Citizens of Calamity - Knuckleduster Iconic Faction

I have been messing around with the town of Calamity again. Revising old thoughts and such, nothing worth writing about at this point. I have decided I need to do some painting though and I pulled out the Iconic Faction from Knuckleduster's Gunfighters Ball Kickstarter. I have cleaned them up and primed them and hopefully they will see some paint before the end of January. Rubicon Armor kits keep distracting me from painting minis it seems. 

I cleaned these up and overall I'm pretty impressed. Of course there were a couple of figures with mold lines across their faces and in some really hard to reach spots as well. Some of the details are a bit soft but I think that's just related to the 3D sculpting and printing process rather than a mold flaw. They looked considerably better after I primed them with the gray primer (Badger Stynylrez).

Nothing identifies these minis as specific characters but if I had to put some names to faces I would go with: Rooster Cogburn (the John Wayne version), Maverick, Shane, Marshal Dillon (Gunsmoke), the Rifleman and maybe William Munny.

Left to right: Rooster Cogburn (True Grit, John Wayne), Shane (Shane, Alan Ladd) William Munny (Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood), Maverick (Maverick TV Series, James Garner), Marshal Dillon (Gunsmoke TV Series, James Arness), Lucas McCain (The Rifleman TV Series, Chuck Connors). Identification is just idle speculation on my part.

Kickstarter - Gunfighter's Ball, Knuckleduster Miniatures

A very large, very damaged box arrived full of stuff from Knuckleduster's kickstarter. I have been eagerly awaiting its arrival!

While this kickstarter delivered late, I don't let that upset me anymore. There are so many factors that contribute to not meeting the date listed in the kickstarter it should really only be considered a guideline. I did not immediately jump in on this one even though it features my favorite western gaming theme. I thought the primary package was a bit weak for the price so I waited to see how many of the stretch goals they were going to hit. I do believe they hit all of them, and I jumped in as soon as the game mat was included. To say that the box was full is an understatement. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and while I did receive a pdf copy of the rules time has just not been on my side to read them now with the actual rulebook in my hand that is likely to change.

A very full box, notice the completely shredded box corner in the upper right of the picture.

The basics; poker chips (who doesn't love poker chips), dice, cards and the character cards (I believe there is a card in there for all the western miniatures currently in the Gunfighter's Ball line).

A look at the front of the character cards

And the back. These are laminated so you can mark right on the cards with a grease or china pencil.

Three card decks. The Black Deck, I believe, can be used to replace the wound table. A Card deck, this is a standard card deck with some very nice artwork on the royal cards. The Pistoleer Deck, which looks like it has special character abilities. Everything is pretty much pure speculation on my part.  

Artwork on the royal cards, although I think they missed an opportunity of doing something fancy with the ace.

Three bags of stuff for the Saloon

That's a lot of MDF parts. I must admit that I'm intrigued enough to want to put this together right away. I have looked at the instructions posted for it and I think I'm going to only use them as a guide. It feels like its not quite in the right order.

Something a little different here with pewter doors, windows and matching interior pieces.

The resin bar along with a compliment of pewter pieces. I'm a bit disappointed that this is not a little fancier, again I think an opportunity was missed. I'm already considering some extra stuff to fancy it up a bit.

The Iconic faction, this is a new faction introduced for the kickstarter

A large pile of add-on miniatures.

The dismounted miniatures, very clean castings. I'm not sure how useful the bathtub guy is but its almost iconic if you watch western movies. 

A close up, and not a very good closeup, can you say Blazing Saddles? I already have a number of miniatures from the Gunfighter's Ball line and they have all been great. Some of the poses are a bit stiff but that's about the only bad thing I can say about them.

The mounted miniatures

A really nice horse, I'm excited about working on it. There were also some riderless horses available, since they were an additional buy in I decided to wait till later on those. They are already available on the Knuckleduster website.

The 3'x4' game mat, very nice, it feels likes it made from the same material as mouse pads

And the hard cover version of the rulebook

A random selection of pages

Overall, I'm very pleased with the results of this Kickstarter, well run, well communicated and great products at the end.

Weekend Painting

I managed to both prime and actually start painting both some wargaming pieces and parts of my competition entries for ReaperCon. Not a lot of progress at this point but enough to make me happy.

A pair of PzKfw IV Hs that have been sitting around for a while. These will be strictly gaming pieces at this point. That's the Warlord Games version on the left and the Rubicon version on the right. This particularly Rubicon kit is no longer available, its currently being redone to meet their new standards.

The Rubicon version, note the separation of the plastic joint on the turret angle. Accidentally left these in the car. The poor glue joint came apart from the heat and I lost both halves to the commanders hatch.

The Warlord Games Version

Rubincon on the left, Warlord on the right

Warlord with the extra filter mechanism, that could be left off of most of the H's

The Rubicon kit. I really need to pull out the wire and replace the antennas on kits with wire from the shop. Of course that wire has disappeared right now. I'll find it in a month when I have forgotten why I needed it. 

Competition work

Hogan, and the initial primer and skin color. Yes its green, I'm trying an experiment with skin using green paint as the undercoat. Will see how it goes. This diorama idea is coming together, we will see if I can pull it off. I received the POW miniatures from Ebob but they are just to small to match up with these from Stoessi's Heros.

Hogan, Klink and Schultz, all in green face

Sven, from Knuckleduster in 1/48. I might well enter this one as well, so I'm going to paint him for competition.

The Heroine from the "It Came From Outer Space" Diorama. I'm working on two of these and the best will be entered as a single miniature entry and the other will go into the diorama.

C&N Railroad Project - O Scale Miniatures - Knuckleduster Western Rail

The O Scale miniatures that I ordered from Knuckleduster arrived quite promptly yesterday. I already have some of these miniatures from Knuckleduster's Gunfighters' Ball Range and I was definitely curious to see how they would look scaled up. These are the same digital sculpts used in the Gunfighters' Ball range just printed and cast in 1/48th scale. They hold up quite nicely to their smaller brethren, quality miniatures from Knuckleduster. Huge improvements in sculpting quality now that they have do digital sculpting. 

I was eager to so how close in size they would be to the minis from Aspen Modeling as well. Again I was not disappointed, the two lines match up very well and I don't think there will be any problems mixing them together after they have been painted. I think Aspen Modeling miniatures are a bit beefier but you can decide for yourself from the pictures below.

The loot. The biggest difference between the two companies is definitely price. I  picked up: Mary (KWR-48111), Town Doctor (KWR-48114), Carpetbagger (KWR-48112), Swede (KWR-48110), Bartender (KWR-48106) and the Conductor (KWR-48118)

KWR-48110 - Swede in 1/48 scale. He is simply labeled as Pedestrian on the website though.

Large Swede and small Swede. You can really see the difference in scales here.

The Photographer from Aspen Modeling on the left, Swede in the center and right. I'll be able to use both ranges without an issue. The smaller scale Swede might well fit in as a youngster though, definitely something to think about. 

C&N Railroad Project - O Scale Miniatures - A bit of a rant

I guess I'm pretty spoiled at this point with the quality of tabletop gaming miniatures. I have been playing miniature games since the late 70s and I have enjoyed, and taken advantage of, the near continuous increase in variety and quality of miniature offerings through the years whether they are in metal or plastic. Yesterday I spent a chunk of my morning looking for what is available in O Scale to populate the C&N with and quite frankly I expected a whole lot better than what I found. Poor to average sculpting, completely inaccurate proportions, to thin or to thick, complete lack of detail. No wonder so many narrow gauge O gaugers do such heavy modifications to their miniature populations and why layouts are so sparsely populated. If you model a more modern period there are better miniatures available in O scale but the best of what I can find doesn't come close to some of the work being done in the tabletop gaming world.

Now I model a bit of an obscure time frame but if you look at period photographs most of the apparel worn in the 1900 - 1920 period works for at least 10 years prior (and maybe 20) and probably forward through the 1930s. The styles don't seem to have changed significantly during that 50 year time frame and even then changes in fashion were slow to reach the western US.

The station at Ward Colorado. Just in this first photo you can see a wide variety of mens' hats including the classic newsboy, fedoras, bowlers, cowboy, and what looks like montanas as well. Men in jackets and waistcoats, just jackets, just waistcoats but in general everyone is fairly well dressed. I see tall boots and dress shows, knickers and pants. The fireman standing on the far left of the photo (which I believe is Bill Tipps who would move up to engineer) is wearing a bowler, necktie, long sleeved shirt and overalls.

An excursion train on the C&N, probably at Mont Alto. This is a good shot for women and children. Check out all the young boys hanging off the locomotive's running board. All the women have hats, most have white blouses and all have long skirts, mostly plain but a couple of patterns as well. Note the grumpy gentleman seated in the front row near the right side of the photograph, looks like he is the group's curmudgeon.

I still need to model this caboose, it is certainly one of the more interesting ones out there! It must be morning because these three guys are very clean! Three different hat styles, one worker in overalls (with necktie and waistcoat as well), another with sweater and long pants and the third all decked out in bowler, jacket and waistcoat with gloves. I love the attitude these guys give off, ready to get started for the day and happy to be there.

Fortunately there are a couple of bright spots; The Aspen Modeling Company and Knuckleduster Miniatures (one of our own!). I have a couple of horse sculpts from Aspen Modeling so I know they do quality work. Unfortunately the line is not very large right now and there are only a few that will be really useful but its a start. They also ask for suggestions so I sent them some suggestions! The order I made this morning has already been packed and shipped so those might be here by the end of the week. (I pulled the pics from Aspen's website, they are a little small).

I have seen this pair painted up, badly on another website, they look much better here. It really shows how a poor paint job can affect someone's perception of how good a miniature is.

This is one that I ordered. Looking forward to its arrival.

These two pictures really show how a good paint job and really show off a miniature.

Knuckleduster I am already familiar with. I am in on their current Kickstarter and its looking like it should deliver on time or pretty close to it. Knuckleduster has shifted to making 3D renders and then creating the masters from those. As a result their quality has shot way up since going that route. Now their O-scale offerings are from the same 3D renders scaled up to O. I'm fine with that. I do wish they would expand that line beyond just the wild west period. There are a few miniatures in there that are very usable and a bunch that probably aren't. I certainly appreciate the effort though. It would be nice if they would advertise in the railroad hobby magazines and websites and have a chance to really grow that part of their business.

I just painted this guy up for Calamity, obviously in 28mm, it looks like he scaled up just fine to O (1/48th).

Your classic conductor, good for almost an era you care to model in.

I'll probably see if I can convince Knuckleduster to do a little bit more with their line as well!