7th Cavalry

Let's get this new blog started with my 7th Cavalry squad for Dead Man's Hand.

Me and my dad were toying with the idea for a while whether to get Dead Man's Hand to try it out. After a lot of uming and ahing he got the set of rules first (with the 4Ground game tokens) and after a quick 'let's see what this is like' introduction game I also got a copy of the rules and went with the Legends of Dead Man's Hand as well. It's a very fun and fast paced game using D10 and D20 (only need one of each for a game) with card activation and special ability cards to create advantages and disadvantages to you and your opposition respectively.

My dad already had quite a large selection of Wild West figures bought cheap from eBay (mixture of Dixon and others) to use with a set of rules he had put together, I also ended up buying a few (mine from Artizan, where they had the 7th Cavalry reduced at the time), and on top of those we already had a gift from one of the members of our club kindly donated a bag-full for us to split amongst those of us interested in playing (which were a mixture of Perry and Foundry I think).

So out of the many figures I have for the Wild West I started with my 7th Cavalry. All are based on 25mm washers (I had a real problem with the first lot of washers I bought not being magnetic and I had to attack the figures to pry them off the base, not fun when they were stuck down with super glue! One trooper KIA).

I can't remember all of the different paints I used, but they were a mixture of Citadel and Vallejo. The figures were all undercoated with white then the block colours were applied. Once dry a wash was applied, then after the wash had dried a highlight of the original base colour mixed with a bit of white. A quick and easy job that looks alright for gaming.

 Undercoated with some base colours applied

 

 A finished trooper to see what the end result would look like

 

Painting finished and all based with sand. I used some small stones I had from the GaleForce9 scenic basing range to cover the unsightly washer holes in the bases.

 

Same finished troopers

 

Close up of the officer

 

After the PVA used to stick the sand had dried the bases were painted, drybrushed and the whole model was spray varnished before small amounts of static grass was applied. The two figures to the left (also Artizan) is the start of the rest of the Wild West figures. The flag for the 7th Cavalry was from Flags of War and the flag pole was just a small bit of metal rod cut to length (the flag pole sticks into the base so it can be removed for transporting).

 

I really like the Artizan  models, they are nice to paint with good amounts of detail. Dead Man's Hand is a good fun set of rules that is well worth trying out, there are also figure sets to match with the different 'gangs' in the rules. And 4Ground do an excellent range of flat pack laser cut MDF buildings.

The 7th Cavalry mid-game, unfortunately I was so immersed in the game I forgot to take many photos. Rather than buying the game tokens from 4Ground I ended up making my own from the downloadable sheet from the Dead Man's Hand downloads page (useful page), I had some 15mm square MDF bases from a previous project and scaled the tokens to fit then cut them out, stuck them on and sprayed them with varnish to protect them.