When we think of the Wild West, our minds often conjure images of dusty main streets, high-noon shootouts, and cattle drives stretching to the horizon. Yet the most dramatic military clashes of the American frontier in the 1860s and 1870s rarely involved the ranch hands and cattle drovers of popular legend. Instead, the historical record reveals a more complex and compelling story involving professional buffalo hunters, civilian scouts hired by the military, volunteer militias, and determined war parties from the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota nations fighting to preserve their traditional lands and ways of life.
These conflicts erupted at a critical moment in American history when two treaty agreements, Fort Laramie in 1868 and Medicine Lodge in 1867, attempted to redraw the boundaries of the Great Plains. The treaties promised reservations and hunting rights to Native nations, but the reality on the ground told a different story. Railroad construction crews pushed westward through promised territories, while commercial buffalo hunters armed with powerful rifles systematically destroyed the massive herds that had sustained Plains cultures for generations. Within just two decades, the buffalo population crashed from tens of millions to near extinction, creating economic devastation and increasing desperation among Native peoples who depended on these animals for food, shelter, and trade.
What makes these historical conflicts particularly suitable for tabletop wargaming is that many involved small, well-documented engagements between forces you can actually recreate on your table. The WoFun Wild West collection, with its comprehensive range of 204 meticulously detailed figurines available in both 18mm and 28mm scales, provides everything you need to recreate these pivotal moments in American history, from the desperate defense at Adobe Walls to the tense standoff at Beecher Island.
The Second Battle of Adobe Walls: When Buffalo Hunters Became Warriors
Why This Battle Changed the Plains Forever
The Second Battle of Adobe Walls, fought in the Texas Panhandle during June of 1874, represents one of the most significant triggers of the Red River War, the final major military campaign against the Southern Plains tribes. To understand why this clash matters, you need to grasp what was happening to the buffalo. Professional hide hunters, armed with powerful long-range Sharps rifles, had begun systematic commercial hunting on lands that the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 had supposedly reserved for Native hunting grounds. These weren't casual hunters taking what they needed for survival. These were businessmen who could kill dozens of buffalo in a single day, strip their hides, and leave the carcasses to rot on the prairie. For the Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne peoples who depended on these herds for their entire economy and way of life, watching this destruction felt like watching their future being murdered one buffalo at a time.
What Actually Happened at Adobe Walls
In the predawn hours of June 27, 1874, approximately seven hundred Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne warriors led by the charismatic Comanche war chief Quanah Parker and the medicine man Isatai'i launched a coordinated attack on a small trading post complex called Adobe Walls. Inside those rough buildings, only twenty-eight men and one woman had taken shelter for the night, most of them professional buffalo hunters who had come to this remote location to process hides. The attackers had been promised by Isatai'i that his spiritual medicine would protect them from the hunters' bullets, and they charged with confidence toward what should have been an easy victory against a vastly outnumbered foe.
But the battle didn't unfold as the warriors expected. The hunters, many of them Civil War veterans who had seen combat before, turned the trading post buildings into improvised fortresses. The thick sod walls stopped arrows and even deflected many bullets. More importantly, the hunters possessed those same powerful Sharps rifles they had been using to kill buffalo at extreme range. One famous shot, reportedly made by Billy Dixon at a distance of nearly fifteen hundred yards, demonstrated the devastating technological advantage the hunters enjoyed. The attack waves continued throughout the day, but the concentrated rifle fire from the buildings made it impossible for the warriors to close the distance and overwhelm the defenders through sheer numbers. By the battle's end, the war party had suffered significant casualties while killing only four defenders, and the failed attack's aftermath pushed the U.S. Army to launch the comprehensive Red River War campaign that would ultimately force the Southern Plains tribes onto reservations.
Recreating Adobe Walls on Your Tabletop
When you set up this scenario using your WoFun miniatures, you're creating a classic asymmetric engagement where careful positioning and patience can overcome numerical superiority. For your hunter defenders, you'll want to use a combination of the Gunfighters 1 and Gunfighters 2 sets to represent the diverse collection of buffalo hunters, gamblers, and traders who found themselves trapped at the post. Add several stands of Mountain Men to represent the more experienced frontier scouts in the group, and don't forget a few Gunfighters Mounted figures to portray the couriers who attempted to ride for help and the men who defended the horse corral outside the main buildings.
For the attacking war party, you'll need substantial numbers. Deploy your Native Americans 1 and Native Americans 2 infantry sets to represent warriors who dismounted to take covered firing positions in the grass and ravines surrounding the compound. Your Native Americans Mounted sets 1, 2, and 3 will portray the mounted charges that repeatedly tested the defenders' firing lines throughout the long day. The beauty of the WoFun collection is that each miniature features unique facial expressions and details, so when you arrange large groups of mounted warriors preparing for a charge, the visual impact on your gaming table authentically captures the overwhelming numbers the defenders faced.
The terrain setup is crucial for this scenario. Arrange your WoFun Wild West buildings to create a small frontier commercial cluster. Position the Saloon, Mercantile, Bank, Barn, and Red House to form an irregular defensive line with gaps between structures, just as the real Adobe Walls trading post was laid out. The defenders win if they can maintain an intact firing line and prevent the warriors from seizing control of two or more buildings before Turn 8 represents nightfall. The attacking force wins through building capture, which means your warriors must close distance despite the punishing long-range fire.
To balance this scenario and keep both sides engaged, consider using an entry wave system where the attacking warriors arrive in three separate groups from different table edges, representing the historical pattern of repeated charges throughout the day. Give the defenders a single special "sharpshooter event" they can trigger once during the game to represent that famous Billy Dixon shot, perhaps forcing a morale check on one warrior unit or temporarily halting one entry wave. This creates dramatic decision points where the defending player must choose the perfect moment to use their ace in the hole.
Beecher Island: Civilian Scouts Make Their Stand
A Fight Between the Army Campaigns
The engagement at Beecher Island in September of 1868, also known as the Battle of Arikaree Fork after the small Colorado river where it occurred, holds a special place in frontier military history because of who did the fighting. This wasn't a U.S. Army regiment in blue uniforms following standard cavalry tactics. Instead, approximately fifty civilian scouts, hand-picked volunteers recruited and led by Major George Forsyth, found themselves surrounded by an estimated two hundred to one thousand Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota warriors in some of the most desperate fighting of the Plains Wars. The battle lasted multiple days, with the civilians digging in on a small sandbar in the middle of the shallow river, constructing breastworks from their dead horses, and holding out until a relief column could reach them.
What makes this engagement particularly dramatic is the death of the legendary Cheyenne warrior Roman Nose on the battle's first day. Roman Nose had earned his fearsome reputation through numerous successful combat actions, and many warriors believed his presence and spiritual medicine made them invincible in battle. When he fell mortally wounded while leading a charge across the river toward the defenders' position, it represented both a tactical and spiritual blow to the attacking forces that influenced the battle's outcome.
The Historical Details That Make It Gameable
Forsyth's scouts found themselves in trouble because they had been tracking a large war party and stumbled into a situation where they became the hunted instead of the hunters. When the warriors attacked at dawn, the scouts realized they couldn't outrun mounted opponents on the open plains, so they took the desperate measure of riding into the river and occupying the small island formed by the braided stream channels. They immediately began killing their horses to create firing positions, understanding that their cavalry mounts had just become their fortifications.
The defenders faced multiple challenges that tabletop rules can simulate effectively. They had limited ammunition and had to make every shot count. They couldn't get fresh water without exposing themselves to fire. Wounded men, including Major Forsyth himself who took three serious wounds during the fighting, had to remain in position and continue defending despite their injuries. The warriors, meanwhile, could rotate fresh fighters into the attack, withdraw to rest, and probe for weaknesses in the defensive perimeter. Only when relief forces finally arrived several days later did the desperate situation resolve itself.
Building This Scenario With Your WoFun Collection
This scenario works beautifully as a smaller-scale game that emphasizes tactical decision-making over massive armies. Use your Gunfighters Mounted set to represent Forsyth's civilian scouts before the battle opens, then transition those same figures to dismounted positions once they occupy the island. The Mountain Men sets work perfectly for representing the experienced frontier scouts who formed the core of Forsyth's command, men who knew how to survive in desperate circumstances and how to make their limited ammunition last.
For the attacking forces, your Native Americans Mounted sets become the stars of this scenario, representing the skilled horsemen who pressed attack after attack against the island position. Use your Native Americans 1 and 2 foot infantry to portray warriors who took covered positions in the grass and low bluffs surrounding the river, providing covering fire for the mounted charges. The back-and-forth nature of the historical battle, with waves of attacks followed by lulls for regrouping, creates natural drama on the tabletop.
The terrain requirements differ significantly from Adobe Walls because you need to emphasize natural features rather than buildings. Create a shallow, braided stream down the center of your table using felt, cloth, or textured mats in tan and blue colors to show sandbars and water channels. Add low bluffs or rises on both sides of the river where attacking warriors can take covered positions. Scatter some scrub brush and grass clumps, but keep most of the terrain open to emphasize the exposed nature of the scouts' position.
Your victory conditions should reflect the historical defenders' challenge of simply surviving until relief arrives. The scouts win if they hold the island position for six to eight game turns while keeping at least half their force combat-effective. The warrior player wins either by forcing fifty percent casualties on the scouts or by capturing the defenders' horse line, which would represent cutting off any possibility of escape. Consider adding special rules for ammunition depletion, where the scouts' shooting effectiveness decreases as the game progresses, and morale effects when casualties mount on either side.
Buffalo Wallow Fight: Six Against the Plains
Small-Scale Survival Action
Sometimes the most compelling wargaming scenarios come from the smallest engagements, and the Buffalo Wallow Fight of September 1874 proves that point perfectly. This clash involved just six men, two civilian scouts named Amos Chapman and Billy Dixon (yes, the same Dixon from Adobe Walls), and four cavalry troopers serving as dispatch riders during the Red River War campaign. When a war party of Kiowa and Comanche warriors caught them in open country, these six men ran for the only cover available, a shallow buffalo wallow, essentially a muddy depression where buffalo had rolled and created a slight dip in the prairie landscape.
What followed was a classic small-unit survival action that tested both the defenders' marksmanship and their mental toughness. The warriors could have easily overwhelmed six men through direct assault, but the defenders' disciplined rifle fire made every attempt costly. As rain began to fall and the wallow filled with mud and water, the defenders found themselves lying in cold muck, wounded men bleeding into the standing water, yet maintaining their firing positions through sheer determination. Four of the six defenders would later receive the Medal of Honor for their actions during this engagement.
Gaming This Intense Small-Unit Action
For wargamers looking for a quick, tense scenario that plays in an hour or less, Buffalo Wallow Fight offers perfect small-scale intensity. Use a small mixed force from your Mountain Men and Gunfighters sets to represent the two scouts and four soldiers, just six individual figures creating your entire defensive force. The attacking force uses your Native Americans Mounted sets, but you'll want to think about them in rotating waves rather than all arriving at once, representing how the historical warriors probed the position, withdrew, regrouped, and tried again from different angles.
The terrain is remarkably simple yet crucial. Create a shallow depression in the center of your table, perhaps two inches across and barely deep enough to provide cover for prone figures. Everything else is open grassland, emphasizing just how exposed and desperate the defenders' situation truly was. If you want to add the historical weather element, consider special rules where rain begins partway through the game, affecting shooting accuracy for both sides but particularly hampering the warriors' ability to keep their bowstrings dry and effective.
The victory conditions are straightforward but dramatic. The defenders win simply by surviving five to six game turns, representing the hours until darkness or relief forces cause the attack to break off. The warriors win if they can overrun the position and eliminate all defenders before time runs out. This creates tremendous tension because every casualty the defenders suffer dramatically reduces their firepower, while every warrior casualty makes the attacking player question whether pressing the assault is worth the mounting cost. Despite the small number of miniatures involved, the tactical decisions become deeply engaging as both players wrestle with risk versus reward calculations every turn.
This scenario also works perfectly as an introduction for players new to Wild West gaming because the small scale makes rules learning manageable while the historical drama keeps everyone engaged in the outcome.
The Wild West Full Pack: Your Complete Frontier Army Ready to Play
Whether you choose the 18mm or 28mm scale version, each Wild West Full Pack delivers two hundred and four individual figurines, providing you with everything needed to recreate the major engagements we've discussed in this article, along with countless smaller skirmishes limited only by your imagination.
The composition of both pack sizes follows an identical force structure that reflects the historical reality of frontier conflicts. You receive three different mounted gunfighter regiments of twelve figures each, representing the buffalo hunters, scouts, and civilian volunteers who found themselves in combat situations. Two separate gunfighter infantry regiments of twenty-four figures each give you the dismounted frontiersmen, town defenders, and trading post occupants who held fortified positions. On the Native American side, you get three distinct mounted warrior regiments of twelve figures each, capturing the variety of tribal affiliations and warrior societies that formed the war parties. Two Native American infantry regiments of twenty-four figures each represent warriors fighting on foot, whether from choice or necessity. Finally, you receive both mounted and dismounted Mountain Men units, those legendary frontier figures who served as scouts, guides, and fighters throughout the era.
If you select the standard bases option, your pack includes precision-cut MDF bases measuring thirty millimeters by twenty millimeters with a grass-texture green finish printed directly on the two-and-a-half-millimeter-thick material. The basing structure follows logical military organization, with infantry bases holding six figures arranged in two ranks for that classic firing-line appearance, while cavalry bases hold three mounted figures in three ranks to show depth and movement. This standardization means your forces look coherent and professional on the table, and more importantly, you can assemble a complete regiment in approximately two minutes by simply pressing the figures from their plexiglass sprues and slotting them into the pre-cut base holes.
However, WoFun recognizes that many experienced wargamers prefer creating custom bases that match specific terrain themes or personal aesthetic preferences. Selecting the no-bases option means you receive only the figure sprues, allowing you to mount your miniatures on custom bases, magnetic bases for transport and storage, or any other basing system your gaming group prefers. The 18mm Wild West Full Pack arrives on six plexiglass sprues, while the larger 28mm version requires twelve sprues to accommodate the bigger figures, but both offer the same unit variety and gaming possibilities.
The Wild West collection extends beyond just the figurines to include an impressive range of period-appropriate buildings that transform your gaming table into an authentic frontier settlement. The building selection ranges from essential frontier structures like the Sheriff's House, Jail, and Undertaker to commercial establishments including Joe's Saloon, the Mercantile Shop, and the Bank. Larger structures such as the Grant Hotel, Church, and Barber Shop allow you to create a substantial town center, while functional pieces like the Water Tower, Windmill, Gallows, and Barn add character and tactical complexity to your scenarios. Each building is from laser-cut MDF structures feature full-color printing that eliminates the need for painting while maintaining excellent visual detail. You can purchase these buildings individually to expand your terrain collection gradually, or invest in multiple pieces simultaneously to create the complete Adobe Walls trading post or a full frontier town for more ambitious scenarios.