers stopped on a hillock in front of the mine (above) to try to hold the miners down while the other two rode up each side to outflank them.  Here's one of them taking cover behind some scrub (below).

 

If we had thought it out and done some prior planning, we (I was a claim jumper with Perry, while Doug and John were miners) might have at least been able to run off the miners pack mule, if not gotten control of the wagon and headed it off, also.  

 



In the end, if I recall correctly, one of the miners ran away and one was wounded, while one or two of the claim jumpers ran away and one died.  The miners saved their claim and went back to digging gold, while the surviving claim jumpers had to find their way back out of the hills without their horses.

Below is an overall pic of the table, also courtesy of Perry.  This is actually the third or fourth game we played on this particular table set-up, including a 28mm Sci Fi game and at least one other.  The mine entrance is at the top of the picture, behind the wagon, fire and mule.  You can see one claim jumper on the hillock in the center, one behind the bush to the left of the mine entrance and one partly behind the hill the mine is in, along with one of the miners.

 

We couldn't play tonight, but I'll be running another WWII game next week using NUTS! so stand-by for more action.  Next week's game will be Brits vs. Germans in Norway...with a twist!  In the meantime, though, happy gaming!







Injuns!

Well, not much gaming going on lately so I thought I'd throw another game from a couple of months ago up here.  We had three or four miners in the camp next to the river get attacked by four Apaches.  Two entered from opposite sides of the board with the miners sandwiched between them.  Again, I didn't get any really good shots. 

One of the Apaches on a hill with the miners' camp

in the distance.

The Apaches did quite well.  I think one might have gotten wounded, while all the miners were killed or wounded.  I think one of them got away by skeedadling off the left side of the table.  I could be mistaken, though.

Two of the miners in the river, shooting at the Apaches

entering on the other side.  They didn't see the ones on

the near side until was too late!

Another shot of one of the guys in the river.







One of the Apaches in the miners' camp.

The figures are all Dixon and the tents are from Whitewash City by Hotz Artworks.

This week will just be some light gaming or boardgames because of Easter.  Hopefully the following week we'll do some naval gaming.  Until next time.



Willkommen! Bien Venue! Welcome!

Although I already have two blogs I can't keep up with, I thought I'd add a third one to highlight the usual gaming that I do.  My first two are an imagi-nation - the Democratic Republic of Yerbouti - and a zombie gaming blog.  This one will show everything else that I do.  Which is a lot.  My wife just shakes her head. 

Mainly, I want to highlight my figures.  Some of them are pretty ordinary, but some of them I have to admit I'm very proud of, having put a lot of work into them.  I'm almost embarassed to admit that some of my 15s take almost an hour per figure to paint (I'm a slow painter anyway - even with a cruddy paint job I can only finish about five of the little buggers an hour on average), and the Old West 25s can take up to three hours depending on the complexity of the figure. 

My WWII figures in the header are a good example of why it takes me so long to paint.  I brought them to the shop of a friend who's a professional painter once.  He opened the box, glanced at them, said "Oh, I see you paint all the unnecessary details," and closed the box.  He took a better look at them later and agreed they are beautiful figures.  But yes, it takes me forever to paint them.

I have some catching up to do, since I intended to start this a few months ago. I do have a couple of games to post so I will go ahead and start with an Old West shootout that we did a couple of months ago.  Basically, we each picked a location in town where our characters began and just started shooting and moving from there.  We were using the Desperado rules and it didn't take long for the blood to start flowing.

I'm having trouble rotating this image, but it shows the

layout we were using.  The buildings are all Whitewash City

 on a plain 3 x 5 tan felt mat.  The big building at the bottom

 right is the saloon (seen below), with the sheriff's office and

bank to it's left.

At this point I don't even remember who was who.  I think

Doug was in front of the saloon.  I remember I was in the

second floor window above him.  When he got wounded

he dove through the window behind him.

This was me coming around the corner of the bank after

running out the back door of the saloon and around behind

the sheriff's office and the bank. 

Just so you know, no one won the game!  If I remember correctly, Doug and I were the last two standing and we bled out on the same turn. 

In my other blogs, I put a list at the right of the websites of where I get my wargaming figures and such.  That would turn out to be quite a list without a narrow focus but I will include that information in the body of the post.  All my Old West guys are Dixons, the buildings are all Whitewash City as noted above, and we used the Desperado rules.  I have several other sets, but I'm most comfortable with these for the Old West. 

Looking at these pictures now, I'll have to make sure I do a better job with the photography from now on so the figures are clearer and can be seen close up.  Anyway, I'll post some more later.  I have a WWII battle on film (or at least on digits) and another Old West fight with Apaches attacking a mining camp, and in the next few weeks we'll be doing an AWI battle and a WWII coastal battle or two.  Somewhere in there we're heading off to Cold Wars as well.