To celebrate the BBC Four Wild West Weekend I thought it might be interesting to look at wargaming the American frontier in the late 19th century. My choice is to do it in 1/72 scale simply because of the large amount of good figures and accessories available these days. Plastic Soldier Review gives a listing of what is available. American company Imex do the best range with pioneer families, stagecoaches and wagons with more in the pipeline like pony express riders and animals. Buildings are cheap and plentiful in this scale too with an excellent Cut and Assemble Western Frontier Town in HO scale to get you started with some useful card houses which can be strengthened to make them last longer. What about rules? Free wargames rules has a good few, though the Warhammer Historical Old West book looks fine if you like spending money on such things but I kind of like free as the adverts say. So what with plastic cowboys and card buildings, free rules you could have your first model gunfight for quite a small investment. 
