READING REPORT: Still More Buying Than Consuming

I have to confess I haven't gotten any further in my reading of the brilliant Viking horror Draugr since last week, through no fault of the book (it's been really, really gripping so far) but because I'm still trying to catch up on my recent deliveries of new comic books from Paradox Comics.

But, of course, this hasn't stopped me picking up a few more second-hand and new books to add to be reading list.

Due to my recent discovery of Reacher (the Prime Video modern pulp action serial) I was tempted to give one of the books the show's based on a crack. But they're like 500 pages long, which seems a ridiculous length for such a style of story. 

However, this led me off on a tangent, given that Reacher is clearly inspired by the Mack Bolan books of my youth I grabbed a random Mack Bolan book from 1975, for a paltry sum, on eBay to add to my reading list instead.
 

Mack Bolan The Executioner no. 24: Canadian Crisis is a much more sensible 181 pages of decent-sized print, in which Mack is still killing off members of The Mob. This time in Quebec, for a change of scenery.

I wonder if The Executioner books will generate the same frisson of excitement that they did when I read them as a schoolboy? 

Another recent eBay purchase was the vintage Marvel "giant-size" comic teaming Spider-Man with Doc Savage.

I've been reading comics pretty much all my life but I'm still continuing to be educated on what's out there. I knew there had been Doc Savage comic book adventures, but I never knew he'd teamed up with Spider-Man!

I can't remember exactly how I came across this title, but I'm pretty sure it was either a Facebook post by author Charles R Rutledge or a Booktube video from Michael K Vaughan.

My big pre-order of the week, however, was a new, clothbound edition of A Dance With Dragons, the 'most recent' (i.e. 2011) volume in George RR Martin's epic A Song of Ice and Fire.

As you can see on my "Westeros shelf" below, I now own all the books in the series he has penned to date, but all in different editions. This was a deliberate choice as I wanted my collection to have a particular quirk about it.

Given that my "simple" PROJECT 60 is in a state of disarray, I'm now renaming it PROJECT BUCKET (as in "bucket list") and adding to it a goal of reading all the books of A Song of Ice and Fire before I kick the bucket.

Perhaps by the time I've finished these volumes George might have completed the next book, The Winds of Winter, or even wrapped up the saga with A Dream of Spring!

As it stands, I've only actually read the first volume, A Game of Thrones, and that was 15 years ago.

I'll repost my review (written just as the HBO adaptation was taking off and A Dance With Dragons was published) of A Game of Thrones at the bottom of this piece. Check out the ironic comment at the end of the review.

I regard Michael Moorcock as one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time - which is why I established my "Moorcock Rule" for choosing, and buying, fantasy literature.

With his first run of Elric books, Moorcock created - for me - a perfect set of standalone novels that sculpted out an incredible fantasy world and detailed a complex anti-hero in the albino prince.

Each of these books ran to around 150 pages (stretching to about 200 by the end) and so I reasoned, for future comparisons, that massive, door-stop sized fantasy novels were probably not my thing and were best avoided.

And anyway they would take an age to read, during which time I could have read several shorter - and possibly better - books.

But A Game Of Thrones shattered my Moorcock Rule with a vengeance.

Enticed by the prospect - at the time - of the impending television series I found a copy of A Game Of Thrones in our local Oxfam charity store and began to read.

It took two extended bursts to finish this 800-page epic (which is only the first segment of the as-yet unfinished Song Of Ice And Fire saga) - the first couple of hundred pages up until the HBO show aired on Sky Atlantic and then once it had finished I returned to the land of Westeros to devour the rest of the book.

The power and genius of the television show certainly influenced my enjoyment of the book, as I could easily visualise the actors from the series speaking the lines in the book - and, in turn, the show turned out to be an incredibly faithful, if naturally streamlined, adaptation of the book.

George RR Martin has a very visceral style of writing that likes to describe the food people are eating and the clothes they are wearing (which reminded me in part of Brett Easton Ellis' name-dropping technique in American Psycho) as well as what they thinking and doing.

Along with these visual motifs, Martin takes the unusual - to me anyway - step of focusing each chapter on a different character's point-of-view, which helps introduce different methods of describing certain swords-and-sorcery standards, such as the "mass battle": in one chapter we'll hear of a battle from the POV of someone participating, in another it's being described by someone watching from afar, and in a third it will be a report from a messenger - who survived the conflict - to his lord.

The world of Westeros is very rich in detail, customs and history and this is drip-fed to the reader as it becomes necessary to the plot, rarely feeling like a massive info-dump of exposition (as the TV show suffered some on a couple of minor occasions).

Finally, A Game Of Thrones - and, I suspect the entire saga, - is dreadfully addictive reading. I've always loved reading and getting stuck into fascinating books, but I found myself more and more drawn back to A Game Of Thrones in preference to watching TV or pootling about the Internet, which are my two usual default settings.

I really didn't mind that it was an 800-page tome, because I was totally invested in the characters, their machinations and the world of Westeros. The entire book is shot through with a sense of foreboding and the feeling that something major is on the verge of occurring... as the central Stark family say: "Winter is coming!"

And, like the first season of the HBO series, A Game Of Thrones ends on a massive series of cliffhangers that pretty much guarantees I'll be reading the next book - A Clash Of Kings - as soon as I get my hands on it (it's at the top of my birthday list!)

PROJECT 60: Back In The Saddle

My three new mini packs for Dead Man's Hand

Inspired by my whinging about not getting anywhere with  the skirmish wargame side of PROJECT 60, I felt I should invest in some new miniatures for Dead Man's Hand.

This coincided with Great Escape Games announcing a couple of new packs of townsfolk (ladies and children), and me bingeing the entirety of the excellent, new iteration of Little House on The Prairie (on Netflix).

So, I ordered that pair of new packs and a pack of Chinese labourers (I'm pretty sure that with all the other Chinese figures I own, I could populate an impressive Chinatown for my unbuilt Wild West town). 

As ever with Great Escape Games these all arrived safe and sound the day after I'd placed my order. 

My painter, Matt, currently has some fantasy figures of mine he's working on at the moment, but the next shipment will be a return to my Western theme, to spur me on with this scheme.

To give you a better idea of what I've just picked up for my game, here are Great Escape Games' beautifully painted versions of these figures from their website:

PROJECT 60: Off The Rails!!!

Photo by Pixabay

Some of you may recall in the past I've talked about my PROJECT 60, an ambitious desire to get both a skirmish wargame and a roleplaying campaign all set up and ready to run by the time I turn 60 towards the end of this year.

You might also have noticed that I haven't actually mentioned it since February - when Nick and I went to our local wargames show and I picked up some suitable 3D printed buildings.

I'd like to blame the hot weather and my general ill-health, but honestly it's my fickle nature and life-long inability to stay focused on any one particular aspect my hobbies for long.

PROJECT 60 was, therefore, rather ambitious - but that was the point.

On the skirmish wargame side, I'm still sticking firmly to my plans to build a tabletop Wild West town for games of Dead Man's Hand.

I just haven't sent off any Western figures for painting this year and have actually done nothing concrete towards assembling and painting the buildings, which was always a goal for this Summer.

Everything has simply remained in a clutter in the gamesroom.

I really need to get sorting that before things go missing as I move books, Blu Rays, and bits & bobs around looking for other things.

And this isn't to say my wargaming thoughts haven't gone round the houses from Bronze Age Greece to Fantasy Medieval and 17th/18th Century pirates and highwaymen!

They've just circled back (for the moment) to the American West.

On the roleplaying game front, my initial passion for Twilight Sword has rather dampened (even before the printed materials show up), and been replaced by flickering flames of interest in Dragonbane.

I haven't found the time to read the rules properly yet, so my confidence still swings all over the place and my mind darts off in other directions every now and then (even, most recently, considering a Wild West roleplaying campaign... but with a twist).

However, as well as 40-year history in Sweden, Dragonbane (aka Drakar och Demoner) has a solid core of fans who really, really love the system, which gives me a lot of encouragement. 

I have actually noticed some mechanical similarities between Twilight Sword and Dragonbane, which has led to my brain classifying Twilight Sword as modern Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons whereas Dragonbane is modern Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!

Of course, I'm essentially starting from scratch with Dragonbane, and you know how slow I am at reading and absorbing things... especially new things.

So, I'm still hoping to get these games back on track for PROJECT 60, but I know my birthday isn't that far away and I have way fewer years ahead of me than behind.

Even if I can one or both of these games up and running, just how long will these "forever campaigns" actually last now?

I AM THE WARLORD OF MARS!!!

Great White Ape of Barsoom (picture by Nick)

This weekend found Nick and I back at our local wargames' show, Cavalier, at the Angel Centre in Tonbridge.

It was my first time in a couple of years and while I wasn't feeling one hundred percent, I was determined that my excitement would see me through. And, thanks to Nick stepping in as my ad hoc 'carer' (in the absence of Rachel, who was at home with Alice), I managed an impressive (for me) three hours at the show.

The highlight of the day came early, when Nick and I had barely seen a quarter of the displays and traders, as a gentleman from the Maidstone Wargames Society invited us to join in their Labyrinths of Mars participation game.

This was one I'd mentally flagged ahead of time, looking at the list of games on the show's website, because - as I suspected - it was John Carter themed.

The game was a reskinning of the classic family board game Labyrinth, which I'd played with Nick and his son, Alec, several years ago. However, this iteration included fighting and treasure hunting, and was scaled up to feature 28mm miniatures.

My dynamic duo of Barsoomian warriors before battle commenced

The ever-moving Labyrinth of Mars

Nick's team (top) make a strategic withdrawal from my gang (bottom)

As with the boardgame, you always start your turn by sliding a spare tile into the layout - pushing all the other tiles in that row on one space, thus constantly reconfiguring the Martian (Barsoomian) maze, and making planning ahead quite challenging.

There were four of playing and we each had four objectives to find before we could escape the labyrinth, be they treasures, allies, or boosts, and you could earn special cards as well that gave you extra abilities or bonuses.

I'd got three of my objectives (a couple of artifacts and a Barsoomian prince), without making too much of a scene about it, but the last thing I needed for my 'collection' was The Great White Ape (pictured above).

The only problem was The Ape had just joined Nick's team, as Nick had played a "brain transfer" card on it, giving it a Barsoomian brain... rather than a raging great ape's brain!

So, I had to attack Nick's party! Aided by the prince, we overpowered Nick's characters (and with some lucky die rolls) and the ape opted to join my "stronger" team.

Then on my next turn (again more by luck than judgement), I was able to slide the walls of the maze to open a straight avenue to the exit... where I was declared not just the winner, but WARLORD OF MARS.

I suspect Nick is never going to forget how I robbed him of potential victory!

After this, we resumed our patrol of the main hall, and the first person we bumped into - who was demonstrating his grid-based Vietnam War game - was Paul of Pazoot, a wargaming YouTube channel I have recently discovered (thanks to his work with Big Lee of Miniature Adventures).

This was my first - in-person - encounter with an actual YouTuber.

Paul's 'Nam game, which he was putting on with the East Kent Wargames Society, will be the second of his Battle Chronicle range of narrow-focused rules sets across different historical periods. The first is 1812: Retreat from Moscow, which Big Lee is working on.

Here follows a brief selection of some of the other games being played at Cavalier:

Shepway Gamers' The Englishman's Castle: a 28mm Wars of the Roses conflict

The Kent & Sussex Dungeons & Dragons and RPG Club had a glorious set-up...

... their gorgeous 28mm scale ship reminded me that no one was selling Blood & Plunder

Milton Hundred Wargames Club's The Mog '93: Task Force Ranger in Somalia

You can never go wrong with an enormous Star Wars space battle (Friday Night Firefight Club)

Of course, as well as gaming, these events are also for shopping. Both Nick and I, in our own way, were surprisingly restrained this year. While Nick didn't buy anything, I managed to restrict myself to items for my Dead Man's Hand (Wild West) game.

I found myself mainly being drawn towards terrain, as I have enough unpainted gunfighters etc already, waiting to sent off for painting.

Me admiring Beowulf Miniatures Printing 3D printing range of Western buildings
(picture by Nick)

Amazing fantasy terrain at surprisingly affordable prices - I'm impressed I resisted

Pumpernickle Games do some lovely stuff - I hope to get some desert bits from
them at a later date, but, in the meantime, who doesn't want their own Stonehenge?

At the end of the day, I only purchased a Western bank, from Beowulf, with interior fixtures and fittings; a pair of metal cacti and a pair of resin outhouses from Debris of War; and a log cabin.

My haul from Cavalier 2026

It was a great time and I'm glad I persevered. I'd wanted to play at least one participation game, but wasn't sure if I was up to it. So I'm delighted it happened to me one I was looking forward to checking out.

I did have one "funny turn" - after squatting down to look at some items that were being displayed on the floor, then bobbing up again. But Nick kindly offered me his arm and helped me to a chair, where I could rest a while.

Once I got home (Rachel came and picked me up), I was totally zonked out for the rest of the day, then had a rough night of near-continuous coughing. But, you know what, it was so worth it.

I had a fantastic time with one of my oldest friends, we got to play an awesome wargame... which I won, we chatted with a ton of people, and I got myself some more bits for my PROJECT 60 wargame of choice.

And I've already have made a shopping list of future bits and bobs I can order from these traders online.

Below, you will see a 17-minute video by Model Paint Whatever of the sights and sounds of the day, which shows off way more of the games on display than I have:

And here's a piece from Big Lee himself about Cavalier:

ASPIRATIONS FOR 2026

Don't Want To Rush These Things: After 19 years, work shall begin on my castle

As we reach the end of January (which seems to have dragged on for about 30 weeks) I thought it was about time to lock in some aspirations for 2026.

HEALTH

Obviously after last year's health debacle (losing about seven months of the year because my legs stopped working properly and being in a great deal of discomfort), I want to get better this year.

More exercise and a healthier (urrgghhh!) diet are key. Hopefully, at the very least, I can bring my blood sugar levels down so I can get the steroid injections in my spine that will allow me the freedom to do more beneficial exercises.

READING

I've already stated that I want to get back into reading more this year (eyes willing), both novels and comic books, as both have slipped in the last seven or eight months.

I'm hoping to dig into my collection of recent Conan the Barbarian pastiche hardbacks, as well as the upcoming new Philip Reeve novel, and a random assortment of other books that either I've purchased for myself or were gifts.

I also have a massive backlog of comics to get through. Even though my pull-list continues to shrink, fresh issues keep arriving every month and I keep getting further and further behind.

My Read Judge Dredd Every Day is going... okay. I read either a story from volume one of the Complete Case Files or fresh material from current issues of the weekly 2000AD or the monthly Megazine pretty much every day. Pretty much.

CASTLE

For my 40th birthday (god, I can't believe it's been that long), Rachel's dad built me a tower that I could then decorate - along the line's of Rachel's dolls house hobby - and while I've collected a lot of "bits" to go inside it, two decades on and I still haven't started proper work on it. 

I keep flip-flopping on the theme of the tower in my mind (sometimes it's a superhero HQ, sometimes it's a U.N.I.T. base from Doctor Who, and sometimes it's even a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy castle!). This year I really must get on with it.

I'D RATHER BE KILLING MONSTERS

The tabletop roleplaying Facebook group I started over six years ago, I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters, is ticking over nicely, with almost 460 members but I'd really like to kick it up a gear.

I want to make the group more interactive, get more conversations flowing.

At the moment it feels as though there's about a dozen of us doing all the heavy-lifting. I'd like to get more members of the group engaged and talking about their own games, the campaigns they're running or playing in, monster/treasure/trap ideas etc

And, of course, I'd always like to increase the membership.

PROJECT 60

This is the big one for me, my core focus for the geeky projects I want to have in place before I turn 60 at the end of this year. Yes, it includes everything I've set in stone above but the two major things I'm channelling my energies into are establishing a singular roleplaying campaign for me to run - that will have legs - and a (skirmish) wargame with painted miniatures and terrain that I can play solo or invite friends over to play.

The current top contender for a roleplaying game is the anime fantasy Twilight Sword.

When it comes to skirmish games, for a while I was spreading myself a bit thin by embracing several genres and settings, but I've finally decided that I need to concentrate on just the Western game Dead Man's Hand.

I'd hoped to get started on terrain building and painting last year, but my osteoarthritis put the kibosh on that. This year I will make up for that.

One Month In And We're Blogging Strong

    I couldn't find any free images for "monthaversary" because that's not a real thing

 Image by bise eise from Pixabay

It's a month since Cowboys, Capes, and Claws sprang to life, bringing my current views on geekdom (be it RPGs, comics, movies, and so on) to this chill corner of the Internet.

Since "Life Day", we've had a reasonably steady flow of visitors to the site. Sometimes too many for my liking, but generally a decent number of genuine readers interested in the words, pictures and videos I've posted up.

It may sound counterintuitive, but my goal would be to keep the number of hits per day to around 500 at most. I'm looking for quality over quantity. I'd rather half-a-dozen people read my blog each day and left comments, than thousands of bots hit the site and did nothing good.

First month visitors - the pulse of the blog

In this first month 35 per cent of the hits came from the United States while only 11 per cent were from the UK, with the bulk of referrals coming via Facebook.

While I'm generally settled on the design of the site, I've still been tweaking the right-hand column, moving bits up and down to see which placing I find most aesthetically pleasing. I think we're getting close to a final form.  

I'd like to applaud the founding members of my "posse", who kindly clicked on the blue Follow button (now near the top of the aforementioned right hand column of the blog), pledging their public support for my ramblings. Kudos to Jonathan, Erik, Justin, Percy, and Clare.

All new additions are welcome 😉

Heading into the New Year, my goal is to elevate the gaming coverage, while still maintaining a stream of reviews (films, TV, and comics) as well as general commentary.

When I started formulating this blog I never expected to write so much about my health again, but then the whole osteoarthritis issue was rather a bolt from the blue that - literally - took my legs from under me.

The idea for the blog was that I'd be writing about my progress with PROJECT 60 (that is, getting my Dead Man's Hand skirmish game up and running by the time I turn 60 next year, as well as the makings of a solid roleplaying campaign that would have long-term potential) interspersed with 20/20 VISION "events" where I'd tried something 'new' or stepped out of my comfort zone.

These last six months of heightened disability and constant pain have rather put the kibosh on that, but hopefully we're now coming out the other side and I can get back on track with those ambitions. And record them here on the blog.

The work on my Dead Man's Hand project will just have to be pushed back to 2026, when, all being well, I'll be able to work in our garden room on more scenery, assemble and paint up the buildings etc

As to roleplaying games, having been in a bit a funk because of my physical ailments, I'm now much more optimistic about the future and believe I've found a game that could be just right for my ideas. The trouble is, it isn't due to be published until the middle of next year. 

Of course, we still have Pete's Outgunned Adventures to look forward to every month.

PROJECT 60: What's To Be Read?

Inspired, in large part, by Booktube - and Michael K Vaughan, in particular - I'm setting myself some personal "book reading challenges" for 2026.

In recent years my reading has gotten a bit slack, for various reasons (a combination of health, the easy ubiquity of television, and general laziness), and so I have been inspired to inject a bit of discipline into this important pastime.

The first challenge (seeking to emulate Michael's "reading Superman every day") is to Read Judge Dredd Every Day.

The plan is to start at the first page of the first Complete Case Files (which reprint every Dredd yarn in chronological order) and read on from there. Over the years I have accumulated (as shown above) the Complete Case Files 1 - 20, with some waifs and strays from the later volumes.

So, that should keep me going for a good while. 

The other challenge I'm setting myself is to read the new Conan The Barbarian hardback novels (see below), published by Titan, as well as the Red Sonja novel written by the peerless Gail Simone.

I think this is a solid basis for getting some organised reading going in the New Year.

Hopefully, by then, I will have made significant headway into my backlog of monthly comics (I'm pretty sure I'm six or so months behind on most titles), as well as trimming my pull-list to prevent such scenarios arising again (and for financial and space reasons).

There's also a new Philip Reeve book, Bridge of Storms, due in February, which will obviously jump to the top of my TBR pile the moment it drops on my doormat.

Audiobook-wise, I'm working my way steadily through Stephen King's Dark Tower saga - with diversions to other worlds between each volume - and hope to start book four, Wizard and Glass, in late January/early February.

This will be new territory for me, as I'd originally read the first three books pretty soon after they were published (not that I could remember much past the first, so the audios felt like new stories anyway).

This is an exciting prospect - even if Wizard and Glass is over 27 hours long - as I've oft wondered how the tale of Roland the Gunslinger concludes... and have been very diligent in avoiding spoilers for all these years.

I have a shelf of King books, outside of The Dark Tower they're mainly collections of short stories but I also have The Shining, which may get a look-in next year, depending on how the Conan reading goes.

Stephen King shelf - with my original Dark Tower cassettes (left), with King reading the story

PROJECT 60: What Does The Future Hold?

As I race towards my sixtieth birthday next year, I can't help feeling that it's time I got my "collecting" hobbies under control before I end up on an episode of Hoarders or Rachel finds me buried under a collapsed pile of books, comics, and blu-rays!

I've already mentioned that my life-long love affair with roleplaying games is dwindling, thanks to the dawning realisation that I'm never going to run a "forever campaign" that comes close to my hopes and dreams.

I still want to keep playing, and won't - and can't - stop thinking about RPGs, but the constant need to be working on 'my next great roleplaying project' has definitely eased off. 

Picture, if you can, the amount of space I could create in our house if I sold off all the games (and supplements) that I own but which I'll never read or revisit.

That's going to take a lot of effort to do properly, but it might generate a decent sum of money to bulk up my ever-shrinking bank account.

On the other hand, I'm currently thinking of burying myself in Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG, just not with any expectation of running it (it's simply not a game I could imagine my group, The Tuesday Knights, taking to).

However, I quite fancy the idea of creating Whoniverse scenarios, settings, gadgets, aliens etc to share with the readers of this blog.

If I were to return to running a campaign, with any chance of it surviving more than three or four sessions, it would almost certainly embrace the simplicity of old school Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming. As I did many years ago with the Tuesday Knight's three-year Heroes & Other Worlds campaign.

Honestly, I'd just really love to run a hardcore dungeoncrawl at some point. Just not now.

For reasons of both space and finances, I also need to trim my comic book pull-list from its current 25 titles a month down to something more manageable.

Part of my problem has been that my osteoarthritis has made me feel so uncomfortable that concentrating on reading (and finding a good position to do so) has led to a four or five month backlog of unread comics.

Some, I fear, will have to remain unread if I ever want to get back up-to-date.

Going forward, I'm thinking of streamlining my reading to: DC's Superman (and family); Marvel's Fantastic Four; and Titan's Howardverse titles (Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword, Solomon Kane etc)

There'll be a few odds and ends in there as well: such as Dynamite's "occasional" Fire and Ice.

I've also heard a rumour that the long-delayed Afterlife With Archie (the greatest unfinished zombie comic book saga of all time) might have finally - after a 10 year hiatus - clawed its way out of the grave to resume its run, but I'll only believe it once that new issue is in my hands.

Of course, on top of all this, there's still my monthly Judge Dredd Megazine subscription and odd runs of 2000AD (I'm still undecided on whether to wean myself off the latter or take out a subscription to sit parallel with my Megazine one).

So, that's still a lot of comics each month, but - as long as I can catch up - it feels like it'll be easier to keep on top of.

THE RANCH GATES ARE OPEN, COME ON IN!

Photo by Gonzalo Acuña

Welcome to The Triple C Ranch*, for the official opening of the Cowboys, Capes, and Claws blog - my personal odyssey through the realms of horror movies, Westerns, and superheroes (not necessarily in that order).

Mosey on in and make yourself comfortable. There's plenty to read - and watch - from the get-go as I have postings dating back to January 1. Many of these are what I term "retro reviews" (it's in the tags under the post), which are reviews I've written over the years but were originally to be found on other sites (different blogs, Facebook etc).

However, you'll also find plenty of fresh material, encompassing my real life "adventures" and the various areas of geekdom that tickle my fancy (and hopefully yours).

I'm aiming for a laid-back, easy-going, approach here and welcome comments, opinions, and constructive criticism (even after almost two decades of blogging and a career in local and trade journalism, I'm still learning and honing my craft).

The blog was deliberately designed to be bright and cheerful and - as with all the blogs I create - is best viewed in "web format" (that is, on a laptop or PC) rather than in "mobile format". While it will, of course, be accessible in the latter format, I just feel you miss out on a lot of the bells and whistles that have come with the 'carefully crafted' appearance and features of the site.

Stetsons - and capes - are cool!

Yes, there will still be typos - even in the older material. My brain often zigs while my fingers zag - especially when I'm writing enthusiastically - and things go unnoticed because I inevitability proofread my posts "as I intended them to be" rather than "what is actually on the page".

There'll be some Doctor Who and roleplaying chatter along the way, between the comic book stuff and movie reviews.

Hopefully you'll also see a lot of wargaming-orientated material as I slowly pull together my Dead Man's Hand game and possibly a Judge Dredd one as well... before I turn 60 next year (aka PROJECT 60).

However, my recent (since July) health issues - with a diagnosis of osteoarthritis in my lumbar facet joints, and the attendant problems of major mobility issues and general weakness - have rather derailed my plans for both PROJECT 60 and my 20/20 Vision.

This has also contributed to a surprising loss of interest in roleplaying games (particularly the effort involved in running them), which I hope to dissect and analyse in due course. However, I am looking forward to playing in Pete's upcoming Outgunned game.

Contrarily - and unexpectedly at this late age - my interest in watching sports has increased dramatically, particularly Lucy Bronze and her colleagues in Chelsea Women's team.

But don't worry: this isn't going to become a sports blog - unless you count musings on Red Dwarf's Zero Gravity Football, 2000AD's Aeroball, or the awesome 1990 post-apocalyptic sports movie Salute of The Jugger.

If you've got this far, I'd be mighty pleased if you clicked on the "follow" tab down in the right-hand column (marked "posse"), to allow this humble offering to slide into your reading list - and give me some idea of how may of you fine folks are actually still interested in my twaddle.

Crack a cold one, pull up a chair, and sit a while... you've got 321 days of reading to catch up on.

* Please note, I will probably never refer to this site - or my home - as The Triple C Ranch ever again, but it worked for this welcome post.

Image by Xoán Carballo from Pixabay

PROJECT 60: Back To The West

Good news for PROJECT 60 and the land of Dead Man's Hand. My latest couple of painted posses are galloping back to me from professional painter, Matt of Glenbrook Games Painting Service.

As shown above, the two sets - produced by Great Escape Games - are The Family (a group of well-armed, militant religious zealots) and A Fistful of Clints (five different Western characters played by Clint Eastwood).

Next up will probably be The Quick and The Lead, a collection of eight gunfighters, based on the excellent Sam Raimi Western, The Quick and The Dead.

While these are sitting, patiently, in my gamesroom, I'm not yet sure if I'll send them to Matt before Christmas or not.

As to the Judge Dredd miniatures mentioned last time, I continue to snatch up sets I don't already own that I see on eBay for a reasonable price. However, given that Warlord has killed the line off, the prices are already starting to rocket upwards on the secondary market.

I'm looking at this as a more long-term project now, as I really ought to concentrate on one thing at a time. And that one thing is Great Escape Games' excellent Western skirmish game.

Dead Man's Hand remains my primary PROJECT 60 objective on the wargaming front, even though my plans to put together all the buildings I've purchased for the setting have been temporarily scuppered by my misbehaving spine.

I still have just over a year to 'complete' PROJECT 60, and - health-willing - I aim to devote more time to it in 2026. Particularly, the time I'd planned to spend on it THIS year!

PROJECT 60: Bringing The Word of Grud To The Wild West

Latest batch of miniatures to send off for painting

Although my body may disagree, I am still pushing ahead with the Dead Man's Hand side of my PROJECT 60 and have managed to pull together a small package of miniatures to send off to my brilliant painter, Matt of Glenbrook Games Painting Service.

This time round, we're looking at the fanatical religious faction known as The Family and a collection of heroes, who can work with any faction able to afford them: A Fistful of Clints.

Released to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Great Escape Games, each miniature is a different Clint Eastwood character from his rich Western history:

"Five lone riders. A mercenary with a wary eye. A preacher who brings judgment. A rebel who won’t back down. A killer pulled from peace. A lawman with a rope around his past. Each miniature captures a different face of [a] frontier legend, grizzled, righteous, and deadly."

This is - currently - pretty much it for my Wild West miniatures, bar a few waifs and strays, but as I've already 'warned' Matt, I'm also returning to an earlier theme: Warlord Games' Judge Dredd miniatures skirmish system.

Having produced a lovely - but limited - range, Warlord pulled the plug on its 2000AD games line (which included Slaine, Strontium Dog and The ABC Warriors), much like they did with their Doctor Who line. I guess licensed miniatures aren't great money-spinners, which is a great pity for those of us who like them.

PROJECT 60: Population Explosion In Town With No Name

My "second wave" of miniatures - for use with the Dead Man's Hand skirmish system - have returned from Matt the painter and, as usual, look fantastic. 

He painted up a Plains Indian warband (pictured above) and a miscellany of gunfighters (including Rooster Cogburn, Butch and Sundance, a woman in a tin bath [for the saloon] and a trio of random shootists).

Most of these are 'official' Great Escape Games figures, with a few off-book, scale-appropriate, acquisitions for good measure.

That means, currently, I have one other faction (the religious zealots of The Family) and a dozen or so civilians waiting in the gamesroom in the 'to be painted" queue.

However, my current 'medical science baffling' physical disability means I am unable to actually get into the narrow and deep gamesroom and sort out a "third wave" to send off to Matt. 

This has brought my progress on this project to a temporary halt, as I don't want to build up a huge backlog of Wild West characters gathering dust, especially as my mind is always wandering across a variety of other genres for roleplaying games (which I'll talk about more in the future).

So, unless, Great Escape Games releases a set of Dead Man's Hand miniatures that I "must have immediately", I think I'll be cooling my jets until I'm physically able to resume sorting and processing my purchases.

Until I'm a bit better, this also means these latest expertly painted miniatures have taken up residence within the games table (in our dining area) - rather than where they should be, in the inaccessible gamesroom. 

Honestly, once science has found a cure for my current condition, I'm going to be spending months sorting out all the stuff I've recently acquired - or rethought - and getting everything where it ought to be.

PROJECT 60: Okay, I Might Have A Problem 😱

 

Despite having already named Go Fer Yer Gun! as my favourite roleplaying game set in the Old West, and having an ever-expanding collection of Deadlands material from across the ages, I still managed to purchase two more distinctly different games in the last seven days: Tales of The Old West and Shooting Iron.

While I admire Go Fer Yer Gun! for its elegant simplicity, Shooting Iron is another d20-based system (class, level, hit points et al), with a heap of background material (although nothing on Native Americans; they were supposed to be covered in a supplement, which has yet to see print seven years after the core rules were published).

I could see this nicely written and laid out, 200-plus page, tome being a source of "houserules" and additions to a possible GFTG! campaign, with little need for much tinkering with the stats and mechanics. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Tales Of The Old West employs the Year Zero Engine, the award-winning d6 dice pool mechanics that power such Free League roleplaying games as ALIEN, Tales From The Loop, The Walking Dead etc

I'll admit the book is quite intimidating. Tales of The Old West may be too complicated for my little noggin, although one of our group mentioned to me in the past of her experience playing ALIEN, so that could help persuade me (always helps to have someone else at the table who knows the rules of the game you are playing).

Although a licenced product (it is produced by Effekt) the book has the high production and art standards consumers of Free League games have come to expect.

Of course, these "straight" West books are just the latest addition to my RPG library.

The other week I picked up a couple of "Weird West" games: Down Darker Trails (a Call of Cthulhu supplement) and We Deal In Lead (based heavily on Stephen King's Dark Tower saga).

So, now, I have six Western-themed roleplaying games: three with ghosts and monsters and three for playing pseudohistorical reality!

What does this all mean for my current superhero campaign that I'm running for the Tuesday Knights?

Maybe nothing, but maybe something. 

I guess it depends if the current game has legs (we've only managed three sessions in five months, for various reasons). 

PROJECT 60: Preparing Dead Man's Hand Wave Two

Wave Two of miniatures for Dead Man's Hand

With Matt having done such a splendid job painting up my first batch of miniatures for use with the Dead Man's Hand skirmish game (and possibly other games), I thought it was time to rustle up a second wave of figures for Matt to work his magic on.

This new collection includes a complete gang (The Plains Indians), some heroic figures (Butch and Sundance, Rooster Cogburn), and some other miscellaneous miniatures (including a woman in a tin bath that will find a spot in the upstairs accommodation of my saloon).

I've already got another gang - the religious zealots of The Family - to lead off a third wave of figures, but I'm trying to break up my spending on Dead Man's Hand material throughout the year.

The Family were originally going to be in wave two, but having been watching random episodes of The High Chaparral I was persuaded to pick up The Plains Indians (although the Apache depicted in The High Chaparral were most definitely not Plains Indians, but Great Escape Games don't - yet - make Apache miniatures).

Hopefully, as the weather is turning brighter and hotter, I'll get myself down to our garden "craft room" to do some basing, build some rocky terrain etc But I'll need to sort out those old "bitz 'n' pieces" storage boxes first, to find out what I have and what is still useful and useable.

I might even start painting my nameless saloon!