Blackwater Raiders

In my continuous search to put to good use the insane amount of miniatures I keep hoarding, i've done quite a lot of research on rulebooks for wargames that allow you to use your existing miniatures. One of my most interesting findings was Blackwater Gulch, a light ruleset for far west skirmish combat. 

It's light enough to pick it up easily and allows you to create your own custom profiles to fit your miniatures. To be fair, far west is a theme that has never interested me specially but I had a bunch of lovely miniatures from Rail Raiders that needed a game to belong to (Rail Raiders sucks as a game).

So I decided to get to it and created some profiles for them. Tested them a bit and ended up pretty sattisfied. So next step was to paint them all. 

Rail Raiders Cavalry Bots

The first troopers I painted were the Cavalry bots. In the game I pictured them as a fast moving force, so I made them excel at moving and gunning. They were also pretty good at close combat with their cavalry sabers. Their game plan was to zip through the board, getting some shots in and finishing the enemies up close and personal.

Next were the Pallbearers, their focus on the field would be on defense with those huge shields, so their profile was built around staying power. They are not the best shooters but they can certainly hold a position with their high defense and lifepoints.

Pallbearers

I had 2 preacher miniatures and I wasn't sure I wanted to paint them the same. The Rail Raiders official scheme for the preacher is so distinct and colorful that it would be a shame having 2 equal miniatures. Having only one purple preacher makes him stand out more, so I thought doing a black color scheme fot the second one. The result ended up looking like an undertaker, and I love it as it really fits the theme of the pallbearers. 

Undertaker and Preacher

For the preacher rules I went for a support hero, able to buff nearby bots using sermons, and being able to heal injured comrades. I still need to think of rules for the Undertaker but I'm thinking of going for a glass-cannon approach on the rules.

This is how the Old Tyme Religion bots look together:

And this is how my Blackwater Raiders are looking so far.

If you happen to own Blackwater Gulch or Rail Raiders and want to give them a try, here are the cards I created for them: