"What's the best/easiest way to create a scale Western Town?" Topic

I've always wanted to play Old West in miniature, but the fact that you seem to need to nice sized town to play in, and which can pretty much only be used for that game, has always put me off.

Is there any easy (or relatively easy) solution to this issue that you can recommend?

I always held off for the same reason, Bede, but then Whitewash City came along…….

hotzartworks.com

Whitewash city just can't be beat for fast and easy.

Or this free website with a number of printable Western buildings. I've already built the sheriff's office and it turned out quite nicely.

home.iprimus.com.au/shadowolf/Index.htm

Jim

If you are on a slim budget those buildings by Shadowolf are a good way to go. If your budget has a little more wiggle room the Hotz stuff is a better product!

I'd just buy the whole town from Arnica, Montana. they make a wide and inexpensive line of resin Western buildings.

This excellent site has some FREE buildings!

link

Whitewash city is indeed easy. Though when I got mine printed and then made them, I found the walkways were too small for a 1" base so you will want to enlarge them a bit before printing.

Mike

The easiest way to create a Western Town IS "Whitewash City" of course. Overall it's the most bang for your buck, without painting, sealing, etc. The buildings also do not take up that much space in storage and transport and they are LIGHTweight, PLUS you get inside floor plans!

Now for real kits?…Arnica is ONE of the best ways to go!

Mike

Before I had many buildings we used to do most of our games outside of town. Rocks and trees make great cover. Getting a mine entrance, or scratch-building one is cheap. Monday Knight Productions makes several types of cacti.

One of the simplest scenarios is having a posse chase down an outlaw gang. Another option is having a gang storm a lone building like a jail or bank. There's no need to start with a whole town.

Whitewash City is a great option as well though, the best part of their buildings is simply that he includes scale floorplans so you can easily take the fight indoors.

Also remmeber that many of the boom towns, especially in the wild few months before law and order settle in, consisted primarily of tents.

Some of the tents might have a wooden false front, but by and large a couple of fancy saloon buildings can be supplemented with dozens of cheap tents made from paper.

I have used the same buildings as ColCampbell.

Printed on A4 labels and stuck to mounting board. Superb and free.

Also keep in mind, many Western "towns" just weren't that big.

I drove up Boreas Pass (near Breckenridge Colorado) this weekend. It was site to the town of Boreas. The photographs at the lone remaining building showed a town of about 5 buildings at it's peak (a post office and a couple of other buildings).

Boreas was founded to service the rail workers which maintained the rail line between Breckenridge and Como.

You can get by with just a building or two and still be "authentic". Start with a General Store and a Post Office and work your way out.

All true, although I think it would be more fun to have more things to hide behind. Otherwise its just a bunch of guys standing out in the open shooting each other!

Go with Arnica Montana. Great prices, great pieces. I've been working on mine lately.

You can see quite a few painted up here link

and Arnicas site here link

If you just want to get your feet wet, try a few of the free buildings above and combine them with Whitewash City. After you've decided that this is a genre you want to invest in, upgrade to Arnica Montana and O-Scale Plasticville model train buildings. Just let your towns grow along with your resources and interest.

By the way, don't forget that you don't have to have a town to run a Western game. You can get hills and multi-use desert terrain (trees, hills, scrub) and set up a game at an outpost, like in this Gutshot Adventure, "Hell Ride to Buzzard Point:"
link

This set up only used five buildings:
link

And this used about three (including an outhouse):
link

And, as noted above, towns can be quite small in the West:
link

So, start small and work your way up. That's one of the great things about Western skirmish games: you don't need a lot of terrain, buildings, or figures to build a fairly realistic game that's a LOT of fun.