Gatling Guns & Machine Guns in Spaghetti Westerns - And a related Figure Conversion

Since the Dawn of the 'Spaghetti Western' movie-genre, it seems that Gatling- and machine guns have been present in several of them. Someone (with better time than me) have counted the presence and use of such weapons in about 95 Western-movies. Most of them are 'Spaghetti Westerns' and someone even took the time to counting kills and estimating type of guns. In some of the Spaghetti Western movies the Gatling- or machine guns are not stationary, but even carried and operated by a single person in 'Rambo style'. The first time I saw this in a western movie was in "Django" (where he kept his freelanced machine gun in a coffin).

Realistic or not, this is something I've been wanting to replicate and capture in model when doing cinematic Old West wargames, and it would give much more firepower to a single figure. The only 19th century Gatling gun I own, is an ACW Union (firing) Gatling from Britains. This is a large crew-served weapon and not exactly what I was looking for.

Many of the Gatling- or machine guns in western movies are not exact replications of the real thing, and many of them looks like 'fantasy guns'. Therefore it was not important to me to make an exact model of such a weapon, just more like a resemblance.  At Thingeverse I found a 28mm scale "Gatling-Machine gun". It's actually neither as it has the same rotating barrels as a Gatling gun (looking like a Colt) but at the same time has the trigger system of a 'Maxim Machine gun'. I liked the magazine. I think this will look good in the hands of a Cowboy.

Now I needed to find a suitable figure. Last year I re-armed one of my inexpensive Airfix Cowboy knock-offs with a shotgun. I like this hip-firing pose, and thinks that would be a good starting-point for a 'Rambo-looking mitrailleuse firing Cowboy'. 

I also wanted this cowboy to look a little different than the 2 other figures I have in the same pose, so I decided to add a coat to him made with 'Green Stuff'.

Then he was finally ready for some priming, painting and sealing. I was inspired by Franco Nero's first appearance as 'Django' when I painted this miniature. Even if he looks all black, I've tried to capture the very dark blue from the movie:

How to use this miniature in games?

No any (free) 'Old West' wargame- or RPG rules I know include rules for machine guns, so some improvisation is necessary to use this miniature in a game. I simply suggest to use this as same stats as a 'rifle-shooter' but with 3 rounds each time instead of one, making it more likely to hit one target or to make multiple damage in a cluster of targets. 

Alternatively if using other rules than specific 'Old West' ones, just treat it as a LMG if the rules include such weapon.

It looks like he is ready for going rouge in future games...

A quick and easy military figure conversion followed by a 'Day out'

 

Just after I came home from our tour to the exhibitions at Neumünster and Hamburg, one of the travelling companions invited to a day out and running session on his garden railway the following weekend. It's been a while since I've been running my Roundhouse W^D livesteam locomotive, so I decided to bring it along. 

I've felt that this locomotive missed 'something' and decided that I wanted to add crew to it before the running session last weekend. There wasn't much time to arrange something, and when taking a look inside the locomotive's cab not much space for crew either:

It's a military locomotive and I wanted a military crew for it. On Thingiverse I found a couple of free figures (one military and one civilian) I resized to 1:19-ish scale to fit the locomotive which I then 3D-printed:

The locomotive-cab was so cramped by valves, cranks, servoes and tubes that the figures didn't automatically fit. Some cutting and drilling (to make them partially hollow) was necessary to make them fit. Thereafter they were hastily painted olive green mixed with a little brown to make the uniformes resemble British Battledress':

The Lance Corporal to the right needed to be stretched all directions but the height to make him partially hollow and fit on the lubricator cap

The 'original' driver to the right for comparison 

Despite that the 'chopped' figures didn't look so good, they looked much better when fitted inside the locomotive-cab:

I managed to get them just about ready for the day out at my friend's garden railway last weekend. Since operating my Livesteam locomotive takes so much attention, I usually don't get to take any photos of it during operation. This time however Tom Arild Sørli took some great photos of it. -Thanks mate!

This is a LGB-model of a Heeresfeldbahn steam locomotive HF110C, and is closer to 1:19 scale than the more usual 1:22,5 for LGB models, and belongs to a friend. The livery is civilian postwar though:

Here are some impressions of other trains from other companies operating the line last sunday:

It's not too obvious on this photo, but the 2 flatcars are still civilian in an American livery, so I'll guess they will be 'militarized' as future workbench project.

Thank you for the invitation and your hospitality Heine!

🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃

Attachments to replies to friends in the comment-section 

Michael: 

I love to paint and weather my rollingstock, but I follow the suit and our club and run them whenever I can, despite time of year, temperatures or weather. This rollingstock is really sturdy and take rough weather well:

A June Workbench update

The Cowboys mentioned in the May Workbench update are slowly coming together. A little slower than I planned though due to the nice weather we have in Norway these days making it more tempting with outdoor activities than indoors, and I got tempted to do someæ further conversions before painting them.

Since I got 2 of this figure armed with a Winchester rifle, I 3D-printed a 'Lego' Shotgun and replaced it with one of the Winchesters.

These figures are made of a really soft and oily plastic, so to give the paint a chance I'm priming them with ModPodge, a tip I got from James at Quantrill's Toy Soldiers.

Then they're primed with a plastic-primer to make the paint adhere better. This plastic-primer dries clear. Aerosols I do outside.

Then they were given a colored coat of primer, so the paint will show it's colors better and more even than painted on the colored plastic.

I've started to paint them with ordinary acrylics form the craft store, but due to the good weather here in Norway recently I've been doing more outdoor activities than indoor, so I'm not quite done with them yet. They're a fun project to paint, and I'm looking forward to get them done so I can use them for future games.

As I'm going to use them for gaming, I needed some interior as well (3D-printed)...

...and a simplified false front frontier town.

This is how my (former) Garden Railway looks like at the moment. Probably I could throw in some tracks and have a real 'Trench Railway' now...

A tip for a simple conversion

Where are they when you need them?

As I'm intending to use my previously reviewed Toy Story Army men for wargaming, I'm organizing them into rifle squads/sections. But to so in a propper way, they actually miss one thing which most rifle squads have; a machinegunner armed with a a LMG. The 'Bucket O Soldiers' didn't contain any such figures.

The two sections are kind of large (at least bigger than a Norwegian section of 8 men), and can be divided in to even more fireteams. A LMG might get usefull for them

Make a not so useful figure more suitable for your needs...

As I wanted my new machinegunners to match the rest of their squad in both style and size, I decided to convert some of the other Toy Story figures left in the bucket for this purpose. Since I've used most figures for different purposes, there wasn't so many left to choose between. I had some engineers with mine-detectors left, as they are not so useful for my type of wargaming. Besides, their position is not that bad for a soldier carrying a LMG (at least not for a "links-shooter").

Still in a Classic style and pose

...And arm him with "Lego"...

The next challenge was to find a suitable LMG to arm them with. I keep leftovers from kits in a box full og bits and pieces, but my guns there were mostly 1:35 scale. I found them to small, as the Toy Story-soldiers are bigger. To buy other kits just to get the machineguns wasn't tempting, but on Thingeverse I found a lot of 3D-files for free to print. I also found a huge selection of different weapons there as well. As I was able to print some files from Thingeverse (more on that in a later blog-post), it was just to take a pick. 

Even though their generic, green and tan "imagiNATION" style, I kept Norwegian soldiers in mind making the UN-troops. Therefore I wanted to arm them with a machinegun used by Norwegian Armed Forces. As the MG3 was one of my favorites from my own service, it had to be one f those. It is very similar to the WWII German MG42, so it was easy to find some models/files on Thingeverse. I had to try to print different files of the MG42, as not all of them came out successfully due to the small size. I found a "Lego MG42" for "Lego Minifigs Wargaming", and resized it to 1:32 scale. It was a robust model and turned out quiet well, so I printed 2 models with both folded and unfolded bipods. I kept the drum magazine on, as it enables the LMG to be operated by 1 person and will be an advantage in wargaming.

Printed in both black and white PLA-plastic with bipods both folded and unfolded.

Now the soft, oily plastic the soldiers are made from became handy, as I was able to bend the left arm on one of them easily by hot water. The other one I kept a little different deliberately to get a slight variation. With the LMGs fitted, my soldiers became wobbly due to their small original base and added weight. Back at Thingeverse I found different bases and resized and printed one of them. Now they stands steady.

Don't look to good yet, as some putty and glue is still visible

Finishing touches

Painting is straight forward, nothing new here. Washed, primed, painted, and sealed with Mod Podge directly this time. 

Primed and ready

I tried to add further variations as some of the drum magazines looks different from different manufacturers. Some MG3s uses old and new parts, and some even has old MG42 parts. That's why I gave the soldier to the right an older 'brownish' bakelite sholderstock to his weapon.

A quick wash and drybrush brings out the few little details that these 'smooth' figures has.

Now they're ready to team up with their BIA and complete their squads, and probably for some action as well....