I’ve spent about a week now tearing through 28 total cowboys, composed of the following kits:

• Great Escape Games Plastic Gunfighters (10 male cowboys)
• Great Escape Games Plastic Gunfighters II (10 female cowboys)
• Great Escape Games… uh… some kinda townsfolk I can’t seem to find again. Metal.

My review of the kits is fairly straightforward: the plastic male gunfighters was a good to great kit. Some facial details are lacking but enough of the heads are usable to give you variety and build a good looking set of cowfolk. The poses are reasonable and give a few standout positions with a good number of casual positions.

The female kit, by contrast, lacks some detail on the faces which really hurts the kits. The hair lacks detail on a few of the heads and I essentially gave up on making them look good. Disappointing, as I definitely wanted some female gunslingers to add to my collection. They still look good overall and at the price offered (I can find them for $25 pretty readily) I’d say they’re not a bad purchase, but not one I really recommend over seeking a few more exquisite looking sculpts from, say, Gunfighter’s Ball–which still sells my favorite metal cowboys.

The last kit, the townsfolk, was actually quite nice. They were full metal and looked great with characterful outfits and poses. Again, metal seems to be the best way to build a small cowboy collection.

The plastic kits, by contrast, let you build some of your own, giving you the ability to put together something that feels a little unique, like my law gang:

Or my outlaw gang:

The bases were a simple trick: I used two different basing pastes and hit them with a thinned sand color, followed by a warm-white dry brush, followed by a sepia wash. Then I decided to add some green–rather than just cacti and other generic desert options, I used some flock to create the feeling of brush and other small weeds growing out of the ground. Between the two ideas, it gives me sandy bases that vary in tone and don’t look like bland sand-yellow.

Unsurprisingly, painting a bunch of varied cowboys proved fun. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend painting 28 in a week, but you have to spend your spring break doing something! Picking up the plastic gunfighters box is an easy recommendation if you’re getting into cowboy games–you’ll have fun both in the building and painting phase.

Now that I have these done, I’m going to paint a few mounted cowboys and call the overall project complete. I’ll be well on my way to running four player What a Cowboy games. You know, except for the hard parts: actually finding time and people.

Man, I hate the hard parts…