Dead Man's Hand: US Cavalry

 Great Escape Games has recently expanded their range of multi-part multi-pose figures for Dead Man's Hand to include US Cavalry (and their dogs).

Peaky Blinders - The official Guide

 As I mentioned at the end of my first post about Flat Caps and Truncheons, I have never watched Peaky Blinders. I was in my local The Works (other discount book sellers are available) a couple of weeks ago and saw this on sale.

It has a number of colour photographs of the cast, set and vehicles, which I thought would be useful reference as well as descriptions of the production.

Flat Caps and Truncheons

 Flat Caps and Truncheon is a two player starter set for The Chicago Way game from Greate Escape Games. The Chicago Way is set in Prohibition era Chicago, this set transports the action to Interwar Birmingham, inspired by the BBC series Peaky Blinders.

The game comes in a large box.

The box contains fifteen 28mm scale white metal figures and fifteen standard Renedra 25mm round bases (I used Wargames Atlantic 25mm dual use bases for the figures so I cound have a flat blend in with the puddle bases on the figures).

There are seven Peaky Blinders figures including one with a Lewis Gun and another withh a WW1 German submachine gun.

There are seven City of Birmingham police, three with rifles, two with pistols, one with a truncheon and a plain clothes one with a pistol.

There is also a Molly Suffolk character.

There are the required cards, both generic The Chicago Way and Flat Caps and Truncheon specific ones, plus a set of markers. There is also a character card for Molly Suffolk.

There is a standard The Chicago Way rule book, and a three leaf fold out sheet with three scenarios and the stats for the police and criminals.

I was rather disappointed with the latter, I had hoped for more details on the set up (I have never watched Peaky Blinders).

Flat Caps and Truncheons - The Police

 At Colours I bought Flat Caps and Truncheons, a Chicago Way starter set.

There are seven police officers, six in uniform and one plain clothes.

The sergeant.

Three police officers with bolt action rifles.

Two police officers with revolvers and one with a truncheon.

Group shot.

Scarlett and Browne, a very British Post-Apocalypse

 Jonathan Stroud (also the author of Lockwood and Co - made into a single season on Netflix) has just completed a British Post-Apocalypse trilogy.

After an undefined Great Cataclysm, Britain is divided into seven Kingdoms. Most of the people live in the highly regulated Surviving Towns, under the watchful eye of the Faith Houses who ensure orthodoxy, both behavoral and genetic.


The map of Britain is both familiar and different. Between the Surviving Towns are the wilds, infested with a whole range of nasty and deadly fauna, including The Tainted (think Rage Infected).

Scarlett McCain is a young robber, who specialises in robbing banks, and occasionally Faith Houses. She is deadly accurate with a revolver and has no hesitation in using it.

Her life changes after she finds a crashed bus with a single survivor, a teenaged boy.

The figure is from the Gunfighters II by Great Escape Games with a Stargrave head.

I still have to find a suitable figure for Albert Browne. I am hoping the Wargames Atlantic Male Survivors set will provide something suitable.

A Faith House Operative (book two).

The body is from the Great Escape Games' Dead Man's Hand Gunfighters set, the arms are from the Frostgrave Wizards set and the head is from the Stargrave Crew set.

The bowler hat seems to be the official headgear, occasionally colour coded for your convenience.

Two Town militia, in their official bowler hats and (when painted) tweed jackets. 

More Dead Man's Hand Gunfighters.

Great Escape Games: Dead Man's Hand Street Scatter

 As part of the Dead Man's Hand Redux set there is a plastic Street Scatter set.

Warfare 2023

 For the first time in a while, I went to Warfare. For reasons as baroque as why the SELWG show is in the Lee Valley, Warfare was in Farnborough (okay 1.5 miles from the nearest railway station according to the web site, though whether that was as the crow flies or including going way past it to get to the entrance I do not know).

SELWG does lay on a bus service to and from the station, but for Warfare it was a bit of a slog out there.

There was a lot more of the companies I buy from at SELWG, but there were some surprising no-shows, which lead to some rearranging of tables that made finding some of the traders more difficult as they were not were they were on the map

I did end up buying a number of sets of rules, so in no particular order.

Seven Days to the Rhine, Cold War rules for the 'eighties. Though designed for 15mm, I am looking at either 10mm or 6mm.

Crooked Dice had their 2.5 version of their Cinematic Skirmish Rules. Combining the rules from the previous variants into a common book. They had lots of new figures, a number of which I also bought.

This is the first Fistfull of Lead game I have bought. It is a simple game for mechanics (and Kaiju) battles. No to find some suitable figures.

Pandyman had their new World War One Trench Offensive starter set. More later.

Winter of '79, set during a fictional civil breakdown during the late 'seventies. Small scale skirmish.

Other items, from Empress I bought a Hornet tank.

And LK-2 tank, plus a T64A.

From Pandyman I bought a number of their modern emergency service figures including Riot Police.

Fire man.

Police.

And two armoured Paramedics.

There were a lot of other things bought, but that is for a later post.

On the way back the route goes past the Farnborough Aeronautical Science Trust museum. There are a number of interesting items on display outside, one day I will come back and have a look in the museum.

Gunfighters II from Great Escape Games

 Great Escape Games have released their second set of multipart plastic miniatures.

This is the first one I assembled.

Not really happy with it, it is rather odd looking.

Lacking instructions, there is a bit of trial with plenty of error in getting the right combination of legs, torsos, arms and head.

They are of a similar size to Crooked Dice's William Killian.

Here is a comparison with a Stargrave plastic Crew II.

Great Escape Stargrave Gunslinger

 Great Escape Games released their multi-part multi-pose Western Gunslingers in June.

This was at the same time as the release of Stargrave and the plastic figures from North Star.

So here is a combination of the two.

This is the duster coated body with the advancing legs from the Gunslinger set combined with a head, arms and gun from the Stargrave Crew set.

Here he is on set

Now I want to build a Chicago Wizard for hire using the same body.

Great Escape games Gunslingers

 

Here are the sprues.