A (fantasy) Norman Army

This year, so far, has seen very little time for me to get any work done on my gaming hobby. I have managed to play a few games of D&D 5e, which I have thoroughly enjoyed, but I have just been so busy that anything miniatures-wise has been firmly put on the back-burner...Until now!

I have only had one day off so far this year, and the current pandemic has seen me busier than ever with work (even though working from home), so I am feeling very tired and in need of a bit of a break. Luckily, I had booked up a few days off for the Easter period to look after the kids and today was the first of them.

I got a few errands and odd jobs out of the way this morning and then asked the kids what they wanted to do today (bearing in mind we are in locked down and cannot go to the park etc. for recreational purposes in groups of more than two). The girls just wanted to carry on doing what they were already doing - some internet You-Tube type stuff and some baking, my eldest said he was happy on his X-box, but my youngest, however, said he wanted me to stick the heads and arms on his Norman soldiers!

So, that is exactly what I did...

As luck would have it, he had enough pieces to make up 6 spearmen, 6 swordsmen, 6 cavalry (including their leader and banner bearer), 4 archers and what he calls a berserker with a two-handed Dane-axe. They were promptly glued up and left to dry whilst I hunted down my sprays, paints and brushes in the garage.

After the glue had had time to dry, it was the turn of the black spray undercoat. It was such a lovely day outside it would have been a shame to waste it by not getting this stage completed too...

Whilst I was doing the spraying, I asked littlun if he had any more Normans we could spray. After a quick rummage through his figures collection he found a dead Norman Knight on his dead charger, so we added that to the army too.

I had, by now, got into the groove and wanted to get started on some painting. We spoke about it and he said he wanted me to start them off for him and he might do his old Ebay LotR orc miniatures in between times. So, I got out the metal paint and did the first bit of brushwork I have done in a long time. It took a while to get my eye in (my eyesight has deteriorated even more since I last painted a figure), but I only went over the lines a few times (this can be tidied up at a later stage)...

When I asked him which unit he wanted done first, he decided upon the spearmen. I have only got the one "colour" on so far, but I am hoping to do a few more tomorrow to bring the miniatures a little more to life. Once these are done, I am hoping to get him to work on his first unit of 6 orcs. Unfortunately, the kids are only with me for one more day until they go to their mum's (with joint custody, we are allowed to take the kids between households according to the governmental guidelines). When they get back in a couple of weeks' time, I will finish these off with him.

Hopefully, there will be another update tomorrow with our progress on the Norman spearmen.