Many moons ago, I finished some elves for Thistlewood (here) Since then of course I've acquired a good deal of the original figures used by Joe Dever, and among them were 15 Minifigs elves.
The army list for Thistlewood states 20 Loyal Half Elves are needed, so I knocked up another 5 ( plus leader, because I had him).
Just need to give them a gloss varnish and add the filler for the bases.
This project has been simmering away for years now, but I found time yesterday to get out the buildings I have finished and take stock of what I still need to do.
I was finishing off the bases of my Robin Hood figures and decided to try and blend the trees I have from The Last Valley to match the figure basing. Plenty of Vallejo brown mud texture was added, and then dry brushed lighter brown to look like Mendip soil where Robin of Sherwood was primarily filmed.
I need to add more items to the village scene, including a stream, road, vegetable patch etc.
I'm making some progress with the landsknechts, although not as fast as I would like...
and of course I've been sidetracked into finishing off some other figures. Recently Crooked Dice Miniatures released some more Robin of Sherwood figures, and this galvanised me getting out the figures I had painted so far and finishing the bases off.
I've been prevaricating for years on how to do them, but recently Geoff at Oakbound kindly gave me a mix of the flocks he uses, and they work really well.
I was sad to hear about the death of Ian Heath today. I can't claim to have ever met him , of even know what he looked like, but his WRG books were and still are absolutely seminal wargaming works. As a youth ( with spare time) I would spend hours poring over the illustrations and descriptions of armour and battles.
Landsknechts..... the idea of painting them has always filled me with dread, but I seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment having found my mojo after months in the wilderness.
I've got a pike block of 54 to complete, along with 10 skirmishers, and I've decided to paint each figure pretty much individually...with non uniformed troops I find it quicker, and less confusing.
The figures are by The Assault Group and are early Landsknechts from the 1490s-early 1500s.
Here are the first 3 .
At the moment, I'm quite enjoying the challenge of getting one a day finished...we'll see how I feel after a few more.
One thing I'm finding is I can only paint for about an hour at a time now without getting a tummy ache, presumably due to my appalling posture when painting.
I managed to get a couple of hours this morning to carry on with these old Grenadier figures to use as Paduan defenders of the 1509 siege.Almost finished 4 guns and 8 crew.
I went to play a quick game with my regular opponent Speckled Jim last night, and he cracked open his 15mm collection for a colonial game using the Osprey rules.
I was playing the Beja or Hadenedowa, defending their village against an Anglo Egyptian force, and I didn't do terribly well, not actually getting anywhere near the enemy before being gunned down, so relatively historically accurate.
I learned a few lessons so if we play again I'll try and wait until I can charge him en masse so he can't concentrate his fire.
It was a fun game though.
