Dead Man's Hand

Find out what I am painting for Dead Man's Hand on my Old West workbench.

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Shotgun House (C) - The Chicago Way

The Chicago Way is a 28mm skirmish game by Great Escape Games. In The Chicago Way you control a gang of driven men determined to achieve their goals no matter the cost. Choose from hard nosed Gangsters, two-bit gangs of Moonshiners, unswerving Prohibition Agents or bright eyed squads of Police officers.

In the mid C19th on the French island territory of Haiti a narrow gable fronted worker’s dwelling had developed with external door openings in the gable ends in alignment front and rear. Internal partition walls were used to divide living space, with internal partition doors in alignment with the external doors enabling good air circulation; often built with a high roof pitch and small windows below the gable peaks which contributed to the cooling environment created by the effect of drafting air through the dwelling.

By the late C19th these dwellings had spread across much of the USA and could be commonly found from Southern Texas all the way up to Chicago - North East Illinois. Better quality examples were sometimes called ‘Shotgun Houses’ rather than ‘Shotgun Shacks’ to distinguish them from those of a poorer quality. By the early to mid C20th almost all of these houses were considered old and dilapidated and both ‘Shotgun Shack’ and ‘Shotgun house’ implied a poor quality dwelling.

The model comes in a box and the cover shows the completed model.

Looks like a really nice building.

I found the model went together reaily easily.

However I did find the doors a little difficult and I constructed them back to front, so worth watching out for that if you are building one of these houses.

As with most 4Ground models there are the burn marks from the laser cutting. I think they add a certain weathered appearance to the building.

I am now thinking about getting the other two Shotgun Houses from this range.