28mm Robin Hood (Conquest Games) - Part I

Nothing's forgotten. Nothing's ever forgotten...

I've been a fan of the Robin Hood legends for as long as I can remember. As a child, when the BBC series ran from 2006-2009 I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen on screen, although I wince a bit now at the faux indie-band wardrobe and dodgy panto-style villains! Over lockdown I got back into Robin Hood a bit and soon discovered another Robin Hood series from the 1980s, called Robin of Sherwood. I fell completely in love with it by the end of the first half of the opening two-parter. For starters, the costumes, whilst being pretty typical 80s TV-fare, were well thought out, but the casting was just excellent, and the music (by Clannad) was evocative, ethereal and incredible. Above all, the stories were out of this world - almost literally, with writer Richard Carpenter mixing in a good amount of pagan folk tales and mysticism amongst the usual scheming Sheriff plot lines. I quickly bought the Blu-Rays and have binged them all a couple of times over already, as well as picking up the audio books from Spiteful Puppet, which feature the original cast performing new stories written with the blessing of Carpenter's estate. 

So, as you can imagine, I was thrilled to find out that a company called Conquest Games produce a line of 28mm Robin Hood-themed metal miniatures that all have an extremely strong likeness to the cast of Robin of Sherwood, including a number of characters that have only featured in that show. Purely by coincidence of course, I'm sure!

These have been great fun to work on over the course of being on furlough from March to September, and since then whilst working at home when there's been a break in the emails. I had never painted metal miniatures before, having only finished a few plastic Normans and Vikings, so I initially started with the Ye Band of Merrie Men I pack, which contains Robin (resembling Michael Praed as the first Robin from series 1-2 of RoS) leaning nonchalantly on his bow, Little John wielding his great quarterstaff, Will Scarlett (formerly Scathlock) brandishing his sword, and a hefty Tuck whirling a wooden club around his head. The sculpting on these figures is brilliant, and the faces are for the most part expressive and quite a good likeness of the actors from the show.

Conquest have said that their initial few Robin Hood figures (the four from this pack, plus Marion and Much from the Ye Band of Merrie Men II pack) are slightly undersized, being about 25mm rather than 28mm. This is the case, and does stick out a bit when you look at the figures next to a true-28mm figure, but on the tabletop you really can't tell. Regardless, Conquest did remedy this with the Ye Band of Merrie Men III pack, which features alternatively-posed sculpts of Robin, John, Will and Tuck in true-28mm scale. Updated sculpts of Marion and Much are apparently on the way, but I find that for these figures the scale difference is less critical as the characters themselves are smaller than their companions. That said, I'll probably pick them up too eventually as it would be nice to have the complete set in true-28mm scale. 

Anyway, enough talk, onto the miniatures...

Robin of Loxley (modelled on Michael Praed)

Little John (modelled on Clive Mantle)

Friar Tuck (modelled on Phil Rose)

Will Scarlett (modelled on Ray Winstone)

A note on eyes: as a new miniature painter I'm still exploring whether or not I find painted eyes appealing or not. For my Robin Hood miniatures I've opted for shading instead, which I think looks perfectly fine on the tabletop. However I have been experimenting with painting eyes recently on a set of 28mm Ecclesiastics, also from Conquest Games, and I'm quite pleased with the result. It may be that I go back to the Robin Hood miniatures and paint eyes on them. If this is the case I'll probably do a separate blog post rather than update this one, to preserve my progress as a painter.

I hope you enjoyed looking at my work, I have a lot more to come! More Merries, some brutish men-at-arms from the Sheriff's guard, and of course the ever-unlucky Sir Guy of Gisburne!

- The Kenilworth Knight.