METAL MAYHEM

 I took my middle son Arthur to see his favourite band play in Cardiff last night. With some trepidation as he's autistic with very high anxiety and not great in crowds, but I was counting on his passion for the band winning through, and it did.

Sabaton provided an excellent show, complete with flamethrowers, blizzards and a tank on stage, not to mention miniature triplane!

Terrible picture as I'm useless with phones, and tbh and rather concentrate on the band.

For me though, the highlight was the first support band Lordi, and I'm so glad we arrived early enough to see them.

I'd obviously heard of them before, through their Eurovision win, but I'd never heard their music before and it was excellent... along with their amazing costumes it really took me back to my early metal days in the 80s, and is just the kind of thing to listen to when painting Oldhammer figures.

Again a bad photo, but you can just make out the wings on the front man.

Here's a better picture lifted off the net.

This was the first metal gig I've been to for about 10 years, and it was interesting to see how different it was to those I remembered.

There was a much wider range of age in the audience, from 10 year olds to 70 odd. It was also interesting to note that I would say only about half had the full metal uniform of leather/denim , patches and big hair... The rest ( like me)  were just in non aligned garb. Whether this is just a reflection on the broad popularity of the band, or a sign of the times where there is no need to proclaim your devotion to one type of music, I don't know. There was also hardly any headbanging, which is probably a good thing, but I was surprised to see it's absence. Also, it was nowhere near as loud as I was expecting....

LOYAL HALF ELVES (MK2)

 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.

Outlaws and Villages

 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.

The sheriff arrives to terrorise Wickham.

The outlaws and Herne the hunter lurking in the woods.

I need to add more items to the village scene, including a stream, road, vegetable patch etc.

Basing

 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.

Basing underway... complete with appropriate soundtrack.

Some of the villagers of Wickham. A mix of 4 flocks, and I've added the odd subdued tuft.

More to follow soon

RIP Ian Heath

 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.

And here is the late Mr. Heath, picture posted by The Perry's.

First of the Landsknechts

 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.

Defenders of Padua

 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.