The Wildhearts

A few weekends ago, the Beastie Boys introduced us to the HeroForge 2.0 website (https://www.beastsofwar.com/featured/win-your-hero-forge-2-0-miniature-design-mantic-goblins-their-best-range-yet-weekender/).

I’d tried the website a couple of times in its earlier incarnations and wasn’t particularly impressed. But the sheer range and quality of minis that people were creating piqued my interest again. I had an idea for a diorama, but getting custom minis commissioned would make it unviable.  Armed with a new-found knowledge of (very basic) Blender hacking skills, I figured if HeroForge could get me “close enough” I could have a go at tweaking and personalising the minis from their website.

“Make your own heroes” bellowed @lloyd.

So I did.

This bunch of ugly buggers are the Wildhearts.

I first came across them as a teen, finishing my sixth-form A-levels while living in a friend’s shed (I left home at sixteen and was something of a gobshite). I’d saved up enough spare change from my meagre Income Support to pay for me and a few friends to get into the Tivoli nightclub to see this raucous new band (using a combination of a housing benefit “wheeze” and doing a bit of cash-in-hand work at weekends, I’d often “spread my good luck” with fellow school-friends and pay for us to stay out ’til silly-o-clock, even on a school night!)

A loud, messy, troubled band playing a mix of “melodic punk” – they quickly become “my band” and my heroes.

I recently saw the band when they played at the Concorde 2 in Brighton and they are every bit as good, loud, angry and awesome as I remembered from that day in 1993 when I first saw them live.

So when the OnTableTop crew invited us to make our own heroes, I knew exactly what I was going to make – not a lizard-headed necromancer or a bare-chested barbarian…. I was going to make my heroes in miniature.