The Final Gallery - Royal Armouries, Leeds.

 

The final round of photographs taken on my recent visit to the Royal Armouries museum in Leeds.

This time it covers Islamic and Western European armours, as well as some more modern weapons.

The big opener is the Armoured Elephant, impressive, intimidating, imagine being on foot with one of these approaching...

In the Islamic cabinets, there was this set of armour which was impressive, with the full helmet.
The huge Executioners sword at the side there, the blade nicked from use. I actually turned and lifted the Mrs up, when she asked what I was doing, I wanted to see how heavy the blade was, being 2Kg heavier then her!

Like in the Samurai cases, there were armour suits and mounted warrior exhibits.

The central stairwell is ranked by row upon row of pikes, swords, muskets, breastplates as you look upwards.

Then we were in the European exhibits, most of which were provided from the national collection from the King's archives.

Edward, the Black Prince's surcoat, the Mrs having watched A Knight's Tale again (for god knows how many times already) happily told me about something she recognised more then just in passing.

There is a large historical gun cabinet, with this filigreed hunting musket on display which was owned by the daughter of Catherine the Great of Russia.

The Royal Armouries has a long tradition of providing armours and armour replica's for Television and Movie productions in the UK, and there was this interesting Vampire Killing Kit in the TV show section.

Finally, in more of a wargaming vibe, there was this rather large display of the battle of Waterloo, featuring the battle around La Haye Sainte, a wargamers dream if only we could field that many miniatures in one game...some day eh?

This is the last of the posts about the Royal Armouries, and we'll be back to wargaming posts soon once I can get back to painting.


Until next time, have nice day...

Samurai Gallery - Royal Armouries, Leeds.

 

With the visit to the Royal Armouries, the main thing I wanted to visit was the special exhibition for this year featuring the Mongolian Empire and Genghis Khan.

But, and I know any American people reading this will scoff, I wanted to make the visit a full day, being just under an hours drive up the motorway from home.
Also just having a day out with the Mrs was a bonus, so we were making the most of it.

The Royal Armouries at Leeds has five floors of arms and armour displayed, re-enactment zones, sword fighting and other displays in a full arena on the second floor, and around Easter Weekend every year they host a Jousting Tournament (I am hoping to get time off work next year for that).

Coming out of the Mongolian Exhibition, on the fourth floor is the African and Asian galleries...most interesting.

These are the photo's I took going round the Samurai gallery, before the Mrs had to pull me away so we could see other things...

I've not got much to write about the various armour sets, as if you zoom in on the photo's you can read the various descriptions from the plaques in the displays.

I did however treat myself to some research material, as one of the projects I want to begin working on again soon is the Samurai project.

The last time I visited Element Games with the group, I was hoping to get a game of Dragon Rampant and took along two forces to enable this.

Unfortunately, no-one wanted to play, so I didn't get the game in.

Instead I grabbed some terrain from the shelves there and made an impromptu photo setup and grabbed the following:

So the aim is to work on finishing a unit of the World Eaters alongside a unit for the Samurai, clearing the table and adding to the forces.

I think I'll work on the foot Samurai I have first for this project and then see what we need from there.

I'm waiting for the MyMiniFactory money off sales before I purchase any more STLs from Kyoushuneko for this project, as they've released a lot more since I last bought some...they now have a Mounted Sohei unit!!!!!!!

I have one more post for the Royal Armouries to do yet, featuring the photos of the European and islamic arms and armour I saw, including the Armoured Elephant, always a big draw.

Until next time, have nice day...