From RobH (HerrRobert/RobertH): Señor Oliverios' Retainers (50 points)

Señor Oliveros crouched down in the scrub, waiting. El Borracho sat nearby, drinking straight from a green bottle with one hand, checking the cylinder of his revolver with the other. In all the years he'd known El Borracho, Oliverios had never seen the man without either whiskey or weapons to hand. His pet iguana, El Guapo, crouched on his shoulder. Men from his hacienda dotted the rough ground nearby, ready for the signal.

Señor Oliverios' Retainers

So begins my second entry into the 15th Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. Señor Teodoro Oliveros leads the men from around his hacienda to confront someone, be they the French, the Yankees, banditos, Villistas, Federales or perhaps even Spaniards or Cuban revolutionaries:

• Teodoro Guerra, Raúl Luna, Luis Aguirre and Loco Sanchez (remember him?) have armed themselves with machetes
• Martin Reyes carries a large scattergun or blunderbuss
• Octavio Montoya and Luciano Peña have muskets
• Javier Solis carries a repeating rifle, perhaps a Winchester
• El Borracho and El Guapo have a six gun

Señor Oliverios leads from the front

Eight of the ten figures (all but Solis and El Borracho) are Wargames Foundry figures from the Old West pack OW161 - Mexican Peons. I'd bought them years ago off ebay, and they'd been sitting cleaned, washed and ready to paint for at least two years now. After our last Legends of the Old West game of the exchange, they called out to paint.

El Borracho is a Reaper Chronoscape figure marketed as Lobo Sanchez, Bandito. My figure's package came with a smudged label which read more "Loco Sanchez." Since I already had Loco Sanchez, I needed a new name. Given that the figure is carrying a hefty bottle of something alcoholic, El Borracho, The Drunkard, seemed appropriate.

The figures weren't too bad to paint up, although the sandals and El Borracho's serape and inner thigh had some trouble spots, as did his hair and Señor Oliverios' cummerbund - the red kept bleeing onto his white shirt.

Three of the figures were painted to test a khaki color combination for the Spanish-American War: Delta Ceramcoat Terretorial Beige for shadow, Khaki for main, and then a wash down with Army Painter Soft Tone. It works for rough cloth, but is too dark for a khaki. I will probably try using a pale gray wash next time, and see if that is lighter.

Rear view of the party

The rest of the figures had the same white I did for Loco Sanchez as a prisoner in my previous entry. Señor Oliverios' pants and hat, along with El Borracho's hat and serape, were both done with Territorial Beige as main and Vallejo Cork Brown as a highlight, then washed down with Strong Tone. It makes for a good medium brown. I switched up my straw hat mixture, highlighting with Reaper Buckskin Pale after the Soft Tone wash, instead of before. It worked much better than doing the Soft Tone wash last, so I went back and touched up the prisoner's straw hat from my last entry.

Before and after capture, showing the touchup on the hat

I label all of my 19th Century colonial figures on the bases, with the yellow, green, blue, red or black of the label indicating skill. It's something I picked up playing a homebrew set of rules for gaming the Indian Wars in my teens/early twenties, and since I started basing my figures for that rule set, it has persisted. Figure names are written in with either white gel pen (0.3mm tip, brand new for the challenge) or 0.005mm artist marker.

The band from overhead, showing the labels

I'm a little more satisfied with the photos this go around. I got a slightly better camera app for my phone, which allows me to control the focus point, exposure and light balance better than the usual point and click of an iPhone. I also bought an attachment for my tripod, so I can use it with the phone. They're not as crisp as the black background photos Curt shoots, but they look better. I may switch to a white background though.

Springing the ambush on some French invaders (the French I bought at a con and need to rebase)

Scoring this entry is:

• 10 28mm foot figures @ 5 points per figure = 50 points.

That's also my first Squirrel Point, and 50 more points in the Colonials duel.

 

 

Sylvain: Not only are your miniatures very colorful, the characters you depict are also very colorful. I like how you add stories to your post,as it makes looking at your figurines a lot more interesting. I also find inspiring the way you coded your bases. All in all a great entry. Excellent work!

 

 

From Rob H (HerrRobert): The Border Exchange (5 points)

April 1898: The Trans-Pecos of Texas is a land of extremes, hot days, cold nights, desolate terrain, sparse population and barely suppressed lawlessness far from everywhere. American and Mexican garrisons soak in the beaching sun, attempting to maintain order as bandidos and Comanches cross the border as suits their own nefarious purposes. Those caught on the wrong, side of the border may yet still face what passed for justice in these parts - or be used as coin to trade for those caught on the other side. 

The prisoner waiting to be exchanged

So begins the setting for today's game of (heavily) modified Legends of the Old West. When I first began wargaming, about thirty years ago in the late 1990s, blogging was the province of self-created websites. Ian Croxhall's The Amazing Adventures of the Red Shadow was one of the sites I had bookmarked and routinely read through for new games featuring the Algerian Goumiere scout and the various misadventures of the French, Germans and Italians across the North African littoral. One of my favorite scenarios was The Red Shadow and the Salami Exchange, which featured the French and Italians attempting to exchange prisoners and the Mujahidine crash the party. Hilarity ensues, naturally.

Side profile, perhaps as a mug shot?

I've always wanted to adapt that to a setting that suits my collections, and the US/Mexico border was the best fit. However, the setting required an unarmed figure to serve as one of the prisoners being exchanged. Fortunately, I had just the figure, already mounted on the base and just needing primed, flocked and painted.

He's a 28mm Wargames Foundry figure from the Old West pack OW166 - Mexican Villagers (2nd from the right above), painted in about 2 hours Friday night after work. I went a bit lighter for his clothes, using Delta Ceramcoat Antique White and then Reaper Linen White, washed with grey and then rehighlighted. His straw hat was a Reaper triad (Chestnut Gold, Palomino Gold and Buckskin Pale), which I washed with Army Painter Soft Tone to bring out the details. He was the first figure I had painted since the last Challenge, and having caught Bargain Bob's Basement Bunker version of the various diseases circulating around California for Christmas and New Years, getting started painting anything was a real effort. It's not efficient by any means, but it was fun just working on a single figure.

I love how sullen his expression came out

Despite lint-rolling my photobooth to remove all stray flock and static grass and making sure my miniatures were well lit, the photos turned out rather disappointing, especially compared to shots from today's game. They have a yellow tone and colors are washed out, which does not usually happen when taking gaming photos using the exact same iPhone. The edge of the base in the photo above should be jet black, and so should his hair. Upon reflection, I suspect the problem may be that the black background and high lighting overwhelm the iPhone camera at standard settings and wash things out. 

F Troop, 7th Cavalry escorting the prisoner to the exchange on the bridge over the Rio Grande

For those interested in his fate, Loco Sanchez was duly handed over to the Mexicans, put in the prisoner wagon, and taken to the jail in El Paso del Norte. However, when negotiating the narrow streets, the wagon bucked dodging a small child. Gunfire from the Mexican garrison killed the wagon driver guarding the prisoner, probably by mistake. Sanchez jumped down from the wagon, made a run for it, and was then shot while attempting escape, bleeding out in a dark alley. 

He's making a run for it!

Life is cheap in the Trans-Pecos.

Scoring:

• 1 28mm foot figure @ 5 points per figure = 5 points

And 5 points on my side for the Colonials duel with DaveD! Yes, Mexico and the Old West counts as colonial, especially Mexico because of the Maximillian Adventure.

On the plus side, this is probably the earliest I've posted anything for the Challenge, so every modest bit helps. And we had a wild, freewheeling 6-player, 5-sided game, which is always good!

Sylvain: Great figurine! White clothes are always tricky to paint and you nailed it. The background story adds a lot of character to a humble model, he's not just a villager, he's "Loco Sanchez who was shot during a prisoner exchange". Thanks for the pictures of your game, it looks great with the scenery and people typical of the old Far West.

From ByronM - Old West Lawmen and Cowboy [History Section, Overdue and Returns] (80 points)

Now that the Christmas season is over, I can actually get down to painting....  One of the projects I really wanted to work on this year is getting in some Old West gaming.  I designed a pile of Old West buildings over 5 years ago for my laser cutting business and sell a ton of them, but have never actually gotten them painted to play with since I never actually had many old west miniatures.  This year both issues have to be resolved...  I aim to paint up a selection of terrain and miniatures.

With that in mind, first up is a group of Old West Lawmen that I 3D printed.  The files are amazingly detailed and come from 3DBreed.com and are from their Join or Die: Wanted collection.

I have still been having issues with my eyes and focusing, making painting detail a real issue.  Just part of getting older, or so I am told.  So while I really wanted them in pin stripe suits and vests, I could hardly make out faces, let alone doing clean stripes, so I kept them extremely simple.

In fact, these were super fast to paint, as I primed grey, then white from above, and then used Vallejo Xpress paints for the most part.  Guns, buttons, badges, belts, and holsters were painted after.  Over all though while very simple and basic, I really like the effect.  

Also included is one other foundry old west cowboy that I painted up to match the one small gang I painted over a decade ago when thinking of playing old west games (but never getting around to it).  He is painted very roughly, with a lot of dry brushing and brush marks, all done on purpose to match the old figures and not my newer painting style.  I don't especially like him, but he does match the other characters I have painted from that era, so that is as much as I could have hoped for.

I am submitting the Lawmen as a historical entry, and the single cowboy as an overdue and return.  I know Curt would prefer separate entries, but I really don't think and entry with one figure (unless amazingly painted, which this one is most definitely NOT) is a great idea either, so this post covers 2 spots in the library.  Points should be 40 points for 8x 28mm figures and then another 40 points for the two theme bonuses, for a total of 80 points.

Ah well, we'll overlook the combining of locations just this once then ;-). It is an amazing entry, Byron. I have printed and painted some of the Join or Die figure myself, and I agree they are great. So is your painting, even if you yourself consider it a simple job. I can't really fault the conspicuous absence of pin stripes, as they look very well as they are! And they are lawmen and cowboys, no East Coast dandies, are they not? A fine job you have done on them, well worth the 80 points!

Martijn

From ScottC: Western Sheriffs [History] (110 points)

My first post of the new challenge, it was a very productive year off!

My first submission is a band of Sheriffs for an upcoming Legends of the Old West or What A Cowboy this winter.

Foot models: The Good Guys faction pack by Gunfighter's Ball - Knuckleduster. The mounted files are 3d prints by 3D Breed. All 28mm.

Elly

Chester

Arkansas

The Duke

Ol' Peg Leg 

Jimmie

And a Murder of obligatory crows!

Points:

Infantry  x6 = 30

Cavalry x 4 = 40

Crows I'm counting as 15mm infantry, 10 @2 points each =  20 points

Bonus Challenge points (history) = 20 points

Total = 110

TeemuL: Very nice cowboys, some of thdm look quite familiar. A productive start indeed!

Edit: I noticed an error on points and fixed it.