One in, one out.

You may recall that back in January I posted about a new rescue dog; Mina.  The idea was that we would adopt her, but sadly it didn’t work out.  While things started out well, as Mina became more settled and her confidence grew issues started to surface.

Initially it centred around resource guarding, especially with regards to food.  It then escalated to guarding the house against men coming in the door, including me!  Finally she started attacking our other dog, Barney, to stop him getting to his food.  At that point we accepted defeat and that she had to be returned to the rescue centre.

We were once again a one dog family until a couple of weeks ago when our daughter asked us to look after her 18 month old working Cocker Spaniel; Mabel.  Mabel and the other dog in the their house don't get on so they needed to be separated.  Whether this is a permanent arrangement remains to be seen but for the moment double doggie life is happening once again at Chez Elenderil. 

Mabel, looking like butter wouldn't melt...

We have been forcibly reminded that an18 month old working Cocker is a lot more energetic than a 10 year old Kooikerhundje or even George at his prime for that matter, and don't get me started on food!   She even makes the late great George look like he was watching his weight.  George used to wait to eat Barney's left overs, well I say eat, hoover up is more accurate.  Mabel doesn't wait, if Barney turns his back for an instance she is in (like Flynn as we used to say).  Other than that they are getting along really well.  We are also back to some aspects of puppy training, but she is a bright girl, keen to please and the training is going well enough that we can let her off lead for a run in the local park secure in the knowledge that her recall is good (as long as the dog treats hold out).  I'm currently having to get up a couple of times each night to let her out to wee, but that seems to be due to a bladder infection which she is having treatment for and does seem to be reducing the trips to the back garden in the wee (see what I did there) small hours.  For the last few nights there have been no 'accidents' so that seems to be going well too.

It's nice having a second dog around the place even if she is currently on my side of the bed sleeping snuggled up to Mrs E!  Dogs eh?

The OK corral - analysing the fight

In the last post I looked at the 'Geography' of the shootout, in this one I'm going to look at who was present and where they were during the critical moments as well as how they performed.  This is much less cut and dried than the location details and even Wyatt Earp himself seems to have misidentified locations in his later life.  However, the majority of sources and witness statements are clear that the shooting started in the space between Fly's Lodging house and the Harwood house.

The Earp party comes into play walking along Fremont Street at the corner of the Union Meat Market (AKA Bauer's) Sheriff Behan attempts to stop them claiming to have disarmed the Cowboys.  The Earps ignore him and continue towards Fly's.  While this is happening the Cowboys are lounging along the wall of the Harwood house and out into the vacant lot.  At least one and possibly two have horses with holstered Winchester rifles (Frank McLaury for certain and possibly Billy Clanton) as they have just ridden into town having been alerted to trouble between the Earps, Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne earlier in the day.  Cowboy Wes Fuller is stood by the corner of Fly's Photographic Studio deeper into the lot and Billy Claiborne is between Wes and Ike.

Rough positions of the participants and routes taken by those who fled the fight

My take on the positions is that as the Earps came around the corner of Fly's the Cowboys started moving with Ike Clanton, Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton pivoting forward in a rough line.  After a few words along the lines "we have come to disarm you" or possibly "You sons of bitches have been looking for a fight, now you can have one" from the Earps two shots rang out almost at the same time.  Cowboy supporters claim that the Earps fired those shots without any provocation, while Earp supporters took the view that Billy Clanton went for his gun and fired at Wyatt, with Wyatt drawing and shooting at Frank.  Wyatt later said that he knew Frank to be good with a gun and a dangerous man which is why he shot at him rather than Billy.  At this point the firing "became general" and the vacant lot must have become thick with gun smoke (remember these guys are all using black powder revolvers).  

In the midst of this Ike Clanton runs towards Wyatt telling him he is unarmed and doesn't want this fight.  He is told "get to fighting or get away".  He chooses the latter option and flees past the Earp's  line through Fly's lodging house front door and out of the back door and away towards the OK corral.  Wes Fuller is also getting clear of the shooting at this point.  Billy Claiborne also decided that discretion was the better part of valour running into the lodging house through the back door to hide.  While all of this is going on Sheriff Behan is also moving through the lodging house.  It must have been getting crowded in there!

Who shot who isn't entirely clear as 30 -40 shots were fired in around 30 seconds so there was a lot of lead flying.  Frank Mclaury at some point crosses the Earp's firing line and reaches Fremont Street.   He  tries to draw the Winchester from the saddle holster but without success.  His horse bolts and he is shot dead on the far side of Fremont somewhere opposite the Harwood house.  Virgil and Morgan Earp have sustained one gunshot wound each and Doc Holliday has been grazed.  Wyatt has had very near misses but is unwounded.  On the Cowboy side Frank McLaury had been hit twice and killed, Tom McLaury is mortally wounded from a shotgun blast and Billy Clanton is also dying from three gunshot wounds.

We know that the Earp party all had a revolver and Doc also had a short barrelled shotgun (A Coach or Messenger's gun).  Assuming that their revolvers only had five rounds each loaded (a common safety technique before reliable safety catches) that gives the Earps twenty pistol rounds and two in the shotgun.  We don't know if all of those pistol rounds were fired off though, and assuming both shotgun barrels were fired (as Doc tossed it aside to draw his pistol) but if they were then twenty two rounds fired at close range generated six or maybe seven wounds (assuming the shotgun wound to Tom McLaury was from both barrels).  That is an overall hit rate of  just under 32%.

The cowboys had inflicted three wounds but it is not fully clear how many rounds they fired.  We know Billy Clanton's gun was empty after the fight and that Frank McLaury's still held two rounds.  Assuming each was loaded with only five rounds for safety from eight shots they inflicted three wounds are hit rate of 37.5%.  However there was, and still is, uncertainty as to whether Tom McLaury was armed or not.  He had been disarmed earlier in the day but several witnesses claimed they saw a bulge in his pocket which could have been a pistol, alternatively it is known that he had just collected $3,300 and receipts for stolen cattle from Bauer's Butchers which may have been what was seen.  No pistol was found on or near his body but Wyatt was convinced Wes Fuller removed it. If he was armed then lets add another 5 rounds to the mix.  That makes the hit rate three from thirteen or 23%.

No matter how the numbers fall out the chance of hitting an opponent in a very short range encounter in a location with little room to manoeuvre is much lower than the game rules would create if all participants have a pistol rating which doesn't create any negative modifiers.  In the old west rules the range is 1 - 10 with ratings below 7 creating a minus 10% chance of hitting per level below 7 and a plus 10% chance of hitting for each level above 7.

So assuming that everyone is on a seven.  This fight starts with pistols 'holstered' actually they were in pockets or waistbands but the effect is the same.  They were drawn and 'snap fired' at short range.  The basic chance of a hit at short rang shooting at a man walking or carrying out any action is a whopping 75%, snap firing at short range doesn't change this although the shooter walking or carrying out any action does reduce the chance to 70%.   I'd argue that once a couple of shots were fired the smoke would obscure things enough to count as soft cover reducing the hit chance to 20%.  So it's the initial two shots that have a worrying high chance of hitting although Wyatt did hit Frank with his first shot while Billy missed.  Maybe I should deduct another 15% for shooting at an appearing target for the first round of shooting.  Alternatively maybe I should drop the pistol rating of Virgil and Morgan on the Earp side and Tom and Billy on the Cowboy side.  Time for some play tests.

Next up I have to build the shootout site.  I have a Fly's Lodging House and Photography Studio and a Harwood House on order from Empires at War and can proxy the other buildings for now.  I have already marked out a foam sheet with the actual scale building foot prints, hopefully the MDF kits will be close to those dimensions.  More to come on this test once the models arrive along with details of the weaponry.

The gunfight near the OK Corral

Having completed the additional house rules for "The Old West Skirmish Rules" I needed to test them which I did with the game at the local modellers club.  The results were far too bloody so I decided to re run a historical fight where there is a lot of information to hand to give me a bench mark in case more adjustments were required.  That fight would be the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Tombstone, Arizona Territory, October 1881.  Except it wasn't at the OK Corral it was near the back gates to the  corral, along the street some 80 yards or so and into a vacant lot.  I suppose "The Gunfight near but not actually adjacent to the OK Corral" doesn't have quite the right ring to it.  

In fact a lot of what I thought I knew (mostly from movies to be fair) is wrong.  Luckily as the most iconic gunfight in western history it is pretty well documented and a lot of useful details are easily found online.  The best starting points, for me at least were the Sanborn Insurance map of Tombstone (dated 1886 so five years after the shootout) and a couple of web sites; The Wyatt Earp Explorer (John D Rose has put a huge amount of work into this site), and (believe it or not) an academic site with the trial transcripts of the attempt to convict the Earp's of murder for the killings.  The main Wikipedia article is also useful in establishing a basic narrative to hang more detailed information on.  This was enough for me to be able to create a scale recreation of the immediate area where the fight occurred.

The layout of the building plots in block 17
(image from John D Rose's excellent website)

The things we know for certain are that the fight took place to the southside of Fremont Street between Third and Fourth Streets in a vacant lot.  We can gauge the size of the building lots from an 1881 Map of Tombstone which shows the layout of building lots on the city blocks (see above).  I was interested in block 17 bounded by Fremont Street to the North, Allen Street to the South and Third and Fourth Street to west and East respectively.  The action was amongst the buildings in lots 1- 4 with lot 6 giving a rear access to the OK Corral.  The blocks were 300' square and had ten building lots along the north and south sides and two lots in the centre of each of the east and west sides.  All of these lots were 30' wide and the majority were 120' deep.  The exception are two "key lots" on each of the north and south sides (lots 11, 12, 23 and 24 above) which were 150' deep.  

The relevant part of the Sandborn insurance map

This is confirmed in part by the 1886 Sandborn map (above) which clearly shows the building in this block.  This in conjunction with period photos allows for a fairly accurate picture of the site of the gunfight to be put together.  The area of the gunfight is highlighted in green above showing the action spilled out onto Fremont.  The brown buildings are adobe construction, the yellow ones are timber framed.  The number in the corner shows how many floors and each building has a brief description of it's use.  For example Dwg for dwelling and Gro for grocery.  Buildings with a cross running from corner to corner are stables.  The Sandborn maps are accurate scale drawings which give these details of the construction, roof type, windows and use of buildings etc as this information was important for fire risk assessments and is pure gold for recreating the fight site.

All of the contemporary records place the fight in the open space between Fly's Photographic Studio and lodging house and the Harwood house with the action spilling out onto Fremont Street.  Wyatt Earp drew a sketch map in the decade before he died placing the action further east along Fremont but this is at odds with all the other evidence. and that was over forty years after the event.

After this things become a little more hazy, but this period photo helps a little.

Another excellent item from Wyatt Earp Explorers
This partially shows the buildings along Fremont Street

Note that in the above picture there are two houses between Fly's and Third Street on lots 1 and 2 (confusingly numbered 3 and 3a) rather than the single dwelling shown on the Sandborn map.  However, I'm sure that this image is fairly contemporary with the fight as the recorders office (marked 10) was replaced by a brick built City Hall, in 1882 I think, and definitely by 1886 when the Sandborn map was drafted.

The information above was sufficient to allow a start on building the terrain.  The really confusing part comes next determining who was stood where and what weapons were used on that fateful day.  So thats what I will cover in the next post.

Murder on the Streets of De lancy

Murder on the Streets of De Lancy

Things have moved along in De Lancy following the events detailed in this post Small but Perfectly Formed: De Lancy's Reckoning - May 1869 (elenderilsblog.blogspot.com).  Jake died of complications from his wounds, but Roscoe Penny survived albeit with the loss of his left leg at the knee.  Henceforth he will be known as 'Peg leg' Penny!  Still in pain but no longer at Death's door 'Peg leg' has been transferred to the custody of the county sheriff and lodged in the town lock up to await trial.  Colonel De Lancy needs him to lie low for a while which is difficult while he is locked up in jail, so a plan has been devised to free him.  This involves Little Ned Tice and associates breaking Peg Leg out of jail.  

"From the De Lancy Star for June 1869.

Two slain in shoot out many wounded not all expected to live.

The streets of our fair town ran red with blood today as desperados attempted a rescue of one of their own from incarceration within the town lock up.  The infamous bandit Little Ned Tice is amongst those slain in a violent exchange of pistol, rifle and shotgun blasts on Main Street and it's surrounds.  The fight commenced just after sunrise with Tice's company of desperate brigands riding into town intent upon forcing the release of Roscoe 'Peg leg' Penny.  Witnesses state that the bandits dismounted outside of Read's Corral and attempted to approach the jail.  It was fortunate that an eagle eyed Deputy Henry Hall posted on the roof of the jail spotted the group of armed men approaching and was able to open fire.  His first shot hit Tice in the leg throwing him to the ground as well as alerting Sheriff Fred T Jeffries and members of the town Vigilance Committee who were within the lock up.

A veritable fusillade of shots then rang out forcing the few bystanders abroad at the time to seek cover and seriously wounding a second desperado.  Matters were not entirely one sided with the deputy who fired the first shot being wounded but continuing in the fight.  Sheriff  Jeffries and our brave citizens advanced down Main Street firing as they came.   It was at this point that the first fatality occurred when an outlaw, named locally as Ezra Bradshaw, fell to a well aimed pistol shot from one of the Vigilance committee.  Sherriff Jeffries was hit multiple times in the exchange which followed as was local man James Ewell who was unfortunate to jump over a fence directly into the sights of a Desperado skulking at the rear of the newly erected town bath house.

Matters now took a more serious turn with Tice's death.  He was felled by a shotgun blast to the chest but managed to wound his assailant with a final shot.  His partner 'Mexican Bob' was severely wounded at this juncture and is not expected to live.  This was more than sufficient for the surviving outlaw band who fled the town.  Our gallant defenders were unable to effect a pursuit as all were carrying significant wounds of their own."

My two willing participants

This was a short demonstration game using the Old West Skirmish Rules fought at the first weekend meeting of our modelling club.  I apologise for the lack of a detailed AAR explaining game play and looking things up meant I didn't get many pictures.

I umpired and two club members took five characters each.  Their respective parties started out at opposite ends of the table and moved towards each other.  Both sides sent men around the back of the buildings on Main Street, but the critical advantage was the guard on the roof of the jail.  He had a clear line of sight along the length of Main Street and a Sharp’s Carbine to make best use of that advantage.  I was using one inch to the yard as a ground scale and with hindsight that would have been better reduced to two yards to the inch.  I’d also reduce the skill levels as most shots hit their target even those from shotguns.  That said the important thing was the two players really enjoyed the game.  For almost 60 year old rules they stood up remarkably well and played reasonably quickly.  All in all well worth the effort of making the buildings.

Looking down Main Street

I just need to break up the mat with some small splodges of green and darker brown and a street grid.  Plus there is no where near enough street furniture or clutter either, so it's back to the crafting table for me.

Banking upon Success

From this to....(see end of post)

Yes you guessed it De Lancy now has a financial centre. A branch of The Freedman's Saving Bank to be exact. The bank actually existed for a few short years after the American Civil War but not perhaps in the South West where I am placing this one. The bank was set up to provide support to freed slaves, hence 'Freedman's' but by the early 1870s had gone bust. Given that banks were often named for their founders I thought I could use this as a bank founded by a Mr Freedman or as the actual Freedman's Saving Bank. That latter would make it an obvious target in the immediate aftermath of the war too.

The basic box frame with a start on the planking

And a start on the front façade with match stick framing

Just like the original wooden buildings I cut and applied planks to a frame.  However, in this case the frame wasn't timber scaffolding, it was a dog food box!  The build is mostly recycled cardboard also from dog food boxes.  I found that the recycling process used to make the card packaging creates a sturdy cardboard with a nice mid brown finish on the unprinted inner surfaces.  The packaging around tins of food is single ply while that around sachets is a thin corrugated card and both are great to work with.  They take paint and inks well and with a bit of stiffening from coffee stirrers hold their shape.  Best of all when given a layer of planking glued on with PVA wood adhesive they are fairly robust.

The planking effect is a bit rough and ready but I can live with that

The build wasn't particularly difficult.  I used the dog food sachet box as the frame as it had a 9.5 x 19cm footprint which fits well with other buildings.  I cut this down to the height I wanted (the original box would be great for a two storey building if you don't need access to both floors).   Planks were cut 5mm x 56mm from the single ply card .  I cut the doors and windows out and deconstructed the box for the frame so I could turn it 'inside out' as I wanted to hide the printed side under the planks and leave the brown as the inner walls.  I have settled on 20mm wide by 35mm high door spaces with a frame around the edge of the gap.  Matchsticks provided those door and window frames.  These I glued to the frame before planking.  A useful trick is to use multiples of the plank widths as the height from ground level to the window base to make planking easier.  Same at the top between the top of the frame and the roof line, not forgetting to allow for the size of the matchstick frame work around the cut outs.  once all the planks are glued in place edges can be tidied up using kitchen scissors and if you want a nice look glue an L profile edging strip around the corners to hide any ragged edges.  I didn't bother doing that for this build.  

Base added and side walk planked

To finish off I added a card board base under the building ensuring it extended 40mm beyond the building frontage to create a base for a side walk. I used some 5mm square section pine moulding rods from B&Q to lift the building and side walk off the playing surface.  I planked the sidewalk in the same way as I did the building sides.  Inside to help the card stay in shape a used more of the pine moulding as a rafter across the building to prevent the tops of the walls curving outwards and I added a counter, internal walls and a strong room.

Painting was acrylics on the frontage and staining to the other three walls using good old Agrax Earthshade on the side walk and a wash of highly diluted Vallejo Bone white  paint on the other outside walls followed by a light wash of Earthshade.

I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before someone either robs it or burns it down or both!

....to this a building with a decent Pedigree, chum

Street Map of De Lancy

Now that I have enough buildings to play a game I have had to turn my mind to how the town of De Lancy is laid out.  Previously I have stated that the town grew around an old stone block house built by the Mexican authorities back in the early 1830's so that has to be fairly central.  The Livery and Blacksmith's would be best on the outskirts of the town with corral space close by.  After that it was a case of slotting buildings in.  The initial street plan I eventually came up with looks like this.

De Lancy in1869

The solid grey blocks show buildings I already have the grey outlines are where I intend to add buildings.  The red lines are building plot boundary lines to aid me in deciding where to place stuff.  The game's ground scale is one centimetre to the yard which is slightly out compared to the figure scale.  As a result while the buildings are more in scale to the figures (I worked to roughly 1/56th scale) the ground scale for movement is about 2/3 of that.  This works for me as I prefer to have weapon ranges and movement lower than the building sizes rather than higher, I find it easier to reconcile slower movement and shorter shooting distances than I do faster and further, I clearly have more cautious shootists than average.

I'm hopeful of filling some of the spaces on Main Street and First Street before the end of the month. Longer term there will be some more MDF kit buildings and some scratch build adobe dwellings.   I have it in mind to add abank,  cafe, more stores and some residential housing in this first stage.

For my reference to town planning in the wild west I found a really useful web discussion that has really helped me plan the layout and especially with things like road widths and plot sizes.  It can be found here History 📆 - 19th century Western town layout: myth vs reality | Cyburbia | urban planning, placemaking, and more .  Its an interesting read for anyone who, like me, is on the far side of the Atlantic and too far away to visit the actual locations.

The Painting Table - April 2023

Stand by for a shock, there is some space on the painting table! This is because s a few 28mm gunfight figures have been completed. I’m hoping that my grasshopper mind will not find a new project to fill it! In turn that means that the WW2 rebasing project will be on the back burner for a while, otherwise that space is definitely going to disappear.

As if by magic a space has appeared.  I'm betting it won't last!

Well this lot would quickly fill that space upstairs!

As well as those 28mm figures I also finished a couple more small buildings for De Lancy.  The town is starting to take shape now and so I have started to think about the town layout.

Three more border ruffians, two Dixon's and one possibly Minifigs

May is already looking like being a productive month.  I have bought a couple of metres of a mottled light brown felt fabric that will be a great start for use with De Lancy.  I think with some darker areas sponged on and the occasional grass green point it will make a nice arid high plain mat.  I’m also working on more buildings with the aim of being ready for a game late in the month.  I'm still running two work spaces as there is still a temporary building construction site downstairs on the kitchen table as De Lancy grows.  I'm holding off on major purchases of MDF building kits as our tow car recently bit the dust and we are saving to buy a replacement and as a result I don't feel I can drop a £50 or so for each of the Sarissa Precision kits I fancy. 

Basis for an arid terrain cloth.  The image appears darker than reality

 Other than that there isn't much to report.