Getting Into the Wild, Weird West!

It might come as a shock to you that in Oklahoma, in the center of the United States, it's almost impossible to find a Western game.  We went a long way to find a game that fit the genre and our needs, and it traveled across the ocean to get to us.  It seems as if the entire countryside full of gamers has absolutely no interest in this genre.  Well, except us here at the Wargate.

It really should be natural for us to get into this genre, but although enthusiasm is built up pretty high there's very little actual historical knowledge about this period with most gamers, especially those here.  Let me clarify we had everything we need as far as roleplaying games go - what we started looking for was a way to bring the action to our miniature battles!

Since we started the World of Darkness Wild West game a few years ago, we've been looking at how to bring it to the table.  There's a lot of different game systems out there, but it was difficult to find a new-ish game to help bring the enthusiasm level up.  As I said before, our game stuff had to travel a long way to get to Oklahoma.


It took a little searching around, but Wargames Illustrated has some coverage of all eras.  In that esteemed magazine, we saw a little about a game called Dead Man's Hand.  We searched for it high and low, but were only able to get a copy in from the United Kingdom.  This, for a wild west game.  We live in OKLAHOMA.

Great Escape Games has done a great job - Dead Man's Hand seems to fill all the criteria we were looking for in a skirmish game.  We had a few Wild West miniatures lingering around from various purchases previously, but most were Reaper...and a few of them I've been unable to identify.  Not even really sure where some of these came from, but there were at least four different manufacturers in our Wild West case before we started this project.

After looking through several manufacturer's catalogues, we settled on what we were going to use to populate our Weird West.  In addition to the Dead Man's Hand range (which is nice and has great sculpts, it's rather limited) we will be using Black Scorpion Miniatures' Tombstone range.  There's a wealth of cool miniatures in there, and they are FANTASTIC sculpts.  The resin Black Scorpion casts in is also one of the finest materials on the market and I suggest you check some of their work out.  With Great Escape, Black Scorpion and Reaper's model ranges leading our charge into the West, we'll have more than enough stuff to keep us busy for this season and the next.

"Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges!!"

Yet as any wargamer knows, you can't just have the miniatures without building terrain for the milieu.  Lucky for us, 4Ground's American Legends range has the makings of our dusty Territory township.  Those are great terrain pieces, and since we intend to build the town square of our main settlement we can expect to see several of these constructions building in Smokefall Ridge very soon.  Not only that, but the Blackwater Gulch range has EVEN MORE great kits we're going to grab up to help populate the Settlements.

"Get a rope."

It's not hard to imagine the entire place.  Dusty roads, a dirty well and a few facade buildings.  Livestock will be kept, and fences.  It's almost a model railroad project but for the fact that this is all centered around gaming.  There's all sorts of variety.

Whatever the case in Smokefall Ridge that would necessitate the construction of a gallows, one thing remains certain:  you're probably going to need one, eventually.  And for me that's good enough reason to build one - notwithstanding how cheap it is!  Going forward into this project with our group is going to be a blast.

We don't need a HUGE amount of new items, and can afford to focus on the whole thing as a collective.  As we build up our model collection and terrain set, the Settlements will become a more solidified place in our hearts and minds.  Welcome to Smokefall Ridge partner - in miniature.