Great Escape Games – Dead Man’s Hand Plastic Gunfighters

This set has caused much excitement at Wi Tower, offering fans of Dead Man’s Hand (that’d be us!) some plastic Old West miniatures from Great Escape Games for the first time.

Cowpoke (left), Unforgiven gunman (middle), Pinkerton (right).

We’re going to be quick on the draw, put our cards on the table, and summarise our feelings right away – the frame’s excellent and has us building gunslingers with abandon. Why are we so excited? Well, the photographs here hopefully show what a wide range of excellent looking models can be built and customised, and these are all from just some of the bits on one frame; there are a lot of possibilities!

Two frames and bases are included in the box set, allowing you to build ten 28mm figures. Torsos and legs are separate so you can rotate bodies in advancing and swivel poses; even the varying length of jackets and dusters does little to restrict the pose possibilities. The crouching legs are a welcome addition, coming in two parts that fit together nicely, giving a height variant and telling a different sort of story – a man ducked behind cover or kneeling to steady a shot.

You can build five gunslingers from each frame and the sets of legs all have similar pants. One set, in chaps, is the main variant and we made a cowpoke looking figure with those. The torsos offer some extra diversity, ranging from basic and rugged coats, bandanas, and dusters for outlaws and hired guns to more dapper styles that are perfect for Sheriffs, townsfolk, and more. Once you start to add arms and accessories things get really exciting.

Some basics worth mentioning: the arm sets are next to each other on the frame (so it’s easy to match them when building), neck joins are rounded (making it easy to pose heads turned or looking down sights), and everything fits cleanly (which means building models is a joy).

This is a packed frame of gloriously versatile parts, many of which are guns – various six-shooters in left and right hands features, along with empty hands that look like they are reaching down to make a quick draw. If you want something bigger there are different shotguns including a double barrel that comes in two parts. We reckon that experienced builders can probably make some fine-looking reloading figures with this.

There are loads of empty and in use holsters to add to the models; these fit nicely and add extra realism. Also included on the frame are details such as a cactus, a skull, and a fistful (and then some) of dynamite.

As you can see from our builds there’s a lot of diverse head designs in the set and we used just five of the eleven options. We made a crouching Pinkerton type, the aforementioned cowpoke (carrying saddlebags and a lasso), a bandit hiding his face (spin above left), a more civilian type (spin above right), and an Unforgiven salty dog.

The only thing we’re a bit confused by are the Sheriff badges on the frame – they’re too big to sit comfortably on the figures, too small to be used as counters, but that doesn’t make this anything less than a truly bona fide set of figures.