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Howdy my old DakkaDakka partners. I have returned from my self impossed exile with something new....or should I say old-timey.

A Dead Man's Hand. A skirmish miniature game set in the American Frontier and wild West.

The game has been around for over a decade I believe. They released a second edition full of plastic goodness over a year ago with a Kickstarter that I missed out on due to funds at the time. Great Escape Games https://www.greatescapegames.co.uk/ are the manufacturers behind the game and they have released a bunch of plastic kits to support the system including: Plastic buildings, Male and female gunfighters, wagons and scatter terrain.

I saw a couple videos recently that got me stirring and with a re-established group and some interest I decided to jump up onto the horse and start collecting and building.

It's been a while since I have done a blog, so forgive how this is all pouring out. While I do want to show off a game and it's products, I have almost always used my blogs to help me remember how I did something, or where I got it from.

The main set: A Dead Man's Hand 2 player starter

The main starter set for the game comes in at 90GBP direct from Great Escape Games. I found it local (US for $126.00 from Badger Games https://badgergames.com/ plus shipping. Great service from them, I had it in about 5 days from ordering to delivery (including the weekend).
The set comes with 3 single story buildings, 10 male gunfighters, 5 female gunfighters, a boardwalk sprue, street scatter, Dice, a sheet of Tokens, the Main rulebook and a nice bookmark. The box was full of goodness.


The game uses D20 and D10 dice as well as a nice card mechanic.

The cards in the box are small, 42x63mm or roughly half the size of standard playing cards. Each card has special rules on them with the 2-10 cards being the same on each of the 4 suits. The Jack, Queen, King and Aces are unique to their respective suits with each suit being specific for the 4 main gang types in the game. The game also employs the Jokers with the red and black jokers usually counting as a value of 1, but they also have rules. I'll have more later, just wanted to touch base on them now.

The buildings from the main box are all identical, but can be assembled in a few different configurations.

The tops are removable for easy gameplay, and the roofs are sloped shallow enough to have models standing on them without fear of them falling off. the internal floors, walls and even ceiling are all textured with the inside wall being removable, so you can have one huge room, or two rooms of varying sizes. The doors to the buildings are all operational, so you can open them both directions or, have them closed.

The painted model in here is actually from Gangfight games wild west that I had printed and painted before the main set arrived.
Please forgive the quick contrast paintjob to show off the wood texture. Darker one is Cygore Brown and lighter one is Darkoath Flesh

Below is the ceiling of the inside of the building


More later as I have to go mow the lawn while the weather is perfect here.

Good Stuff. I've been aware of the game and company for a very long time, but haven't made much effort to learn more. Will be interested to see what comes of your foray into the wild west.

THEO! Welcome back!

Looking good already, pardner.

The far Sons of Empire are all coming back this week, with great reception and fanfare, bearing tales of strange places and far off games.

This seem like a very interesting game, with suggestions of the movie The Quick and the Dead to it. Base kit is very complete and looks to be easy to get up and running quickly.

Rock on!

That's a great start on the project, looking good already!

Good looking old west stuff, Theo. Nice to have you back.

Very nice, is that terrain plastic?
Looking forward to seeing the minis done, always love Victorian era stuff!

That looks so good! Teen tiny Wild West buildings and teeny tiny cowfolk? I'm so in!

Good to have you back Theo

That woodgrain is amazing!

That wood is absolutely gorgeous.

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome home .

I had anticipated getting more done in the past two weeks, and was awaiting the release of the new expansion for A Dead Man's Hand that was scheduled for September 6th, but things got delayed. Looks like they had more demand than they anticipated, and some pieces took a bit longer to come in, but it worked out well as a paycheck for me had gotten delayed but came in time to get the pre-order bundle. It finally arrived Monday evening right as I was giving up and headed to bed.

"All the Good" Is the first expansion for the new edition and the book comes with the rules for the 13 factions as well as faction specific cards to play the game and more scenes to battle over. I went in for the whole shebang.

Each of these smaller boxes contains the gang card (quick reference rule card) and models for the gangs. I think they range from 7-12 models per box, so I have some painting to do. Thankfully they are all Metal models and so far, are all one-piece models, meaning no gluing except to the plastic bases. Also in the box was the card deck, each gang has 4 unique cards (Jack, Queen, King and Ace) each with their own gang symbol. They also included a plastic holder to keep the quick reference rule cards in. Purchasing the bundle also got me a special metal figure called: "The Good". Not Clint Eastwood in any way/shape/form. Since the package ran late they tossed in a gunfighter casualty model as an apology, extra nice.

I did reach out to them because 2 of the gang boxes did not have the reference cards in them. The Plains Indians was completely missing and the Texas rangers box had a copy of the special character "The Good" in it instead. They have responded and are sending the replacements right away.

I have been getting some items ready for the game, mainly extra tokens and some small terrain pieces, but lack of pictures currently. I will rectify that hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

Like I said, this is the first expansion for the games new edition, what I have read on the Facebook forums looks like they will have another one shortly named "The Bad and the Ugly", I think I get the reference . I expect it will contain some of the other gangs that have been released previously such as the Voodoo count and supernatural type monsters so you can do a weird west game. Until that time, I guess it will be all civilized folks fighting it out to see who stakes a claim and who buys the farm.

The Seven. And The Other Seven. I like the tone of this game. I also love weird west, having played my share of Deadlands/Doomtown. I look forward to seeing all those minis.

That’s going to be a lot of old west action! Looking forward to it.

Welcome back and great to see you working on stuff again.

Thanks Guys,

As promised, some pictures I took this morning about 3:50am

The Good, next to a 3D printed model from Blackwater Gulch. I forgot how tiny 28mm true scale models are.

A couple other 32mm Blackwater Gulch Prints


Texas Ranger checking out a well that I printed from I think Sablebadger...could be wrong.

"Hey Timmie are you in the well?"
Not done painting the rocks yet, and the lid comes off the well so you can jump in and take cover. Hopefully you have brought Lassie to save you once your down there.

The rest of the Texas Rangers

Well, looks like Timmie shouldn't mess with Texas.

The Tongs are looking for Directions

3D Printed Cacti from EpicBasing.com, real simple paint job of white base and militarum green contrast paint.

More soonish.

The figure advancing with the rifle looks like Ken Curtis as Festus from Gunsmoke!

Thanks everyone for the replies. Life is still happening here, projects keep getting interrupted as usual. Every time I make some progress we get company and everything gets put away and I wind up on something else. I think I will start referring to it as Forced ADHD. I want to complete something, but am forced to another project out of necessity. Anyway, late to the Halloween party, but enjoying the progress none the less.

Myminifactory had a frontier project by BigChild (sculptors from Zombicide) which had 3 greenskin Bloodbowl teams and access to their last 3 undead bloodbowl teams. I missed the last one so I went ahead and got all 6 teams this time around. I started printing out the Necromatic team for Halloween, but decided to get brutal and decapitate the prints and add Pumpkins to them. Still work in progress, but I'm loving how they are turning out.

There are 4 "fattie" sculpts and 4 regular zombie sculpts in the necromatic set along with 2 Flesh Golems, 2 werewolves and 2 wraiths. These are all the zombies and fatties with spare pumpkins from Epicbasing.com for heads. Some have carved faces, but I think I like the disturbing blank faces of regular pumpkins better. Also, the ones with the pumpkin leaves just make them feel slightly more "Alive" which is strange for zombies.

I think my team will actually become a Nurgle team by adding in some more "fatties" from Zombicide Black Plague with Different Pumpkin Cyclopian heads from Dragon Trapper Lodge as the "Bloaters" and making Pestigors from other Evil Pumpkins.
https://dl2.myminifactory.com/object-assets/615ea3f5851bd/images/720X720-pumpkin-heads-awake-1.jpg
The Beast of Nurgle might actually come from another CMON game "The Others:7 deadly sins" if I can find the models in the basement.

These guys were all inspired by my Pumpkin Golem I printed and painted up.



also still in the works from Wyrd Miniatures

The Carver (This is the smaller version)

Not sure of the robe/team colors yet. Leaning towards "Gourd Brain Patchers" Green and Yellow. Really matches the Green Bay Packers Cheeseheads theme.

Also Have to finish printing my BloodBowl Pitch, but that is much further down the line, Huge project.

Love the pumpkin heads. The golem is a fantastic mini. Here's to being able to focus down one project, at least.

Hey, I know it's pretty belated at this point, but welcome back Theo! I just now found this blog, and I gotta say I like how the Wild West stuff is turning out. Those building look great so far!