In the mid-nineteenth century, according to some reports, the neighborhoods of the City of New York were dominated by fearsome gangs. One of these, according to these reports, was the Irish gang from the Five Points neighborhood known as the Dead Rabbits.
If you've read the first two installments in this series, then you know that several manufacturers make figures and rules for wargaming the conflicts, battles, and riots involving these gangs. However, for better or worse, if you've read the second installment, you know that the history of these gangs, up to and including whether there was a real Dead Rabbits gang, is controversial.
Which leads a wargamer intent on gaming the period with a dilemma. What's a guy to do when he's intent on painting a bunch of figures to represent that seem to have never actually existed as described? Well, as any good gamer knows, paint on!! Huzzah and Hurray!! Never let reality get in the way of painting figures if they are figures you truly wish to paint! And, if they are not a real thing, then use as much imagination and pizzazz as possible and if done right, and the results are impressive enough, no one can possibly complain!
And thus I made my decision to create a reproduction of the Dead Rabbits, not as they may or may not have been, but as they should have been regardless of whether or not they actually existed. In other words, I have sort of taken reality as a jumping off point and am working on sort of a steampunky sort of Dead Rabbits gang.
And to do this, I needed a few special figures. Fortunately not only are there a lot of interesting figures out there waiting to be bought, prepped for gaming, and painted, but converting figures into something special and unique is a fun part of the hobby.
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The five special figures I bought or converted for my Dead Rabbits Gang. From left to right, a standard bearer marching off to battle with a Dead Rabbit on a pole, a female Dead Rabbit with a cavalry or naval saber, a drunken Irish street berserker, a second standard bearer proudly holding another dead rabbit on a pike, and, of course, a gorilla in a top hat. One must have a gorilla in a top hat, after all, or something is lacking from your Dead Rabbits gang. If your opponent should object to the presence of a gorilla in a top hat in a historical game, well, your choices are simple either put the gorilla in the top hat back in the box and get on with the game (if he wishes to be historically sound and all) or get a new opponent and put the one who objects out on the street instead. Regardless, the presence of a gorilla in a top hat among your figures does not require that such a figure be used in every game, but it most does increase your options when preparing for a game. And, it looks cool.
A second view of the figures under construction.
Below, I will describe the figures and the work done on them.
First, an introduction to converting figures. In order to convert or modify a miniature figure, you need the proper tools and supplies. A good Exacto or hobby knife is required but here's some of the other supplies I used.
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"Green stuff" --sculptable epoxy putty. One cuts or tears off a bit,
mixes the two colors together, kneads carefully until it all turns
green, then stick on to a figure or sculpt as desired. It is sticky and
takes a bit of practice to work with, but you can do fun stuff with it.
It used to be available in mainstream hardware stores but these days
it now only seems to be available from specialty hobby stores.
Games Workshop sells it but, again, you can also but it from
the Army Builder Company.
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| A good hobby drill with small drill bits was required. This one is so old I have no idea who made it or where I obtained it, but I saw that a similar drill is now available from the Army Builder company. I do not own their drill but their other supplies have worked quite well for me. |
If you wish to order from The Army Painter Company here's their website:
https://www.thearmypainter.com/
"Green stuff" is here:
https://shop.thearmypainter.com/products.php?ProductGroupId=5#Green%20Stuff%20(2019)
Be advised, while I have bought their products several times in hobby stores and been pleased with the results, I have never ordered off of their website. My guess is, though, that if there were problems with their service, I probably would have heard it.
Of course, you will need some "crazy glue" or cyanoacrylite. This comes from several companies in differing qualities and containers. I've found that Loctite Super Glue Gel Control works well and comes in a container where one is unlikely to discover that you have accidentally glued the gap on tight, usually rendering the product worthless and useless and in need of replacement. I like the stuff.
Someone told me that J-B Weld Super Weld is stronger and it's a liquid, not a gel, so I keep some of that around too.
The Original Figures
I decided that if I were going to model a unit of Dead Rabbit gang members charging into battle with standard bearers waving dead rabbits on pikes in the front, I needed a couple more such standard bearers. And some other distinctive and unusual looking figures would be nice to have too.
I dug through the "Gangs of New York" figures I'd purchased and found two that I thought would make nice standard bearers. Then I looked around to see what else I might have that could be used to create distinctive figures. I found these.
The top two gang members looked like they would make good standard bearers. They are, I believe, both from the good people at The Victorian Arm Chair General. ( look around here. You should find them:
http://www.thevirtualarmchairgeneral.com/211-bhoysfigs2.html )
The one on the bottom showed a lot of potential. Long time readers might remember I've done Roman gladiator gaming ( see
https://history-for-fun-profit-and-insight.blogspot.com/search/label/Gladiators ) The ) figure comes from the Wargames Foundry gladiator range. (see
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/gladiators ) Specifically:
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/gladiators/products/glad013-circus-favourites
Clearly, he's a big, hairy, northern European barbarian condemned to the arena. Some time ago, I ordered a bunch of Roman Gladiator figures off of ebay and wound up with three of these guys, so this seemed like an excellent place to try to put one to use. More on him later.
Dead Rabbit Standard Bearers
This was a relatively simple conversion. First I took the two figures, trimmed the flash (mold lines) and excess metal from them with a hobby knife, then I glued them on to pennies for bases. I do this with most of the figures in a unit. That way they have uniform sized bases.
Next, with the hobby knife, I cut off their clubs. Obviously I put them on a small piece of scrap wood first.
Next thing I needed was the pikes or spears that would become the standards. For these I dug in my spare parts box (any good modelling hobbyist should have a box full of spare parts that he can dig into and pull things out of for projects in the future) and found some Old Glory miniatures spears.
Old Glory 25s in the USA makes many interesting and useful figures at good prices, but their spears and pikes are particularly useful, in my opinion. Made of sturdy piano wire with a molded metal head, unlike the spears on many figures, they don't break. In fact, they make an excellent source of replacement spears for when the spears and pikes on your 25 and 28mm figures break off. I recommend them highly.
You can buy them here
https://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/products.asp?cat=407
But you will also need some little dead rabbits to put on the pikes, now, won't you?
I could think of two sources for these. The first was to sculpt a little dead rabbit out of green stuff, which I did for one figure. The second was to buy a little 28mm rabbit and drill a hole through it and put it through the pike. Of course, it's tough to find some 28mm rabbits.
Not impossible, Reaper Miniatures does have some 28mm Jackalopes. (see:
https://www.reapermini.com/miniatures/savage%20worlds/latest/59024 ) which interestingly I do have a pair of but I did not wish to destroy them and put them on a pike. (Hmmm? Might they make an ally to the Dead Rabbits? Or an enemy? Interesting idea)
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| These are not my Jackalopes but the professionally painted Jackalopes painted by the people at Reaper Miniatures. |
Fortunately in my parts box I did have some 28 mm cats. Again, we have the fine folks at Reaper Miniatures to blame or thank for this, depending on one's frame of mind. Some time ago, they came out with a figure of a "crazy cat lady." I lived upstairs from a former belly dancer turned crazy cat lady for a couple years, a sad and frustrating experience but so typically a Schenectady one, so I had to have a 28mm crazy cat lady. She pops up in some of my science fiction or wild west gunfight games. Here's the Reaper Miniature. You can see she came with a lot of extra cats. My extra cats wound up in the parts box. (If you want to buy your own crazy cat lady,
https://www.reapermini.com/search/cat%20lady/latest/50235 )
Extra 28mm Cats from the parts box. Courtesy of the figure above.
So I took an extra cat, removed it from the sprue and drilled a hole through it and ran the spear shaft through the hole. You can see this below.
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| (those cat-like things at the top of the picture? |
You can see the resulting standard. You will also note that I did some sculpting with the hobby knife on the figures hand to completely remove the club and prepare it for holding the standard.
Later I removed the cat's long tail with a hobby knife and added some ears and a tail to it using green stuff so it would look more rabbit like. The result is below.
Note that with both of my standard bearer conversions I did drill a small hole in the base of the figure where I could insert the end of the pike and create a stronger hold.
For the second standard bearer, I took a completely different strategy and just sculpted a tiny dead rabbit out of green stuff and ran the wire handle of the spear through it. It appears like I did not take many work in progress pictures as I did but you can see the half completed result below. The standard with the green stuff rabbit lies on the wood while the figure that was prepared for it is in the center, second from left.
Dead Rabbit Crazed Drunken Berserker
This one was a lot of fun. (Yeah, I've got my own sense of fun.)
You will recall we started with the north European barbarian gladiator figure with two swords. I chose him because he was sitting around, unused and looked shaggy, unwashed, and savage, something I wanted in at least one member of my Dead Rabbits gang.
I decided that to make him into a 19th Century drunken Irish brawler, I'd need to give him some pants, modify the swords, and give him a hat. I thought he looked pretty scary if armed and shirtless, as some dangerous drunks tend to be, and actually went so far as to try and trim down his sandal straps to make him barefoot, but a hat seemed like a really good idea and I wasn't quite sure where I'd get one.
Fortunately the gorilla figure, the one I am so proud to own, came with not just a top hat but a tiny bowler cap that looked just right for this figure.
Not sure where to begin exactly I drilled a hold partway into the top of his head. If this confuses you, don't worry. It will become clear later as to why I did this. You can see the little bowler hat next to him and you can see that I had already drilled a hole right smack through the hat itself.
After this was done the next step was to prepare for the addition of pants by removing much of the loincloth with a hobby knife. Obviously, this had to be done carefully so that I did not cut my fingers.
You should be able to see here if you look carefully that chunks of the loincloth have been removed.
Next came the process of adding the pants using the green stuff. This had to be done a little bit at a time over many days a little bit at a time. Of course, I wasn't worried overly much about getting too much, as I knew I'd trim it down when done, but I had to add just a little to get it to stick and then dry in place. Working with green stuff can be tricky as it is sticky, especially when doing detail work on something this small.
Here's some pictures of the work in progress.
This is the final result prior to trimming the green stuff with the hobby knife.
Now, remember the hole I drilled in his head? Remember the hole drilled through the bowler hat?
Now it's time to still a short piece of wire or pin in that hole, zap it in place with the Loctite gel, and let it dry. While at it, it seemed a good time in the process to glue the figure to a penny and trim those Roman era long swords into nineteenth century daggers, again using the hobby knife.
Next slide the bowler hat down the wire.
After that snip off the excess wife and glue it all in place with the loctite gel.
Why not just glue on the hat with the cyanoacrylate? Simple, if you do it that way, it will fall off. Sooner or later that glue will crack and it will fall off. At least that's my experience, so it's a good idea to drill and pin, then glue if you wish a strong bond that will last.
And there you have it!! A crazed, drunken, mid-nineteenth century streets of New York berserker with no shirt and a bowler hat. I'm frighteningly proud of the results, of course.
Dead Rabbits Female Slugger (a Mort? )
I decided my gang needed a female member. Not a woman who stood by the sides and threw bricks, but one who actually waded into the middle of a big, ugly brawl, and made her presence known. But where to find one?
Since Reaper Minis has all kinds of interesting and unusual figures, they seemed the place to go.
So, first I went to:
https://www.reapermini.com/ and then I used their figure finder tool on the website
https://www.reapermini.com/miniatures/metal
I found this figure and decided she'd work fine for the job. "Red Petal Su" --I'm not sure what she's supposed to be but she looks like a woman pirate of the late 17th, early 18th century. Good enough. Context is everything. She's a mid-nineteenth century Gangs of New York Dead Rabbit now.
As you can see, her stand was much larger than a penny though. I decided to fix that. (And, by the way, I always feel guilty when I glue a figure on to Abraham Lincoln's face but it seems better than putting him face down on the ground.) As you can see elsewhere, I cut off that metal slab from the bottom of her feet, the one that fits into the slot, and simply glued her to the penny using the cyanoacrylate. You can see photos of the end result elsewhere on this blog.
Dead Rabbits Gorilla
When I saw this on the Brigade Miniatures website, I knew I had to have it. It comes from Westwind Miniatures Empire of the Dead range, a steam punk range featured in the first blog post in this series.
A photo of the figure in the package.
The opened package, a figure, a plastic stand, and two hats! How lucky I was that it came with not just one but two hats!! Many thanks to the folks at Westwind Figures.
Preparing the figure for painting took very little work. I used some of the green stuff to put the figure in its stand (I decided to leave the large stand as it is a large figure) and then drill, pin, and glue the top hat in place for a strong seal.
The photo below shows the clipper I used to snip the pins down to the desired length.
Wa la!! The completed project! Simple and so cool!
Finally, it can't hurt to repeat some of the photos of the shots of the specially converted figures, now ready for priming and painting.
Books and Media for the period.
There is a variety of media one can get if you wish to explore this period of American history in more depth. Please remember, if you order through these links you are supporting this website.
First, once again, we have this wonderful set of rules.
Second, we have Herbert Asbury's classic yet sensationalized work, "Gangs of New York." Asbury was writing in the 1920s about life in the mid-nineteenth century and historians who look it over pretty much universally feel he was more interested in entertaining the reader than sticking to the facts and presenting a historically accurate document. It's an entertaining read that has been through several editions, but should not be taken as gospel. This is probably why when you look for more details and other sources on some of the things he describes you simply don't find them, as it is likely that they never existed.
Tyler Anbinder's "Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum," is a more serious history of the time and place written by a contemporary author. The two books at times contradict each other.
The Great Riots of New York is a late nineteenth century work that describes historical events as the author understood them to have happened. It is probably one of the sources Asbury used to write his book and parts of it are well worth reading to understand this period.
Yes, there was a big Hollywood movie based on these things and the events in Asbury's book. Perhaps unexpectedly, I was not a particularly big fan of the film, neither are the people at TVAG either by the way, they make that clear in the introduction to their wonderful rules, and it is also not particularly accurate in its depiction of history. Dates are mixed and some of the details not quite right. Nevertheless, if you are going to game this period, it's gotta be a "must-see" film so, if you wish, consider buying it through this link.
I was a bigger fan of a much lesser known BBC-America show called "Copper," which portrayed the adventures of a New York City police detective during the American Civil War. The show ran for two short seasons only and the actual number of episodes is a bit limited but it was a very interesting series and gives an interesting depiction of the underside of the City of New York at the time, even if it does not mention any of Asbury's gangs. Be forewarned that is a very dark and at times difficult to watch series but very well done. For instance, several episodes of the first season deal with the main character's attempts to get a 12 year old prostitute off of the streets and into a better life. She is portrayed disturbingly realistically. The situation is complicated when it turns out she is fleeing an abusive, yet completely legal, marriage to a man three or four times her age, and the legal options under the laws of the time are quite limited when he announces he wants her back. (The age of marriage at that time was much, much lower than now.) Worth watching if the period interests you and you can stomach dark materials.
Please be aware-
while there are only two seasons of the show available, they are being sold in several different packages so there are six items listed below.
And one more time, the awesome rules . . .
Finally, my books . . .
Yeah, I've written books. Please check them out and see if they interest you.
