A gaming friend of mine recently picked up a copy of Warhammer Historical: Legends of the Old West, which is a Wild West skirmish wargame. Reading the rules it’s sort of a franken-game, combining the best features of Mordheim, Necromunda and the GW Lord of the Rings systems. Unfortunately it still retains the awful ‘I go, you go’ scheme that GW games can’t seem to escape from, but fortunately it has staggered rounds which offsets that somewhat.

As I’ve often admired Black Scorpion’s range of Tombstone range figures, I thought this would be an ideal time to pick some up. However I didn’t just want cowboys, but rather some figures that might mix into my Pulp collection as well. Black Scorpion have two groups of female figures that seemed like a good compromise, Tombstone 5 and Tombstone 6, most of which would work in a Pulp setting too. I ordered them from the Black Scorpion site a couple of weeks ago and they’ve just arrived, so here’s a quick review and comparison against a couple of other independent figure manufacturers.

Casting

On unpacking it’s clear the figures are well cast. There’s almost no flash (one figure of ten had some flash under an arm), and only visible mold lines on a couple of figures that had to be filed down. The mold lines are also well placed, with no lines crossing faces or other important details. One minor annoyance is the fact that I had to straighten the barrels on every figure holding a gun out of the box. I suspect this is because rough handling by international post, as the figures have travelled from the UK to New Zealand. As you can see from the photo the figures use a slotta base system and have molded on tabs. I’ll probably be cutting a few of these off so I can base some figures on wooden planks.

Sculpting

The figures are well sculpted with a nice variety of clothing and hair styles. For female 28mm figures they have fairly realistic proportions with only a single figure displaying an enormous chest and cleavage – I guess there had to be one! They’re generally statically posed, with only four of the ten figures actively aiming or drawing their weapons, but it’s a nice mix of poses I think. The static figures are presenting their arms in a gun-safe but threatening manner.

They also have a nice mix of firearms, with two shotguns (either of which could be filed down to make them sawn-off), two recognisable Winchester repeaters, four armed with a variety of single and dual revolvers and two unarmed ’showgirl’ figures (maybe they have derringers). This mix of weapons makes them ideal for putting together a couple of Legends of the Old West posses.

In terms of detail the figures are passable. Period costume of the Old West was pretty simple and this is reflected on the miniatures, with decoration consisting of tassled fringes and the odd bow. In terms of detail I’d say the Black Scorpion figures are comparable to the Copplestone Casting ranges, but not as detailed or crisp as the Artizan Designs collection.

The wide mix of clothing, hats and hairstyles will keep the figures interesting to paint though. I particularly like the figure that looks like a gentle homemaker, in a full dress and leg’o'mutton jacket, clutching a sun umbrella in one hand and a Winchester repeating rifle in the other…!

Scale

Black Scorpion state their figures are ‘32mm’ scale, which equates to the so called ‘Heroic 28mm’ that Games Workshop use. Here’s a photo comparing several of the Black Scorpion figures to an WWII Artizan Designs 28mm German and a Copplestone Castings female archaeologist. I’ve chosen the tallest of the Black Scorpion ladies for comparison and as you can see there is a noticeable scale difference. However as it’s not often you see figures lined up like this on the tabletop I can’t see any problem mixing and matching these slightly larger figures with the rest of my Pulp collection.

Cost

At GBP7.50 for each group of five figures, plus 15% for shipping internationally they’re a pretty good deal and I’m perfectly happy to recommend them to anybody after some 28-32mm Western miniatures. I ordered directly off their site and had no problem getting the items shipped international air to a New Zealand PO Box.

Black Scorpion also have several other interesting looking ranges, in particular their Pirates, Fantasy Pirates and Iraqii Militia all look good to me.

I recently made the mistake of introducing my lovely wife to the Battlestar Galactica TV series when I bought the three season DVD boxed set. Since then I’ve been forced to watch several episodes of BSG a night and consequentially haven’t got a lot of painting done. After our last Pulp game I was at least inspired enough to finish off these two Pulp figures. I’m also half way through painting that final 15mm Carthaginian base.

The lady on the left is from Copplestone Castings and the Wehrmacht sentry is from Artizan Designs. That lantern jawed German has been kicking around my paint station for no less than two years, since I last got some Pulp painting done. So it’s a relief to finally have him packed away in the gaming cupboard.

The irony is that having painted some Pulp figures, Daniel and his flatmate, in a fit of madness, dropped $300nz each on Warhammer Fantasy figures. So it seems we may be playing some Border Patrol in the near future! Might be time to assemble some of the Orcs I bought in 2006. Funny how this stuff goes in cycles isn’t it?

My gaming mates and I kicked off a new year of gaming with a bit of Pulp .45 Adventure madness. Simply because Pulp is a nice, fun game and a few of the group hadn’t tried it before. For the occasion I threw together a stand alone Pulp scenario that can be played without any sort of moderation – as it’s usually me that ends up moderating and not getting any gaming in!

I’ve converted the Tempus Fugit scenario into a small PDF you can download. The scenario is designed for four to six players, each with a couple of figures. It’s pretty straight forward except there’s a hidden aspect, so players don’t know who else is a friend or foe. This resulted in some hilarity in the play through, with my own villain and his sidekick getting ruthlessly and repeatedly shot by other villains on the table. I guess there’s no honour amoungst power crazed madmen?

This post continues and completes the earlier part of the tutorial. Once again, I’m not an expert painter but always try to speed paint to a reasonable tabletop quality. If you recall we left the half painted Anglian Miniatures Moroccan drying after applying a chestnut brown ink wash.

This left the figure looking rather dark and very shiny because of the wax in the Klear floor polish I used. That’s fine though because once the wash dries you’ll have a very stable, hard coat you can easily paint over.

5. Painting Over the Magic Wash. The point of the chestnut ink wash was to define the folds and edges in the figure. In a sense the quick ink wash provides a similar effect to the ‘black lining’ others paint with. This is where you prime your figure black and build up the colours over that while leaving thin black lines between the various areas of the figure.

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Matakishi’s Tea House has an excellent tutorial up showing you how to quickly create these fine looking WWII airbase buildings. They’ve built largely from cork tile, cardboard and matchsticks. Put together they make a great table for all sorts of Pulp gaming.

The rest of Matakishi’s site is top notch too, and if you’re a Pulp gamer you’ve probably already seen his cork-tile inner-city buildings in the past.

Via Rattrap’s Speakeasy.

The first thing I’d like to say is I am by no means an expert painter. As I’ve mentioned in previous polls I paint solely to get figures onto the gaming table as quickly as possible. With that self deprecation out of the way, here’s the second of three posts regarding painting Pulp figures for a North African desert setting. This post is a continuation from the previous 28mm Desert Basing tutorial as once you’ve based your figure, you’re ready to paint it.

For this tutorial I’ll be painting up one of the Anglian Miniatures Moroccan Spanish Civil War tank hunters from the basing tutorial. As I’ll be using him for generic Pulp gaming I’ve made no attempt to adhere to historic colours so apologies to any Spanish Civil War buffs out there!

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As I’ve purchased a few more rounds of 28mm metal figures for Pulp gaming it’s time I started working on them. Some time ago a reader expressed curiosity about the way I speed paint my Pulp figures for the gaming table, so I plan to put together a couple of tutorials around that.

Of course, before you paint a 28mm figure you’ve got to base it! So I’ll start the ball rolling with this tutorial on basing figures for the Egyptian/North African desert setting we game in.

1. Assemble your materials. I use Selley’s ‘Permafill’ wall repair product for basing my figures. Applying and clean up is easy because it’s water soluble, and it also dries to a very hard surface. I use the Permafill for a basic smooth sand effect, to add a little variety I scatter small rocks across the bases too. Primarily I use a mixture of three different sizes of Woodland Scenic’s Model Railway ballast and fresh kitty litter – that’s the white stone you see. For larger rocks I use pieces of cheap green marble scatter from the local gardening centre.

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