My good friend Buck Surdu has recently written a Robin Hood themed campaign for Miniature Wargames, designed to be played using Feudal Patrol or other skirmish rule sets. The new Legends of Sherwood range of 28mm Robin Hood themed miniatures are just about to be launched so this weekend I decided to quickly put an outlaw force together using the Army Painter Speedpaint range of contrast paints.

This weekends figures have all come from the either the Robin Hood starter set or additional single miniatures. There is also a Sir Guy of Gisbourne Starter set which I am hoping to get painted next weekend. I am normally a big fan of clear basing, so that miniatures blend in with any terrain, but as these figures are going to be used mainly on forest and rural village terrain, I have based to match my Terra-Former terrain tiles.

After cleaning up the castings, they were all glued on to Renedra 25mm round bases and undercoated with Army Painter White primer.

The figures have had a very quick basic paint scheme applied for tabletop gaming. They are not going to win any painting awards but by using Army Painter Speedpaint I can easily get 20 or so figures painted to an acceptable gaming standard over 3-4 hours at the weekend.

I always like to start by painting flesh on faces and hands, as I find that this gives the miniatures some character which helps when I am choosing colours for clothing and equipment. Flesh was painted using Crusader Flesh, which I find excellent. No other shading or highlighting has been added.

The next stage was to paint the key colours, and for Robin Hood miniatures, this is definitely green! I have used two different green tones on each miniature, applied to different parts of clothing like trousers, jackets, hoods and shirts. For variety, I have mixed additional green tones by adding drops of ‘Holy White’ and ‘Hardened Leather’ for variety.

Once the greens had properly dried, and it is very important with Speedpaints that they are completely dried to prevent running, the other clothing and equipment was painted in. Apart from characters like Maid Marian, Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet who were painted in specific colour schemes, the palate for the rest of the Robin Hood miniatures was restricted to brown, grey and black.

The figures have been varnished (I use brush on gloss varnish for protection, followed by a spray coat of Army Painter Matt).

Bases have been painted with Chocolate Brown emulsion and then covered with PVA glue and dipped in a pot of sterilised soil from my garden. This is the same technique that I use on terrain tiles and scatter terrain to ensure everything blends together. The soil is fixed with an overspray of Matt varnish and then some more pva glue is applied in places and the bases are sprinkled with Woodland Scenic foam turf.

This is my completed Warband. I can see these miniatures getting a lot of use, not just in Feudal Patrol, but also Frostgrave, Barons War, Thud & Blunder and Rangers of Shadow Deep. The figures have all been designed by the very talented Iain Lovecraft and are available soon as 28mm metal miniatures from Sally 4th. I’m now inspired to get Sir Guys force painted as well and get them on the table for a game!