History for Fun, Profit, and Insight: Old West Undead Miniature Wargaming Army

An Old West Undead Miniature Wargaming Army in 28mm Scale

But first, deep thoughts

on hobbies, stress, and living a Good Life

Years ago, I set an informal personal goal of painting a different miniature wargames army each year. As I have gotten older, I have gotten away from that, but I think it was a good goal, and I will try to get back to it. Not too small, it's a real hobby. Not too big, it is an achievable goal and a fun one.

If a hobby goal is too big, it's not achievable, and if it's not achievable it becomes frustrating and a source of stress. And that's not the goal of a hobby. In fact, its the direct opposite of what a hobby should do. Hobbies are to destress, not increase stress, and while I, for one, have lots of unpainted figures collected over the years for several reasons, I also have a very sedentary job. Painting wargame figures does not help people, it does not make the world a better place, it does not really help me achieve my dreams (save for the small dreams involving owning nicely painted figures,), and should only paint figures when it relaxes me.

And in today's internet, social media, highly connected world, it's easy to find yourself unconsciously setting hobby goals that climb higher and higher as you try to impress your social media contacts on the other side of the world with your hobby related accomplishments or at least keep up with them. Little social media voices from strangers continuously joke about things like "You can never have too many miniatures" and the (alleged) importance of painting, painting, painting all those figures and doing so to the increasingly higher (yet admittedly wonderful and impressive) standards that we see in magazines like "Miniature Wargames" and the internet. In such cases, one needs to catch yourself, recenter, recalibrate your perspective, and remember why are doing this in the first place --to have fun and relax.

My advice, remember that. And when you forget, as I surely will from time to time, try to catch yourself and remember why you are here.

Which brings me to photos my latest project, The Old West Undead Miniature Wargaming Army.

The Old West Undead Miniature Wargaming Army

Figures

Figures come from a variety of sources.

The undead or zombies come from Foundry, Reaper, Artizan (Dracula's America range), Great Escape Games, and the old 1990s Deadlands range (those are the noticably tall ones). Several are conversions made from some extra Artizan dismounted Seventh Cavalry that I had acquired but wasn't sure what to do with. Conversions often consisted of drilling holes in them with a mini-drill and adding wounds with an exacto knife. A couple undead figures from fantasy ranges were painted appropriately and slid in.

The Grim Reaper and the Cowboy Vampires on Foot were from Pontoonier but purchased through Badger Games (Many of the zombie figures were also purchased from Badger Games.)

The Vampire on the Haunted Bicycle from Eureka's Pax Limpopo range and is sold as "French Lady on Penny Farthing." Making her a vampire was done with a carefully chosen paint job and a little bit of green stuff ectoplasm adding to the one and a half inch washer I used for her base.

The gray coated necromancer leading the zombies is a simple conversion from Copplestone's Back of Beyond range "Mad Baron" figure. (The historical "Mad Baron" was a crazed warlord with very strange and bloodthirsty beliefs who led an army in Central Asia during the mid-war period. He may be best known for leading his army to burn Ulan Bator, the Capital of Mongolia. See: War History On-Line. ) The figure was modifed by adding a sword to the foot figure so that he would match the mounted figure and adding gree stuff flames to the bases of both the foot and the mounted figure.

Note that both the Grim Reaper and the Mad Baron figure came in sets of a matching mounted and dismounted figures for the same character. This is how I prefer to buy figures for skirmish gaming when availability and the budget allow.

Rules

As for rules, there are a quite a lot of Old West Gunfight Rules out there. Most of them are quite good and produce good games. Several have rules for supernatural creatures, but not all do.

I have recently started using Gunfighter's Ball rules. They produce a good game, but they are designed for smaller actions than I'd like. Although well researched, they are intended for fun but historically sound games and do not include rules for supernatural creatures.

I have written my own rules to add the things I want to these games, but I haven't playtested them yet. Therefore, I am not ready to discuss or share them. Perhaps in the future.