Robin... The Hooded Man

As planned, I pressed on with some archers for my growing (and still unnamed) fantasy force.

I've still got five cavalry to sort out (well, potentially six, as the Fireforge Northmen come in multiples of six, but I've got one of them earmarked as a commander), but these were to be the last five infantrymen produced with the kits I currently have. Unfortunately, these didn't go together as smoothly as the previous figures. Don't get me wrong, the kit is largely spot-on, and goes together well - there were just a couple of things that proved awkward.

Good hoods (and less-good quivers)

There's a brilliant spot of attention to detail in the kit - most of the torsos have a hood hanging down the back. There are, however, a couple of hooded heads on the sprue... and a couple of hoodless torsos to pair up with them. Lovely stuff. The heads themselves have rather prominent neck joints, and for the bare and helmeted heads in the box, this works perfectly. It does, however, make the hooded heads look a little odd - like they're wearing babushka-style headscarves or open-faced balaclavas more than hoods! They also sit awkwardly alongside the hanging hoods, which seem much larger. Not a massive problem, but it did mean that I had to crack out the greenstuff and bulk up the backs of the necks so that they blended into the clothing more. A bit fiddly, given my skills with greenstuff, but I think they worked out well enough. Much as I like that most of the pikemen are helmeted, I really appreciated the variety of head options in this kit. I mixed in hoods, helmets, and a bare head, chiefly to add more variety to the figures in the 'samey' shooting pose but also to give the unit the feel of a bunch of more independently minded soldiers - though with the uniform elements marking them as part of the overall force.

Newly sculpted hoods - everything below the 'fold' of the hood was built up with greenstuff

The annoying element, that frustrated me enough that I put the kit to one side for a day, is that the backs of the quivers are concave, rather than flat (as found on most separate quivers). Going by the pictures on the box, the curve is designed to fit around the waist of the figures. Fair enough. Could I get them to stay in that intended position? No, I could not. Cue excessive amounts of polystyrene cement and a fear that I'd obscured too much detail and ruined things beyond saving! I think the break was helpful - once returned to the project, I was a lot happier, and the painted minis don't show the damage I feared had been inflicted.

The irony is that, unlike so many plastic figures, there's plenty of flat space for a flat-backed quiver to sit, thanks to the long padded armour the models are sculpted wearing. Were I to do these over, I'd definitely ditch the included quivers and replace them with something from another kit. In fact, I'd probably also switch the archer torsos with those from the infantry box, as the latter have belts across the chest, and plenty of flat space for a quiver on the back! It'd mean no hoods hanging down, but I could probably live with that. Aaaaaanyway, lessons learned if I ever revisit this kit.

Painting was the usual straightforward approach that's incredibly familiar by this point. At this stage, it's second nature, and I cracked through this little lot over the course of a couple of afternoons. For now, there's just the cavalry left to do. I might take a break for a moment, though, and pick up another project as a palette-cleanser... and to paint something other than blue, grey, and brown!

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