Construction Begins on Serenity Gulch

There is something especially satisfying about returning to an abandoned project. Not without its share of guilt,I suppose; Audrey bought a set of old west buildings for me for Christmas back in, what 2005? At the time, I was still working for Games Workshop, and had picked up a great ruleset at Games Day in the U.K. called Legends of The Old West. I'd grabbed a handful of historically appropriate and characterful models from Wargames Foundry in Nottingham, and was planning to repurpose some Mordheim scenery in order to be able to play.

On Christmas, Audrey totally surprised me with a set of period buildings from a small retailer in the States called Arnica Montana. (The original owner sold out and it's now called Arnica Real Estate, but I miss the original motto of "It's like playing cards with your brother's kids.")

Well, there's always another project, and the western scenery got back burnered. After I left Games Workshop a couple years later, I was painting less miniatures in general, but more importantly, I wasn't around other miniatures collectors prodding me into building a western town.

In preparation for Gaming & Guinness X next May, I asked the lads how they would feel about painting up a gang of lawmen or outlaws, if I spent the winter months building a town for them to battle it out in. To my surprise and delight, they agreed, and I placed an order with the Foundry website which should be arriving in the next week or so.

In the meantime, I found the Arnica box and started cleaning and prepping the resin pieces. They are not only naturally oily but are also coated with a lubricant called a release agent to facilitate removing them from their molds. As a result, a soapy bath, as ridiculous as it may seem, needs to precede any actual constuction.

Time for building is sparse these days, but I wanted to break ground on Serenity Gulch, Nevada, before December and the attendant Advent madness. Tonight I didn't get as far as I would have liked, but managed to shave the flash off of all four buildings and get them all washed. I even got the general store started.

I bought a sheet of hardboard for basing the buildings, but need to at least get them framed up so I know what sizes to cut it into. Still, it feels good to blow the dust off a model town languishing for almost a decade...although, I guess I will need to paint on some dust in order to make it look authentic.

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