Dead Man's Hand - The Horse Soldiers

Even when you're actually being quite productive hobby-wise it can sometimes be difficult to update the blog. Such is the case currently for me, so apologies for the radio silence the past two plus months. But, as you'll see, I've been quite busy with the usual myriad of projects.

First, I had several games of Dead Man's Hand at the club with Jeff, but more importantly we're introducing the game to new players and even have plans to put on a demo table at local game store. 

A few weeks ago we introduced a club member, Lance, to the game as well and these pictures are from that game.

Something I've always wanted to get to the tabletop in some fashion is the sequence from the movie "The Horse Soldiers" where the Confederates attack Newton Station by charging out of the arriving train, and this was finally my opportunity to do that.

The narrative was that the Confederates, in disguises, would attempt to sabotage the local telegraph office.

There was a wagon near the gun shop, loaded with weapons and ammunition, that was a secondary objective.

The Union camp near the edge of town.

Milt McGuiness, owner and operator of the Red Dog Saloon.

I had a couple of Rebels "hiding" out in  the local saloon waiting for the signal to have the getaway wagon ready across the street - this basically gave Jeff, who was playing the Confederates, two deployment points. 

And of course the two models in the saloon both got Queens to start the game off.

On the very first roll of turn one my lawman got taken out of the game with a one shot kill by one of those Confederates hiding out in the Red Dog. Pretty much par for the course for my luck.

One of the things I really love about DMH is the interrupt cards - one card was played on this model by Lance and that meant he joined the side of the Union forces protecting the telegraph office.

He got right into the action and starting shooting at the Rebels jumping out of the boxcar.

He actually ended up with one kill as he took out the model across from him in this photo, who was attempting to hide behind the boxcar.

The boxcar was an area of quite a bit of action.

Lance ended up running his entire unit up from the camp into the fray headlong.

When talking after the game Jeff said that totally took him by surprise and made him readjust his initial plan for attacking the telegraph office.

 Again, you can see all the carnage in this area.

These box pieces are from the Rorke's Drift set and are pretty nice but after putting them on the table and seeing them in play I'm going to need to Dremel down those bases - they are resin so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. This was GEG Jonah Hex model hiding behind the crates.

One of Jeff's models carried a bag full of dynamite and he ended up having that model jump on a horse and make his way over to the telegraph office.

The end result of the dynamite on the telegraph office! Great game and lots of fun as usual, but the best part was we got another new player into DMH 😀

Before this last game one thing I decided to do was go back and do some more weathering and detail work on a few of my buildings.

I went over all the planks of wood with different colour washes and inks to give them a more realistic look.

I couldn't be happier with the results!

I feel the buildings actually look much more "real" now and I'm really looking forward to doing even more little touch-ups to enhance the look as well as cutting down the edges on all of bases of the buildings. 

My original plan on making the bases like this with the hard edges was that everything would be modular and that I could butt each building base up to one another creating different modular town set ups.  I think in hindsight now they will look much better with a beveled edge.

As I mentioned above I've actually been quite busy hobby-wise and very productive. I built and primed all my Zulu wars models - 120 British and 204 Zulus.

 

Multi-part plastics are definitely not a favorite of mine, and it took me probably close to two weeks to complete everything for each side. I will say that the quality of what you get between the Perry models and Warlord models is night and day. Had I known at the time I would have only gone with Perry but getting the Warlord stuff at super clearance prices was a no brainer.

Just to break the monotony of building plastic models for so long I painted up some figures.

I decided to do all the metal heroes in addition to a few of the rank and file models. 

I also got 60 Perry ACW Confederates done.

And some Union Zouves. 

Jeff printed out this cabin from a Kickstarter he backed and I painted it up.

I'm still sorting through the best ways to tackle painting 3D models as it's very different from everything I ever done, but overall pretty happy with the results here.

I will say you definitely get a bit spoiled by the 4Ground kits with the working doors and roofs that come off, something this models doesn't have.

I got this message in Blogger saying that if I have any followers by email that they will no longer get my posts that way. I have to dig a little deeper into this as it does say I can inform those who follow by email of the change but for now, if you do follow by email and would like to continue it looks like you'll actually have to hit the "follow" button on the top right.

On a personal note, our son graduated from the University of Cincinnati last month with a degree in architecture 😀

His final project was "incredibly ambitious" as stated from his professors.

Looks to me like there's some possibilities of designing 3D buildings for tabletop gaming if this architecture thing doesn't work out lol!

I really like how he took an idea for a five year plan to convert vacant and unused buildings into something new and unique to the area. 

Incredibly proud of all his accomplishments over these last four years and I'm certain he's off to bigger and better things in the future. 

And finally welcome to new follower Lance King, appreciate you hitting the follow button. 

Until next time, thanks for looking!

Ivor