Western Legends

Hi all and Happy New Year to you all.

I hope you guys got the toys you wished for! I was certainly very lucky, with my family being particularly generous and you lucky people will be seeing that largesse, as I post the minis as they get painted.

First up, this week I painted the minis from the board game Western Legends.  Western Legends by Herve Lemaitre and Kolossal Games is a sandbox game set in the Old West full of cowboys, outlaws, native American Indians and a host of historical figures thrown in to boot. You can play as Billy the kid, Calamity Jane or Geronimo picking from a line-up of 12 characters.

As a sandbox game this is where the fun really begins, on your turn there are just so many options and all of them can support you in working towards becoming the most legendary figure in the Old West. You really can play this as you want to, become the most wanted character or become a marshal chasing down the bad guys arresting them and placing them in jail. Either way you can go into one of the two towns to spend your cash in the general store to buy a mule or a horse to increase your movement or buy and upgrade your weapons which prove your abilities in fights.

The general store also stocks some additional items that you can buy that will provide further bonus actions or abilities. Any upgraded weapons and mounts provide additional legendary points when you get to the end game scoring, so it is well worth spending cash to do this.

In the two towns, Dark Rock and Red Falls, you can play poker; 'Texas hold em' of course, either against any other player who is in the same town or simply against the house. To the winner goes the pot, at least $60, or more if more players ante up the $10. You can also go to the cabaret and pay $30 to catch a show, a drink and gain legendary points. You will also find the sheriff's office and the doctors. Wanted characters will be sent to the Sheriff’s office when arrested by players or the sheriff himself. The Doctor allows you to pay to have all your wounds healed.

Out of town are two goldmines and you can roll the two dice to find gold nuggets, gold dust or gravel. The nuggets can be taken to the bank and exchanged for cash and legendary points. Gold dust provides the gold digger with $10 and there is even a gold dust re-roll face.

You could choose to go to one of the two farms and move the cattle. Here you decide whether to go for valour or infamy. You can choose to wrangle the cattle delivering them to the station to gain the bonus on the reverse of the token and one marshal point, or you can rustle them taking them to the other farm in exchange for one wanted point.

So here are the minis and my paint jobs.

Despite the fact that they are relatively poor sculpts compared to bespoke miniatures, they were quite a lot of fun to paint, so I managed to get through them quite quickly.  They scale to about 25mm so would actually fit most settings and could conceivably be used in TT wargaming, however there are better miniatures out there, so I'm happy to stow these away with the game and use them purely for this.  That said, I'm very tempted to make a larger 3d replica of the board to play at Uncon, when it returns at the end of the year!

hope you enjoy

dGG