The Chicago Way Police & First Game

Work on the farm has been absolutely crazy busy; everyday 10+ hours, so it's been hard to keep chipping away at the long "to do" list for The Chicago Way. I wish this game came out in February when all the horses were down south and I basically had a 10 week vacation (though I did get quite a bit of my Bolt Action backlog finished)!  Anyway, a busy couple of days saw me complete my first gang for TCW. I decided to paint up the police first, as I felt that they would be the easiest to finish quickly.

I started as usual with painting the skin tones first and then did the main blue color, which was Vallejo Intense Blue. As you can see that blue wasn't anywhere close to the color I wanted (the photo below on the figures to the right).

To darken up the blue I used Army Painter Ink Quickshade Dark Tone. It took 4 coats of the ink to get the blue to a shade I was happy with!!

Here is a quick photo of 4 of the officers with their shading completed with the other 3 without - you can see what a huge color difference there is without the shading.

And the full gang completed. Clear bases were still in the mail at that point.

Jakob and I played a quick game (almost 3 weeks ago now) of TCW and only used the figures, no vehicles, just to get a feel of the rules since it had been forever since we played a game of DMH. Jakob played the gangsters and I took the police. The scenario was a liquor raid at the Wrigley's building.  Here are a few photos of the board I quickly set up for it.

Some Dead Man's Hand buildings made their way onto the board to fill in space. I think that the bank could actually work in this setting if I took it off its mdf base and changed a few other things.

We used the photographer as part of the special civilian rules. If you control this figure he will be a part of your gang and you can move him around the table to take "photographs" - adding a re-roll bonus to any of your figures within 12 inches of him.

The interesting twist to civilians is as the "bad" guys gang, if you kill a civilian you add one card to your hand.

I won control of the photographer, and he ended up with the highest activation card, so he got to move first. I did a "move, move" and put him into what I felt was a good position outside the Wrigley's building near the truck.
Jakob was next to activate, and what does he do with his first activation? Moves one of his figures just inside the building into a position to try to shoot the photographer. What does he do with his first shot? Rolls a 20 for an instant kill; adding another card to his hand. Honestly, kids these days. So yeah, I really got to enjoy the new civilian rules; by moving him a total of 12 inches. That last sentence was written in my sarcasm font :)


A lot of the action turned out to be a fire fight outside the entrance to the Wrigley's building - with me rolling as I normally do when I play games, horribly, and Jakob the complete opposite, ridiculously good.

We did have a pretty brutal hand to hand fight between the officer next to the yellow car and the gangster in the gray coat, which was good cinematic fun.

As usual Jakob ended up winning the game, but it was fun to give TCW its first go. Next time we'll get some vehicles into the game.

When my clear bases arrived, I immediately began to prep the police officers for them. I decided to try pinning the figures into the bases as opposed to gluing them; the glue always ends up leaving a "frosted" look around the feet of the figures, no matter how careful you are.

I used florists wire for my pins. The little hand drill was perfect for both the figures and the base. 

I was able to pick up 50 Litko clear bases for $15.00 off of Ebay, so a pretty good deal I thought.

Cutting the bottom off of the figures was pretty easy with the cutters and Xacto knife.

I drilled holes out in the feet and the pins went in really easily. Then it was just a matter of cutting them down to size.

I used the pins in the bottom of the figure to make my marks for the drill holes in the bases - positioning the figure where I wanted it and then pressing down a bit. This left little marks in the base giving me the spot for the hole. Pretty easy.

The biggest lesson learned was that I should do the basing before painting the figures. I had to do some touch ups to several of the figures where I was holding them (hats was a big one), and then all the shoes needed repainted from the cutting of the Xacto knife.

The final results worked out brilliantly! Everything was solid in the connection between the figures and base, nothing loose, and of course absolutely no "frosted" look because of the glue.

Next up are some new buildings for the board!

As always, thanks for looking!
Ivor