EM4 Pre-painted Wild West Figures

Anyone starting out on collecting 28mm scale figures for Wild West gaming faces a wide choice of suitable figures from assorted manufacturers they can buy from. One company that may not be immediately apparent is UK-based EM4 Miniatures. What I particularly like about their two Wild West boxed sets is that their figures come pre-painted to a very high standard, making them ideal starter figures. I bought both sets just last month, despite the fact that I've been after them for a very long time.

OWH1 Old West Heroes Set 1 contains the following five figures shown from left to right in the two photos directly above and below - a dapper sheriff armed with a pistol, a no-nonsense gambler armed with a holstered pistol, a poncho-wearing gun-slinger armed with twin holstered pistols, an overweight Mexican bandit armed with a double-barrelled scatter-gun and a plains Indian warrior armed with a rifle and tomahawk.

All I did to them was add sand and gravel to their bases and then paint the bases. Nothing more needed doing to them. What a lovely, refreshing change! By the way, the slottabases provided with both sets were hexagonal-shaped, I replaced them with 25mm diameter circular bases.

OWH2 Old West Heroes 2 contains the following five figures shown from left to right in the two photos directly above and below - a "soiled dove" saloon girl armed with a pistol, a grizzly mountain man armed with a knife and buffalo gun, a simple farmer armed with a rifle, a deputy sheriff armed with a pistol and a Negro buffalo soldier armed with a pistol.

I repainted the trousers of the buffalo soldier as I felt they were too dark and I also painted the turn-ups of the jeans worn by the deputy. Once again, I textured then painted the bases.
These two sets contain a nice cross section of character types and in my opinion, there isn't a bad one amongst them. I particularly like the Mexican bandit and the mountain man. The fact that they are all pre-painted is a huge plus and a great time saver, even for someone like me. That they are so well painted is just the icing on the cake. I doubt if I could have done such a good paint job on them or chosen these colour schemes, not that I'm criticising the colour schemes (apart from the buffalo soldier's trousers, which I didn't like).
Set OWH1 costs £12.25 for all five figures. £2.45 per figure is not bad value for such well painted figures. However, I do have a complaint to make about set OWH2. It costs £15.30. The reason it costs a lot more is that it was "supposed" to include a CD of simple skirmish rules and floor plans for a Wild West town for you to print out. My set did not contain this extra CD. I resented paying extra for something that wasn't there. That said, the rules are very basic (just 4 pages long) and not that good and I certainly would not have used them or the floor plans either. I have seen both on-line and was far from impressed by them. So, I don't really miss them. It's just the principle of paying for something that should have been included but wasn't that rankles me. Incidentally, both sets also come with five different coloured d20 dice, with skull symbols replacing the number 1's.

This is the floor plan that should have been included with set OWH2.

EM4 used to sell a lot of pre-painted boxed figure sets but I have noticed over the past years that their ranges are dwindling and are not being restocked. The moral of this story would seem to be, buy them whilst they are available, because if you wait too long they may well be gone for good. It is such a shame that these sets are not being restocked. I'm only too glad I bought so many of them when I did.