Tuesday, March 14, 2017

GUNFIGHTER'S BALL BUILDINGS; A TEASER

A little teaser for the new buildings.
This is a really simple one from the new line of Gunfighter's Ball buildings (but it's the one I happened to have assembled); it's pretty bare-bones basic because it's going in the new Desperado Deluxe Box Set (a no-frills introductory set). It has no added features like hitching rails, a porch roof, or scrollwork on the crown of the fascade as some others will have. We're even designing buildings that will come standard with cast furniture.
Features to note:
This was designed by a team that includes Lee Beheler, the original designer of the TCL line of buildings, so you will see a certain similarity in style that makes them look good on the table together, even though the new ones are slightly larger. And because Lee designed them, they are dead simple to assemble.

Metal-cast doors and windows with interior woodwork that mates up from the inside to meet the outside frame and glue together (primed grey in the photos). The shape of the sashes and moulding of the woodwork is modeled digitally and cast crisply. Some buildings will have entire panels of resin detailing on the fascade to model the kind of woodwork a bank or other substantial building would have.
The boardwalk has been given proper framework underneath it and floor-level is up a quarter-inch off the ground to simulate a foundation. No more toylike flat-bottomed building as with TCL.
The cedar shake pattern is smaller (although this design does away the woodgrain texturing effect in order to keep the cost down).
Generous proportions to allow room for lots of interior action, and to accommodate the larger figures and bases in use today with games such as Malifaux and Wild West Exodus. We spent a lot of time at the shop comparing the buildings to different sizes of figures, and we found a size that seems to work pretty well with all of them, even the old-school Knuckleduster figures of ours at the small end of 28mm. Since O-Gauge figures have no bases to make them look taller, they even look good in that scale, believe it or not!
In about a week-and-a-half, three of these will be available; a saloon, store (pictured here), and blacksmith, as well as a corral and outhouse. We'll roll them out at a fairly brisk pace after that and hope to have a very substantial selection rivaling the old TCL line by mid-summer.
Cost will be comparable to the TCL buildings, but not that we've figured out how to keep production costs down, we're going to be able to distribute them to stores, which we couldn't do before. This gives you the ability to go to the game shop and do some "tire-kicking."
Pick up your first buildings at Adepticon in a week's time, or watch for the online release at the end of the month!




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