Dead Man's Hand

Great Escape Games keeps DMH fresh with a steady stream of new figures, gangs and color items. First up is the Tong Gang.  If you're a fan of the HBO series Deadwood, you'll recognize the fellow with the meat cleaver as Wu. Sometimes after a bad day at work, I too shake my fist and meat cleaver at the heavens. I had a bit of fun mixing up my blacks with green, blue and grey tints.

More Zombie denizens for the Curse of Dead Man's Hand.  A bit gruesome and colorful!

The Count and his motley gang.  Here's hoping they're as fun to play as they were to paint. 

Lastly, a hodgepodge of color items for the game. Rest easy, I sourced the snake colorings (other than the anaconda) to the American West. Today's post shows why painting for Dead Man's Hand remains one of my favorite subjects 3 years on. Where else do you get to paint snakes, zombies, horses, zombie cattle, Dracula and Wu too?

Curse of Dead Man's Hand, Round 2

Here's another drop of new gangs from Great Escape Games.  The front row is the Magnificent 7 and behind them, the Malevolent 7.  Ranked up, it's a pretty awesome look.  The Magnificent 7 will also pair well in a showdown with the Bandito gang. 

I also finished up the Mountain Men set.  I love the beardy fellow who looks like he just carved "I kilt a bar" into a tree with his Bowie knife.  The Longhorn steer are for in-game color.  To round out the bunch, a Buffalo Man and a Mountain Lion who are part of the forces of good in Curse of Dead Man's Hand.  

It's another fine set of figures by Great Escape Games.  While clicking through their web store, I saw they had WW II Romanian army figures presorted for Chain of Command.  After mulling it over for 5 minutes, I decided Romanians will be my next Bolt Action/Chain of Command army! 

Curse of Dead Man's Hand AAR

My friend Hugh and I put Curse of DMH on the table for the first time and I was reminded again that we need to keep this fun game in rotation!  Pro tip for those who play, you can't use standard gunfight tactics against the undead.  Being a slow learner, it took me a few losses to sort that out!

Scene 1 saw 2 Wendingos loose in the town.  They can race across the table and excel in hand to hand  combat as my poor cowboys quickly discovered.  I lost this round quickly!

Scene 2, the undead turn up.  While slow, they attack en mass.  They too are great in hand to hand and mouth to hand combat.  My cowboys went down in a sea of dead flesh.

Scene 3, it dawned on me that I needed to change my tactics.  Starting near the gallows, I decided to make a stand on the platform and use height to my advantage.  I kept a "blocker" on the stairs and used my collective firepower to take down the undead, one by one.  It was a good idea but undead Ned Kelly is a hard to kill tank.  He went on a tear and soon it was down to 1 undead versus 1 cowboy.  Unfortunately, I missed with a sawed off shotgun at short range and lost again! New tactics, same results.

Scene 4 , things heat up.  The Baron is in town with a gang of beasties.  To make things worse, the Baron can bring my dead cowboys back to life to fight for his side!  Hardly seems fair but then life isn't fair.  Early on, I tried to jam the baddies by covering the windows and doors of a building they were moving through.  The Baron had a surprise ability to move everyone at once quickly and in one go, it cost me most of my gang! Down to just my shotgun fellow and desperate to make a play, I spotted a move that let me take a single shot at the Baron .  With shooting modifiers, I needed to roll a 20 to get a kill and save the game.  If I missed, I'd be swarmed by monsters.  I threw my die, looked and laughed.  I rolled a 20 to win!  If you can't be good, its good to be lucky!  

Curse of Dead Man's Hand

Great Escape Games hit a home run by bringing the undead into their Dead Man's Hand franchise. My friend John and I have a standing zombies versus gunfighters game I look forward to every year around Halloween. With Curse of Dead Man's Hand, you can pitch right in to the undead at any time with new factions, characters, abilities and a campaign. And figures that are lovely and gory all at once.

Everybody say "Cheese!" 

Fantasy painting normally pulls me out of my comfort zone. Hours of watching The Walking Dead finally paid off as I was comfortable painting this set once I found a recipe for painting blood and dead flesh.  When it comes to painting blood, it comes down to personal taste and how gory you want to go.  My recipe for blood was as follows:

Vallejo Hull Red for the base.
Vallejo Scarett Red for midtone
Vallejo Carmin for highlight
Citadel technical Blood for the Blood God to wash it all down.

If you don't have these colors, its essentially a dark red base, red  and then bright red highlights washed down by a fairly heavy red wash.

Haunted Bear and Storm Crow

Cannibal Dwarves and Dread Wolves

Wendingos

I played around a bit to come up with a recipe for dead flesh. Again, it comes down to what looks right to your eyes.  My recipe for dead flesh was as follows:

Vallejo English Uniform for the base
Wash with Citadel's Reikland Fleshshade or Druchii Violet
Highlight with Vallejo German Beige

Undead minions

If you're a Dead Man's Hand regular, you'll recognize the minions above are all based on of past figures and gangs. So if you ever wondered "hey, what happened to The Preacher," well, now you know.  

Perhaps the most important question is "How does it play?"  The Curse of Dead Man's Hand campaign is a blast.  The scenarios do a great job of setting up a cinematic arch and story to the campaign.  When we finished our first round, Hugh and I were laughing and shaking our heads. it really does play out like a movie!  I'll share up an after action report in my next post. Spoiler alert, the undead are really tough!  

The Witch and the Baron

Dead Man's Hand

These lovely figures are the "Daughters of the West" set by Great Escape Games.  Each is a character in her own right and that made these fun to paint. Its hard to come up with a back story when you're painting 70 figure warbands for SAGA but it worked for me here.

These fellows are part of the Dead Man's Hand Rogues collection.  Speaking of a story, the Preacher looks to be channeling the abolitionist John Brown.  I can't wait to get him out on the tabletop, even if it is just for a bit of color in a gunfight.

My friend John Stentz hosts a Halloween-themed game of DMH every October. We played  "Dead Man's Hand, Dead Again" with Cowboys versus Zombies last year. This  year was "Night of the Undead Man's Hand" with Outlaws versus Lawmen versus zombies.  You read that right.  Each turn, 3 zombies spawned from a grocery store in the middle of the table and moved to the sound of the nearest gun!  It was a target rich environment with Oktoberfest beers, pumpkin pie and lots of laughs. It's a testament to the game that 3 years on, Dead Man's Hand in still in  rotation and I'm already looking forward to our next Halloween showdown.  

I've got two new SAGA warbands under way. The US Grand Melee is next March and I've got 4 months to paint and train up with a new warband.  I'm split on taking the Spanish or Mutatawwi'a. Whatever I take, it'll be another epic event, courtesy of Eric Hagen and all the great players who turn out. This gaming life is a good one!

Bring out Your Dead Man's Hand!

I keep Dead Man's Hand in regular rotation. Win, lose or draw, there's nothing I play that generates quite as much color or laughter at the tabletop. Great Escape Games upped the ante this spring with Dead Man's Hand Down Under. This installment takes us to the Australian frontier, along with Ned Kelly, the State Police and Bushrangers.

The Ned Kelly gang are, no surprise, my favorites!  Their cobbled together armor is modeled perfectly with dings and holes throughout. I touched it up with a bit of rust weathering.  

The real deal.

The Bushrangers are tough lot.  In a game that models Hollywood's version of The Western, I love having a tough moll in my gang. Life is tough for a bushranger and they have the worn out clothes to prove it!

The State Police are all about the business.  Looks like a few of them rolled out of bed for the big showdown.

To round out the drop, I finished the prisoner set and Rogue's Gallery characters.

And a small painter's note, I've finally switched over to gray as my primer color.  It's true what they say.  Over time, everyone goes gray.  ;-)

On the gaming front, John S and I got in our annual game of DMH "Dead Again."  Once a year right around Halloween, the dead come back to haunt Coyote Gulch.  For a time, it looked like the Dead had the town in hand.  After two failed Big Nerve tests, both sides fled the town and the game ended in a bloody draw!

If you're celebrating, have a great Halloween tonight.  Game and paint on!