The Tombstone Tinderbox, available from Little Wars TV, is a complete starter set for historical tabletop gaming in the Old West. I recently saw it advertised on Little Wars’ Youtube channel and was immediately attracted to it. Here was a chance for some exciting new gaming, all in one package! A new time period (Wild West), a new scale (15mm), and new rules try.
Little Wars advertises the set as containing everything you need to get started gaming in the Wild West. Let’s take a look inside and see what you get.
Game Components
The set comes with a copy of Ruthless, a free two-page ruleset also available online, although you could conceivably use whatever rules you wanted to with this set. I found the rules themselves to be great, and I will be taking a closer look at them later. What is very nice, however, is that Little Wars has also included everything you need to play the rules – character cards, dice, tokens, a deck of cards, even card sleaves and dry erase markers! All components are of good quality, and I was quite pleased with them. It was very nice to just immediately have everything you need to play.
One of the best things included, however, is the scenario book, allowing you to play a four-part linked campaign covering the shootout between the Earp’s and the Cowboys in Tombstone (the gunfight at the OK Corral) and its aftermath. The scenarios themselves are interesting and quite well written, and the linked campaign looks like a bast to play.
As an added bonus, the scenario book also includes tips and tricks for building more terrain, how to expand the game, and generally how to get the most out of your gaming.
Terrain
The terrain items included in the set are a felt mat, a set of trees from Woodland Scenics, and six cardstock buildings with fence sections.
As an avid paper modeler, I quite enjoyed putting the
buildings together. They are printed to nice quality cardstock, are of good
design, and generally intuitive to put together.
The only thing I would have liked to see improved were the “removable” roofs. They are removable in the sense that you do not need to glue them down; however, they simply sit atop the models and as such are not very secure. Some additional supports would have been nice to see here.
The felt mat is fine, although you may wish to add a little more color to it. The trees are of the usual Woodland Scenics quality.
Miniatures
The Tinderbox comes with a set of eighteen 15mm miniatures from Blue Moon. This is the first time I’ve had my hands on 15mm minis. A google search tells me they are closer in size to 18mm, but still, I am quite impressed with their quality and detail.
I also very much appreciated the variety included – lawmen, horse riders, bandits and banditos, and townsfolk are all represented, with no duplicate poses!
The figures were quite fun to paint up, although I could have benefited with some finer-tipped brushes.
I also appreciated that the set came with basing materials (super glue and washers).
Conclusion
When they said this set comes with everything you need to get started, they weren’t kidding! Terrain Items, miniatures, and game components are all taken care of. Overall I am very happy with this set and am looking forward to getting more table time with it! I will end this post by including a few shots of the game in action. Enjoy!
