Dead Man's Hand Down Under

[axabrax]

Steve S and Mark Sims would be a natural choice and a similar style as they are all ex Foundry. High on my list would also be Hicksie, but we shall see.  I don't see why a lot of the current Old West figures wouldn't work, at least the ones that don't have cowboy hats.

Here's also hoping that 4Ground decides to do an appropriate building or two.

I watched The Proposition last night. Far, far superior to Ned Kelly, which feels like a dollop of pablum by way of comparison. Almost watched Quiggley after, but the preview looked really dated and lame. 

Yes, good reads on the rangers would be welcome. I couldn't find much on Amazon that wasn't from the 19 century.

Can't think who that would be off the top of my head, but look forward to adding some to the collection if they match in style.

I'd heard some of the stories about Tasmania. 

I get the feeling that the attitudes haven't changed that much in the area. When I was in Mudgee we visited a friend of the family who regaled us with tales of dodging the cops when they were younger and generally getting in trouble. As he sat in his armchair making hunting knifes..

It was around the time the law came banning the ownership of semi-auto rifles. I was told that a load of them had got around the ban by sticking all their guns in a shed somewhere in the outback. I believe it was quite the arsenal.

Do you have any recommendations for books about the bushrangers?

[NickNascati]

It would be great to see another Kelly Gang set without the armor suits.

[axabrax]

Yeah I'm not sure how well they will play in the armor. Not having to worry about insta-kill is nice, but they are slow and can't duck back. I think the bank robbery scenario will be particularly tough for them due to low mobility. They'll be fun to test play, however.

I could actually see a house rule where you can have some of the gang armored and some not. This way you can field a few tanks to screen your gang and absorb fire, but still have some mobility. I think only being able to use pistols is a big disadvantage too. Honestly in a competitive campaign I probably wouldn't pick the Kelly Gang based on a quick read of their stats.

It would be great to see another Kelly Gang set without the armor suits.

[starkadder]

Do you have any recommendations for books about the bushrangers?

My first suggestion is a negative. Treat anything by Frank Clune with great suspicion. According to rumour, Clune had an old drunkard who ghost-wrote a lot of stuff for him. He used to make a lot of stuff up. Having said that, they are great reads and cover people like Hall in great detail.

Charles White's 2 volume History of Australian Bushranging gives a pretty good account. It's old-school writing but very detailed.

Robbery under Arms is a great read but again is "old-fashioned".

Bill Wannan (sometimes W. Fearn-Wannan)  produced a lot of stuff. His most fun book is Australian Folklore: A Dictionary of Lore, Legends and Popular Illusions.

A lost classic is Cyril Pearl's Wild Men of Sydney. Not precisely about bushranging but it has great flavour.

If you want real background to early Sydney, I can recommend Grace Karsken's The Colony. It is one of the best accounts I have ever read. Social history at its finest.

[Leigh Metford]

The White books are still probably the best, most comprehensive starting point.

Wannan also did a less detailed general history: 'Tell 'Em I Died Game'.

There are several large format illustrated histories around; George E. Boxall's 'History of the Australian Bushrangers' has been reprinted numerous times since it was first published in the late 19th century, and is still worth reading because it covers events not discussed in other books.

Keep in mind that in all cases you'll only be reading about the best known, best recorded cases. There were perhaps 2000 or so bushrangers active over the entire colonial period, but the stories of most of them are either lost to history or remain untouched by historians and writers. Just to give one example, a couple of years ago a shiny new history of the NSW Police Force was published, which includes a brief account of a shootout between mounted police and a couple of colourful desperadoes (one going by the epithet 'Angel') in the west of the colony in the mid 1880s - when according to most general histories of bushranging Ned was the last real outlaw. One of those troopers was awarded for bravery and later went on to become Police Commissioner.

While I'm on the subject of police, I recommend two books by John O'Sullivan: 'Mounted Police of Victoria and Tasmania', and 'Mounted Police in NSW'.
Also by O'Sullivan is 'The Bloodiest Bushrangers', which is the story of the Clarke Brothers gang - oddly little known outside bushranger enthusiast circles. In an eerie precursor to the Kelly story, they ambushed and killed four special constables who were hunting them. And in one of those strange twists of history, they made their final stand in a shootout with police from the protection of a fortified hut built in the 1840s that had originally been loopholed for defence against Aboriginal attacks.

And while I'm on bushranging/frontier conflict overlap, 'Robbery Under Arms' is of course a novel, whose author, Rolfe Boldrewood (real name Tom Browne), participated in the Eumeralla War in south west Victoria in the 1840s. In his memoirs he recounts what he considered an amusing incident, when a Native Mounted Police section rode up to his homestead and the Aboriginal NCO leading them saluted and said to him 'I hear the blacks been very bad about here.'

     

[Ray Earle]

Brilliant, thanks for the suggestions.

I've managed to pick up the second volume of Whites books for a fair price so shall start with that. From what I've seen its similar in style with most of the period histories of the Old West I have so I'm pretty sure I'll be alright with the style of writing. 

[Bugsda]

Did the Aboriginie's ever get any of their own back, was their an Australian little big horne or some such?

[Leigh Metford]

Bugsda - to answer your question in the simplest terms: no.

The highly decentralised social structure of Aboriginal society meant that it didn't have time to absorb knowledge about the invaders' new technologies on a large scale, such as the horse and - with a couple of localised exceptions - guns, before the advancing frontier of settlement reached a 'tribe's' territory. There was also the crucial matter of food resources, which would be quickly exhausted by large concentrations of people. The number of warriors that could be fielded was consequently limited, and never exceeded five or six hundred - and even that was generally only possible through an alliance of clans. This dynamic also meant that the invaders could usually deal with resistance locally without the need for large military campaigns, relying instead on the the settlers themselves with the support of para-military mounted police forces - a situation which played into the hands of authorities who, for the most part, preferred to assign indigenous resistance to the law and order basket. This isn't to say that the army wasn't involved, but outside Tasmania it was on a small scale, and virtually ceased after the 1840s. For all these reasons there was no possibility of anything on the scale of Little Big Horn occurring.

Most of the fights on the frontier were skirmishes involving a handful of settlers, police, or soldiers against scores or hundreds of warriors. Aboriginal warriors fought on foot and mostly relied on traditional weapons: spears (in many regions assisted by spear throwers, or woomeras), clubs, and boomerangs - so, in some respects, the situation was not unlike that in southern Africa: settlers who were usually mounted (other than miners and those defending buildings), heavily outnumbered by tribesmen on foot. Additionally, Aboriginal weapons had low lethality; they were made of wood, and spearheads were of bone, flint, or fire-hardened wood (increasingly supplemented by imported glass, metal, and ceramics), so it was hard to knock a settler out of a fight unless he received multiple wounds. Due to the numerical odds this was always possible, but it was difficult for warriors on foot to catch mounted settlers in a position in which they'd be exposed to sufficient missiles. None-the-less, it did happen, and - getting back to your original question - there were some instances of what you might call mini-Little Big Horns; mostly involving Native Mounted Police patrols, because as a permanent force embodied specifically for service on the frontier they were continuously engaged.

The most effective way that Aborigines 'got their own back' though was by forcing settlers out through a combination of fear, tension, casualties, property destruction, driving off their flocks and herds, inflated wages needed to attract workers (effectively 'danger money'), additional costs due to having to hire extra staff purely for security duties, and ultimately... bankruptcy; a fate that befell many property 'owners' across the continent, individually and collectively.

I hope this answers your question.                

[axabrax]

Wasn't this post about Dead Man's Hand at one point? Lol! 

[greatescapegames]

Two new rogues: Jonathan Pain and Roy Magnum. Released April 25th, available for pre-order now:



www.greatescapegames.co.uk

[Ray Earle]

Great stuff. 

[axabrax]

Argh! I already ordered! Now I have to place another order. I hope you guys will at least combine shipping considering its a pre-order?

[Bugsda]

I hope this answers your question.                

Yep, brilliantly, cheers 

Wasn't this post about Dead Man's Hand at one point? Lol! 

Yeah, DMH Down Under, if you know sod all about it you gotta' have some background. 

[axabrax]

Fair enough, Bugsda. Look forward to seeing your paint jobs on these figures! 

[greatescapegames]

Argh! I already ordered! Now I have to place another order. I hope you guys will at least combine shipping considering its a pre-order?

If you add these guys on, we'll refund extra postage when it is ready for despatch.