A question about Old West towns (and a quick pic of my new 15mm building)

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Greetings mighty hobby gestalt that is the collective LAF’ers, I seek your wisdom and insight about your tabletop portrayal of the old west.

Whilst distracting myself from one project with a spur of the moment purchase I came back around to thinking how I’d do the old west in 15mm.

 Having read many LAF’ers ongoing accounts of their own towns or districts (Counties in FifteensAway’s case!) I’d like to create an imaginary setting and base my gaming in/around it. This is where I need your help, I’ve definitely thought about this before but I can’t recall what I decided and thought it would be quicker and easier to ask for your help/opinions:

How big (size or population) is your imaginary town or setting? What buildings (and what’s their purpose) are important/necessary/suitable for the old west to set the scene on your tabletop?

Saloon/Boarding House
Hardware
Bank (only bigger towns?)
Bakery
Barber surgeon
Gunsmith (or would this be bigger towns?)

I’d like my setting to be more treeline and green than arid and spaghetti western and believe the easiest reason for the town’s existence would be something like newly discovered gold at a fading timber camp. This would presumably bring miners and their residences, entertainment, equipment providers and other sundry services. What other reasons (and any specific buildings needed) can you suggest?



So this isn’t just boring text here’s a slightly dark mobile phone picture of a Blotz old west building (is there a specific name for the style?) I’ve just built. I’m really impressed. It’s simple and sturdy but doesn’t look cheap. I look forwards to further additions to the range and I’m going to try and paint this one asap (more pics on my blog).

Thank you

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[Codsticker]

I imagine my little town to be the centre of a spread out ranching and farming community so just a few residences, a shop or two, a church, a smithy and possibly a hotel and stable. A population of a hundred or so. Initially inspired by Barkerville in BC's interior, my idea has evolved away from strictly a gold rush town.

[snitcythedog]

You have some real options to work with but it depends on what the town is built for. 
Rail hubs/travel hubs
Farming communities
Mining communities
Communities supporting reservations
Lumber communities

Once you have the setting you also need to work out the when. 
1860s to 1870s mostly small communities where people are moving in.
1870s to 1890s these communities were being built up with more permanent structures. 
1890s to 1900s would be either the heyday or the decline of many of these towns. 
1900s to 1910s could be a period of lawlessness on rural communities away from larger towns.  This could include criminal activity or cross border skirmishes. 

Hope my rambling helps you figure out what you want to do. 

[joekano]

While I don't play this era, I grew up near the old Gold Rush towns in California, and here are some that might be able to provide inspiration for mining towns:

Placerville (Formerly Hangtown) https://www.cityofplacerville.org/placerville-city-history https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ca-placerville/
1850s

1860s


Nevada City https://westernmininghistory.com/towns/california/nevada-city/ https://www.nevadacountyca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/14905/Nevada-City-Landmarks-PDF
1850s

1900s


Angels Camp https://www.calaverashistory.org/angels-camp https://cali49.com/hwy49/2013/12/6/angels-camp
1860s:

1900s:

[Malamute]

To add to your list of buildings:
Livery stable.
Land office.
More than one saloon
Church.
Schoolhouse.
General store.
sheriffs office/jail.

I am sure there are plenty more!

[ichwillauch]

To add more to the list of buildings:

If you want to play a more rpg style western game like boot hill 3ed you need a bathhouse and a barber to increase your social rating after living months in the wilderness,  some stores to buy new clothes and heads or equipment for new wilderness adventures. An Ammo and weapon store is also useful and an undertaker.

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Thank you Codsticker, Snitcythedog, Joekano, Malamute and ichwillauch, much appreciated. That is exactly what I was hoping for and has helped to get the cogs turning again!

I started the list of buildings and it seemed to just keep going so I realised it was better to ask others and spot ones I’d missed or forgotten (which has worked - Malamute I’d forgotten about a schoolhouse).

 I now have lots of questions about orders of building priority and populations needed/served but that’ll only be important to my background (Codsticker your simple description of your setting is exactly what I want to fix in my head for my setting). I’ll start looking into that (pictures are amazing joekano thank you) which will be all the easier with snitcythedog’s succinct overview.

I’m going to take a look at Boot Hill (thank you ichwilauch for the suggestion) as I do like rpg elements (need to look at the Deadlands Reloaded rules aswell).

How frequent were Land Agents? What sort of area were they responsible for?

Thank you all again, please chip in with your own description of your setting/town etc.

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[FifteensAway]

Many towns in the greener parts of the west were railroad towns built to attract settlers so the railroad could benefit from land grants and could be farming, ranching, lumbering, or mining towns - and sometimes a mix of several.

Another often overlooked source of communities in the west are those established to supply US Army forts - those lucrative government contracts.

As to how big, matter of taste, pocket book, and available storage space.  I have gone way off and over the deep end for sure.

My personal preferred scenario concept involves range wars where there can only be two sides involved but lots of figures on both sides so there can be many people playing in the game.  Not a big fan of games where there are six different sides in the game.  Fun, played in one like that this past weekend but there were three players more law abiding and three not so much so not quite a free-for-all.

Those street shootouts so beloved by Hollywood were actually really rare.

joekano - those are some cool photos.  I live in that part of the world and have been to all of those places.

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Not a big fan of games where there are six different sides in the game.

Yes, such amazing, sprawling multi-sided campaigns strike me as great in theory but are potentially easily derailed by one player if they go off on a random tangent (and this then lessens the experience for others).

It’ll mainly just be me and anyone I can convince to play - the appeal was I could start relative small and get a few usable figures and buildings done. I won’t get anywhere near your collection Fifteens, just a few groups of antagonists and then civilians and characters. I desperately need some kind of motivational kick to get my painting mojo up and running again as whilst my painting progress has effectively halted I haven’t stopped prepping and basing platoons for most of my projects 

Thank you for the advice, please keep chiming in as it’s all very inspiring and helpful (saves me trawling through notes or ospreys)

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[Khusru2]

Sarissa Precision have some nice buildings.

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Thank you Khusru2, I’ve seen them but not actually in the flesh. They look basic but eminently suitable and with a little bit of additional detailing they’ll be great. Certainly add some variation to my Blotz ones. Do you own any of them? Have any thoughts?

There are quite a few 15mm Sarissa products I’d like for WW2 and others but I only have the Chateau (and it’s still packed) so far, definitely need to invest in some more. I’ve also remembered Empires at War’s products today - they have some great options.

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[FifteensAway]

If you want to add some resin buildings to your collection, I recommend taking a look at Stone Mountain Miniatures:

http://www.wargamingminiatures.com/wargaming-buildings-terrain/15mm-acw-buildings/

They offer five different false front buildings - each with a separate false front - and one false front tent structure (very common in early days of many Old West towns).  Click on the colored links on the left for photos of items.  Check through the rest of the range for other suitable items like fences and walls. 

In UK QRF miniatures has some buildings in resin that must be assembled but some interesting offerings.  The OldGlory25s Bluemoon Old West range are very nice buildings but MUCH larger than other ranges - removable roofs for interior skirmishing I guess, perhaps why so large.  They are nice looking.

Not sure how well they would mix with MDF buildings but they do expand your options.

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Excellent, thank you Fifteens. Going to peruse stone mountain now. I’ve owned some QRF vehicles in the past and they were some of the worst casts I’ve ever seen - I couldn’t make it look ok, no matter what I tried. I will investigate their buildings.

I don’t have many miniatures overall so it is very tempting to use blue moon minis as their range has a good number of civilians and everything else - just wish I’d seen them in the flesh…

Thank you again

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[snitcythedog]

For a couple of other building types.
Assayer's office

Any of the buildings listed above as tents (for new towns)

News Paper

Many of the businesses were also dual function out of necessity so keep that in mind.

If you are looking for photos for inspiration, many of the towns and cities in the Southwest have historical societies and local news papers.  Some of them have photo archives that are online to view and some of them have published articles with historic photos from their collection. 

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Brilliant, Thank you Snitcythedog, some nice pics and great advice re the historical societies - now I’ll have to work out where in the US I want to set my town……

With the tents: were they very short lived? (Whilst the town was initially being set up and supplies for more robust buildings not yet available/prioritised elsewhere). I’m guessing they would have then been reused/repurposed, once the original owner had built their intended structure, as a tent is better than nothing and the influx of people (boom town) creates a constant demand.

Thank you all again. This was intended as a quick distraction whilst I waited for my Star Wars project to gain more traction but I’m getting more and more distracted! 

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain