Horsies!

 It's time to go back to the Bretonnian project for a bit. If reading about knights isn't your thing, skip the next chunk of text (or possibly this whole post).

There have been three Bretonnian army books, if you count the recent one for The Old World (and why wouldn't you, really?). The first was released in 1996, and was written by Nigel Stillman. Stillman doesn't get much mention these days, but he was a fairly big figure in the old days of White Dwarf. The second, by Anthony Reynolds, came out in 2003. I've got both, and I think the Stillman Codex (which sounds like the title of a Dan Brown novel) is the better of the two.

The Stillman book actually makes Bretonnia look like fun. In fact, it seems to be a cartoon medieval kingdom, where jolly peasants quaff wine and brightly-coloured knights fall off their horses a lot. There are references to stuffing cheese in your ears to avoid annoying minstrels, and to something called "the Great Flapping Monster of Chateau Mal" (as slain by Bertrand le Brigand, who in no way resembles Errol Flynn's Robin Hood). It actually sounds like a place you might want to visit. It also gave the Bretonnians an Arthurian feel, introducing the Lady of the Lake and the Green Knight, and provided rules for special formations and divine protection. These did a lot to move Bretonnia away from the "Empire without the fun stuff" feel that had dogged it in the past.

And that's the time that I'm looking to recreate with my army.

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After all that, I've painted my first unit of knights for about 30 years. These guys aren't even Bretonnians, technically: they're from a game called Battlemasters, which Games Workshop released with MB Games back in 1992. I remember looking at the pictures of the knights in White Dwarf with my friend Jim when we were at school.

Obviously, they're all the same sculpt, which isn't brilliant but isn't bad either, especially for a board game about 30 years old. I've used these as a bit of a test unit, trying out a variety of colours and block patterns for later units. The early Bretonnian knights had a wider range of colours and less ornate detail than the current miniatures, and I don't think they suffered for it.

After painting harlequins and Escher gangers, I was expecting these to be very fiddly. In fact, the main challenge is keeping the different sections looking cleanly defined and shading the big sheets of cloth without having an airbrush. It wasn't easy. The overall effect reminds me of those 1950s films about Camelot (it is a silly place) shot in Glorious Technicolor: very bright and slightly hallucinatory. I like them. I might even paint some official Bretonnians soon.

Bretonnia Redux: The Army Starts Here

 I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to repaint my very old Bretonnian army. These date back to 1991, and were some of the first miniatures that I ever saw. I was somewhat intimidated by the prospect of redoing these models, but I stripped them and started to give them a new lease of life this week.

We've got three main units of infantry, painted in colours roughly following the original army featured in White Dwarf 137: knights, men at arms and archers. I've done five models for each unit - not exactly a mighty army, but probably a legal one under the rules of 5th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. 

Here are the men at arms, painted in the colours of Les Hommes de Renault.

Here are some knights, in slightly simplified colours of the Baron D'Angon:

And here are five bowmen in the livery of the Archers du Brest:

I've done with a slightly grimy but still quite bright look for all of them. The knights have cleaner weapons and armour (I left off the brown undercoat), since their gear is newer and better. 

I also tidied up an old model from a game called Dungeonquest, about which I know nothing. She's an elf wizard called Serelia of Zimmendell, but I think she'd work well as a Bretonnian wizard. I painted her scrying orb to look a bit like the palantir from the Lord of the Rings films.

And that's where we are for the moment. I'll slow down a little on the painting, but I'll keep chipping away at these guys. And then we can do the knights on horseback!

Brettonia Redux: My First Painted Models Ever

The first models I ever bought and painted were a bunch of ancient Eldar (now sadly gone) and a load of metal Brettonians. I got the Brettonians from a kid called Alan for very little money, mainly because I wanted to play Fantasy Battle and they looked like King Arthur guys, which I recognised. I painted the Brettonians over a week and proudly fielded them in their first battle. They were the only painted miniatures in the game and I was so keen that I gave every one of my knights his own name.

They were garbage. My opponent exterminated them, and so I failed to take the hint and bought some more. What I didn't know then was that, at the time that I was starting to play Warhammer, the only armies that GW cared about were High Elves, Empire, Orcs, High Elves, a bit of Chaos and High Elves. My main opponent had High Elves.

For a long time, Brettonia was literally the Empire without any of the good units. Fighting High Elves was like a medieval army fighting the Battle of the Somme: they just got mowed down by bolt throwers. The only way to win was to buy the minimum number of actual Brettonians and to pack out the army with manticores (I do miss those general lists of monsters available to all armies, which gave them a lot more options).

But now, Brettonia has two army books and even a new list in the Old World. Hmm...

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Repainting the Alice in Warhammerland models got me thinking about my old Brettonians, and Lasgunpacker's comment on my last post pushed me over the edge. I've considered repainting my Warhammer Frenchmen before, but have been deterred by the complexity of the heraldry involved. However, painting old harlequin models has given me a bit more confidence - at least, in painting checks. 

Here are some of my old models. I'm putting these pictures up as a bit of a record, as I'm going to strip and repaint them. They've got no real shading and are extremely basic, but they're not bad for my first efforts.

(Incidentally, the first GW Brettonian army was painted in flat block colours, without shading. It looked very basic.)

So there they are. I also found a few blister packs in a box at my parents', stashed away for many years and testament to a time when even GW were desperate to get rid of the Brettonians. Back then, as my friend with the High Elves pointed out, £1 was not a bargain.

So there we are. I am going to paint a load of Brettonians in the near future. Not a very big load, certainly not a proper army, and I will paint them pretty slowly. But I reckon they might look nice, and it'll be an interesting project.

Now I'm going to paint some space orks.