Hinchliffe Week

I've mentioned previously that I ended up with a cache of mostly Hinchliffe mostly Byzantines from the flea market at Huzzah in 2015.  Last year sometime, I cleaned and primed a dozen Varangians with axes, intending to add them to my fantasy Byzantine project.

I recently finished them.

Myzantine Dragon Guards

Inspired by this success, I went to the box and pulled out eighteen peasants, a handful of crossbowmen, and ten Pecheneg horse archers.  I figured that, as long as I had the metal cleaning gear out, I might as well add a half dozen Ral Partha/Iron Wind Metals Mongol horse archers to the mix.  That was Monday, the 29th of May.

Metal cleaning day

Old Hinchliffes have a rough-and-ready sculpting style, which responds reasonable well to mass painting.  I'm not too fond of the crossbowman casting, but I painted them anyway, but the peasants came out reasonable well for as little time as I put into them.

Five Myzantine crossbow skirmishers

With eighteen peasants (including one stray Byzantine staff slinger), I decided that I would base two groups of six, and the rest as individuals.  Most of the fantasy rules I'm using now are based around twelve figure units.

Hinchliffe Peasants

Unfortunately for my budget, just as I was cleaning and priming the figures, somebody on the Old School Miniatures discussion on FaceBook posted a picture asking for identification of a Hinchliffe Robin Hood peasant woman.

I ended up deciding to thicken up the individually based peasants with a bunch of Robin Hood figures, since the castings are available from Hinds Figures. Mr. Hinds was very prompt with my order, so I now have a couple of dozen Robin Hood and Sheriff figures in hand, which will probably form a pair of matched war bands for Dragon Rampant, as well as serve as bandits for D&D.

Newly arrived Robin Hood range figures

I have a dozen of those, including the principal characters, primed as of this morning, and hope to get started on them shortly.

As a bit of a digression, I had some time to paint at lunch this week, and finished a unit of Ral Partha/Iron Wind Metals orcs, from the recent Chaos Wars Kickstarter.  They'd been sitting in my cupboard for a good while, so I was glad to clear them out.  I've also primed another dozen goblins to follow up.

Chaos Wars orc warriors

So it's been a good week or two for painting...