Dinosaur Cowboys – Tabletop Skirmish Game

Above is my latest painted miniature: Alexander the Bartender. His name is kind of a nod to the Alexander Keith’s beer popular here in Canada. Apologies for the ever so slightly blurred picture. I’ll try to re-take the photo during my next game.
I went for a pretty standard paint scheme of blue jeans (washed green), dark brown vest, green shirt, hay colored hair, and a wicked looking shotgun of red wood with metal and gold inlays. The element I like best on this miniature is his “butcher’s apron”, which is so gory I should have converted the bottle he’s holding to a meat cleaver ala Bill Cutting from Gangs of New York. I went for a mix of brown ink stains, various shades of red and brown, and the best feature of all: the bloody hand print slowly dragged down the front of his robe. This combined with his twirled mustache gives Alexander quite the menacing look! I even got his eyes painted a merciless ice blue. His bottle has double X in yellow on the painted-on label, and I like how the angled brew inside ended up looking. I went for a wintery stand color with a flat light gray bordered in plain white, which REALLY stands out on the standard green tabletop.
The miniature itself is Mickey O’Doul from the Chronospace line from Reaper Mini. Terrific line up of pop culture miniatures!
Now that I’m all moved to my new house I’ve been able to sit down and paint some more. I also painted a Minotaur for my D&D campaign. Two miniatures in the same month is practically a record compared to how painfully slowly I was painting before. Hopefully it’s the start of a trend. I’ve rounded up all my cowboy-esque figures that I need to get started on. With some luck, buckling down, and inspiration winter should be a productive time.

2014 UPDATE
Finally some better, less blurry pictures! And I had the first tabletop usage of the Bartender (Fight for the Flaming Gorge battle report), where he did quite well!

Well after far, far too long using my old figures and collecting many unpainted cowboys I finally sat down and cranked out two figures. Both are from the Chronoscope line from Reaper Miniatures. They aren’t “heroic scale” like Games Workshop so all the weapons look realistically sized for once. The Chronoscope line has a TON of great figures and movie parodies and stuff.
The thumbnails are a bit grainy so I recommend clicking for the full size. Also the matte protective spray I use is TERRIBLE. I think it settled too much since my last painting night and now sprays on a fine white fluff sort of like grainy snow. Really annoying and it’s especially noticeable in the solo shots below. I used to have a great protective spray but it ran out, and I’ve been trying various brands ever since. Still no luck recreating that thin, even matte covering.
Anyways here they are:

The cowboy with two machine gun pistols is based off the character Tallahasse in the movie Zombieland. I went with an orange shirt to brighten him up, since I find it’s very easy to fall in a rut of “brown + green + black” for a figure. I tried for a worn look on the jean knees and upper thighs, gave him a cool bowler sporting jacket, and went for subdued black + metal drybrush guns.

Then we have Preacher Pike, who I’ve had mostly painted for a while now, aside from finishing up the stand. Pretty simple look for him and he’d be great as a double in a Cthulhu game. I went for a more ornate bright silver hand shotgun, simple but dashing red shirt, and a worn look to his outstretched book. In hindsight I probably should have painted the facial features, but that’s easy to say when the figure is blown up to large size in the picture.

After these I have a khaki wearing safari explorer, a Victorian era British rifleman, a Clint Eastwood “Man With No Name” imitation, a space sheriff, and a few more good ones just waiting to be used on the table.