Saturday, 31 August 2024

Old West Town

For our What a Cowboy campaign I needed an Old West town. I love the MDF Old West buildings from Sarissa and TT Combat, but due to space and budget restrictions I needed to find other options. 

I have found that paper buildings (e.g. from Dave Graffam) work well for me. While Dave has some buildings available that fit in an Old West town, he doesn't have things like a saloon or sherrif's office. Fortunately I found the Rio Draco set from Fat Dragon Games.

Instead of foamboard I use cheap corrugated cardboard as support for the paper. Basically the method is the same as described in my Old town post.


The cardboard house is glued to an MDF base supported by pieces of styrofoam.


Then the paper building walls are glued to the cardboard.


To maximise ease of storage I decided to leave out the boardwalk parts except for the saloon and build separate ones from popsicle sticks.






I remembered covering the side of the cardboard building walls for the bank before attaching the paper wall.



I forgot to do this for other buildings and fixed this by inserting matchsticks.


And covering the top of the front with coffee stirrer sticks.


The finished buildings in a town setting, together with Dave Graffam buildings:
















Friday, 23 August 2024

Indiana Jones and the sword of Cortes part 3

Last week of the school holidays. Managed to squeeze in another Fistful of Lead game in my son's busy online gaming schedule đŸ˜€. He played the heroes. I got the villains.

The story so far:

Dr. Marcus Brody and British agent Rupert Jenkins have taken the Sword of Cortez from Baron Otto von DrĂ¼ben and his goons in Iceland (read all about it here) while Indy was recovering from his wounds sustained in part 1. Marcus and Rupert escaped to Canada where they join up with Indy. Accompanied by Lieutenant Goodman RCMP they board a train to the United States.

With help of agent "Elch" of the German embassy Von DrĂ¼ben has organised an ambush party to intercept the Sword before it reaches the US.

The good guys

The bad guys


Indy is admiring the Sword when suddenly their train violently brakes and stops, just in front of a pile of logs on the tracks.


Indy, Rupert and Lt Goodman get out of the train to investigate. They see villains moving through the woods towards them.





"Granaten" Gertrude appears from behind a tree and throws a grenade towards the heroes. It goes wide and explodes without wounding anyone.


Von DrĂ¼ben's evil henchmen gun down Lt Goodman RCMP. Rupert fires his Thompson at Gertrude. Dropping her with a wound.




Marcus rushes to Lt Goodman, but fails his medic task roll. Lt Goodman stays wounded and down. 


Indy and Rupert put "Granaten" Gertrude out of action before she can trown another granate. Agent Elch has closed in with his shotgun, but also goes down in the hail of bullets from Rupert's Thompson.



Unable to do any more for Lt Goodman, Marcus retreats back to the train. Lt Goodman's recovery roll succeeds and Indy and Rupert take agent Elch out of action. Things are going great for the good guys!



Then disaster strikes for the heroes! Both Indy and Lt Goodman are shot by Von DrĂ¼ben's body guard Schultz and are out of the game!


However, the villains are experiencing trouble of their own. A random event causes an angry bear to turn up at the board edge close to the henchmen, who are all out of ammo.



With their rifle butts they beat the bear unconscious without receiving a single scratch themselves.....


Rupert sees his friends fall around him and fires at Von DrĂ¼ben. Von DrĂ¼ben cowardly transfers the successive wounds he receives to his bodyguard Schultz.


Meanwhile Marcus has stealthily made his way to the front of the train. He carefully aimes his revolver and kills Schultz.



Rupert charges towards the henchmen, firing his Thompson, but unfortunately not hitting anything.


Marcus has more luck. He inflicts two wounds to Von DrĂ¼ben, who decides to flee.


Although Von DrĂ¼ben collapses in the snow (failed his recovery roll), his henchmen put three bullets into Rupert, putting him out of action.

While Marcus hides from the henchmen, they recover the briefcase containing the Sword from the train and take Von DrĂ¼ben to a friendly doctor. 


Marcus patches up Indy (who was just unconscious from a bullet that grazed his skull) and stabilizes Rupert.

Will the good guys be able to stop Von DrĂ¼ben taking the sword to Germany? Stay tuned for part 4!