Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Some WIP Blue Moon 15mm Wild West minis

Working on those Blue Moon 15mm Wild minis. These are from the Personalities pack. Got them Block painted. Will be doing a MinWax dip on them this weekend. Then just gotta do the bases. These minis paint up easy.


Blue Moon Bandits




Blue Moon Lawmen




Saturday, March 13, 2010

Blue Moon Mfg 15mm Wild West Review


I recently read on the Hawgleg forum that Blue Moon had just started a bunch of 15mm lines, among them some Wild West. Since I had just started some 15mm Wild West I went to their site to check them out. I was blown away. Everything about their 15mm site is just outstanding. First of all, they have pictures of everything! Not just pics of a few of their minis. Every mini. Not just a thumbnail that you can't tell what the heck you're looking at, either. They have thumbnails that you can click on and get 2 progressively larger pics showing all of the minis in a particular pack. No more having to buy minis and hope they look good or are equipped the way you want. You can see them. They're color pics. The minis have been washed to bring out the detail, and there is a lot of detail. The pic above is one of their enlarged pics showing their "Personalities" pack.

I bought the Personalities pack and I love it. First of all, the service was great. The pack showed up in the mail in 2 days!

Every mini is different. I had recently bought some other brands' minis. They didn't have pics of all their minis on their website. Some had just a title. One pack I got from that other brand had 12 minis in the pack but only in 3 poses. I hate that. With the Blue Moon minis I got 25 different minis for $15, including a coffin, blacksmith anvil and one of the 25 minis is a mounted "One-Eyed Fat Man" like Rooster Cogburn from True Grit. As you can see in the pic, the minis are in groups of 5. These are my unofficial descriptions of the groups:

5 Mexican Bandidos
5 Kerchief wearing Masked Robbers
5 Lawmen
5 Personalities: A "Blondie" from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", a "Bat Masterson" a "wild Bill Hickock" and a couple of others.
5 Miscellaneous Types: A blacksmith, an Undertaker, 2 other townies, and the mounted Rooster.

Size: The minis are pretty much 18mm instead of "true 15mm". They're noticeably larger than the Minifigs and Peter Pig minis I have. The latter seem to be "true 15mm".

Detail: The level of detail on the Blue Moon minis appears slightly superior in comparison to the Minifig and Peter Pig minis. But maybe that's just a function of size and my failing vision. :)

Now for some poorly executed pics of badly painted minis :).
Blue Moon 15mm Bandidos - Block Painted & Dipped


Size Comparison Shot (Left-Right) of Blue Moon Bandido with Minifig and Peter Pig


One-Eyed Fat Man


I am planning on painting the remainder of these minis up in like groups, as I did with the Bandidos. I'm going to use some unofficial Gutshot conventions for the painting, also. The Lawmen are good guys or "White Hats". Therefor, I'll be painting their hats white. The Masked Robbers are bad guys or "Black Hats". So they get black hats. I'm thinking that using cohesive colors in a given group will help for making "warbands" for Flying Lead, also.

As always, comments are welcome, and thanks for looking.

Luckyjoe

I'm back! Now for some 15mm Wild West

Hi, folks. This blog has been idle for a long time. Time to get it back up and running. I'm still into 15mm gaming but am now expanding into Wild West. I had a lot of 28mm Wild West and had been playing some "Gutshot" from Hawgleg Publishing a few years ago. I'm thinking I'll start Gutshot back up in 15mm, maybe try Andrea Sfiligoi & Rich Jones' Flying Lead solo and with the kids for Wild West also.




So far I'm amassing a big pile of unpainted 15mm Cowboys and such. (For tiny prices compared to 28mm) Got some of the Minifigs Wild West Townsfolk and Gunfighters and Apaches from Musket Miniatures. Some Peter Pig Wild West from Brookhurst Hobbies: Female Gunfighters, Lawmen with Sawed-Off Shotguns, and Gunmen with Rifles. And just recently got the "15mm Wild West Personalities" pack from Blue Moon. Now if we can just get Khurasan and Rebel Minis to make some Wild West 15's I'd be in hog heaven.





Also got some H/O scale "Rustic Rails" Wild West Buildings from Jerry's Hobby Junction. That's a great place. Excellent service. Fast shipping with outstanding packaging to protect the buildings, and they even threw in a nice little resin outhouse for free. I'll be getting more of their stuff soon. Those buildings are very nice with lots of detail and they scale in perfectly with 15mm.





Had to make a few scratchbuilt buildings also. I probably have as much fun building and painting, trying new materials, techniques on scratchbuilts as I do playing the games.





But don't expect beautifully detailed and painted minis and buildings from me, though. As I get older I obsess less on perfection (never could close, anyway) and just settle for getting things ready for the tabletop. And since I'm taking it easier I enjoy it more :).





I'm planning on putting up a series of posts about the different manufacturer's minis, the building, and hopefully some battle reports. I hope some of it will be interesting.





Luckyjoe