Fire!

No, not The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, rather a unit of archers.

A measly unit of 10 archers, mind, but a unit nonetheless. And that takes me to three units in total. That deserves a Xander happy dance!

Gotta love a snoopy dance!

As I have mentioned before, I like the detail on the archer models, and decided to include lots of little, characterful things like turnips, rats, rabbits an dead birds hanging from the archers' belts. It struck me that they'd likely be hunters, poachers even, and would probaly serve as foragers too (though whether officially or not may depend on the leniency of their liege-lord!).

With every archer down, I grew less enamoured with the fiddly bits, although once they were done, I do like the rag-tag look of them. Have a gander:

Go on, charge us. I dare you!

My only issue with them is the two guys on the left. The command bodies from the Bret. men at arms boxes are really distinctive, and the two here both have relatively decent armour, considering they're supposedly peasant scum. I've tried to cover some of it with colour, but I'm still not loving them.

The Ninth Age rules currently have a bowmen upgrade -  Brigands - that may be worth taking though, and I could see them fitting that type of unit, I suppose. Maybe their armour was looted from fallen enemies?

In addition to finishing the archers, I also finished the missing man at arms, taking that to a properly legal unit of 20:

Better late than never!

So all in, that's three minimum strength units down. I've got 3 more knights in progress, and a base-coated/washed Damsel to finish. And I'll be assembling some mounted yeomen and Knights Aspirant too.

Here's my little warband as is:

Three, count 'em, three whole units!

Now I just need to pin down Andy Lawhammer for a game!

Ni!

Knights.

You've gotta love 'em, right?

Ni!

I know it's something of a cliché, but like a lot of little boys (and I don't doubt a lot of little girls) I've always been fascinated by stories of knights. When I was a kid, I had lots of knight related toys. I had heaps of toy knights, ranging from Lego to Britains model knights (remember those?). I had a cool scratch built wooden castle (that I think was made by a local dollhouse maker) and I had a wooden sword my dad made for me (which I may have used to terrorise my sisters...).

I remember these being much, much better

When I was getting into this hobby, I was instantly drawn to the Bretonnians, being the Medieval Knight heavy army. I can remember well, when I was still very knew to the whole thing - I'd played Heroquest and D&D, and bought one issue of White Dwarf the year before - I got ill. Chest infection. I was off school for ages, and en route to the doctor, my mum said I could buy a magazine. I was going to get a comic, but then I saw White Dwarf and thought...why not? I spent the wait in the doctor's flicking through the magazine, and what should be inside? Why, a whole heap of Bretonnian models. (I think it was issue 136, but it was hard to find a decent index of issues)

I was hooked.

It so happened I was also reading TH White's "Once and Future King", as well as a Robin Hood novel, so all those Knights were well seared on my juvenile imagination.

It's been a while...wonder if it'll hold up to a reread?

As it happened though, I was also mad-keen on sci-fi, and my burgeoning group of gamers were more drawn to 40K, so I never took up Warhammer until years later, when working at GW. And despite having had several armies, I never went for Bretonnia: mainly because of the job. See, one of the things about working in a Games Workshop store is that you have to paint a lot of minis. I mean A LOT. Especially when a new boxed game comes out. And while I was at GW, Warhammer 5th Edition came out. And it had a lot of knights.

That's a lot of knights!

Strangely, painting all those sets never put me off Lizardmen, but it sure put me off Bretonnians (an issue still afflicting Baz, I know!).

But I think I'm finally past all that. When I started this blog I mentioned that Bretonnian's "could wait" as they were "fiddly to paint". 

True enough, but the time I feel, is now.

See, Andy Lawhammer is in the process of sprucing up Mighty Empires to function as a Warhammer campaign system, and I'm very excited at the prospect. What's more, I've hit that army painting slump with my orcs. I like the models, I want to paint them, but I've painted so many it's getting tedious. Plus, I'm at the stage of bulking out extant units...doubly tedious.

What's more, as well as keeping up with Game of Thrones (a rewatch before Season 3 was needed in order to convert my wife to the show...), I also watched the 90s BBC Ivanhoe series. A whole lot of jousting fun!

Brian De Bois-Gilbert from the Ivanhoe series (an almost unrecognisable Ciaran Hinds!)

The Knight of the Flowers. He's so pretty, oh so pretty...

So I've decided to get a wee Bretonnian army on the side. They'll be fun to paint, to break the monotony of the Orcs. They'll also be very different to play. And if the worst comes to the worst, and I never actually get to play with them? No biggy, I'm sure I'll find them a home on eBay. ;) So, that being the case, I picked up a Battalion today.

Bretonnian Battalion - good value for £60 I'd say!

I was briefly tempted by the very good Fireforge Teutonic/Templar Knights (you can see them here on their very hard to navigate and overall pretty poor website). They look pretty ace, and they're cheaper than GW. And they're plastic. They're also a bit smaller than GW, so I'd need to commit to 100% Fire Forge, and also to my army looking weeny on the table. So I popped into town, caught up with Baz, and bought the battalion.

I plan to paint them up in small batches, and I intend to make them as characterful as I can. That doesn't necessarily mean masses of conversions, but each Knight is a lord, and I intend to name them all, and try to make up their complex genealogy. 

But of course I need to think about my general. They always say in the Warhammer rulebook that your general represents you on the battlefield, so I've decided to take that (almost) literally. Step forward Andre De Lisque, Bretonnian Knight! 

This is the Leask coat of arms. I may not use it on my Men at Arms' shields! 

I'll use the Leask coat of arms for my general and his family. I may chicken out of doing my men at arms' shields with that heraldry though, as I don't have transfers for stars/diamonds, unless anyone knows any good places? 

I decided to do the general first, on a horse initially (though I may do him on a Royal Pegasus, or even a Hippogriff in the future - all my enemies seem to have DRAGONS!). I fiddled with the horse's base to make him rearing slightly, and put on a knight without a helmet, so you could see his face. I clipped the hilt away from the scabbarded sword, as he had a drawn sword in his other hand and also put a helmet on a chain hanging from his belt. I considered adding a lance to his back, but it looked naff so I took it off. 

But it was missing something. This is supposed to be the general, the leader. It's supposed to be me! What's it missing? Well I couldn't give it glasses or a big belly, but I could give him a beard. To the greenstuff!

Andre De Lisque

I'm pleased with the beard, especially the moustache. When I'd done the beard, I realised I needed to bulk out the hair a bit too, so I did. 

Close up of the beard. That'll do pig!

Looks a bit wonky straight on, but the angle's not helping.

And from the other side, with more detail of the hair extensions. 

Now I'm no sculptor, nor do I possess Andy Lawhammer's artistic gifts, but I'm really pleased with how he's turned out. Now I just need to paint them damn thing!

VBB

Why Greenskins?

This whole Warhammer thing gathered steam pretty quickly: we've been playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for years (starting with 2nd Ed, evolving to +Andrew Law's homebrew rules), but not tabletop gaming. When Baz came back to GW Edinburgh, he got in touch with Andy, +Ross Lorimer, Harry Wright and I to come in and work on something. Years back, GW had all their retail stores collaborate on a display of the entire Ultramarines Chapter, all 1,000 of 'em. This year they're doing it again, and Baz has got a Terminator squard - the elite veterans of a Space Marine army. He thought it would be nice for us to contribute, so we did.

Terminators: mine, Ross's & Andy's

We were pretty pleased with them.

That was only 2 weeks ago, and here we are collecting an army: I thought long and hard about which force to collect: initially I was tempted by Skaven. They are sneaky and fun characters, and most of their models are cool (see exhibits A + B below).












Skaven Warlock Engineers. Awesome.

But, while they are cool models individually, collectively, there's a lot of brown there, which can make the army a little samey from a distance. Also, while the whole army is quite fast, they don't have cavalry. and I like me some cavalry. So that ruled out the vile ratmen.

Next I considered Chaos: some lovely models, such as the new Warriors unit, but given I only had interest in Marauders and Warriors, and not in trolls, daemons, giants, etc, the army would feel quite limited.

I briefly toyed with Bretonnians - I've wanted an army of them since I was a kid, reading White Dwarf when I was off sick from school. But they're fiddly to paint, so they can wait.

Which led me to Orcs.

I've only had three Warhammer Armies that I've collected fully. I've started and abandoned loads, but only three ever stuck: Empire, Lizardmen and Orcs and Goblins.

The Empire are great fun: I loved playing with them, and given our roleplay characters are from the Empire, there's lots of fluff reasons to choose them. But they were the last army I played, and what's more, Andy's doing Empire, so that's them out.

Lizardmen were a strange one. I played well with them, they were easy to paint, but I had no real love for them, fluff-wise. I found them a bit cold (appropriately enough, I suppose!).

Which led me to Orcs. Back in the day, I had a big old Savage Orc and Forest Goblin army. I never did very well with them, but I always had fun. I spent some time looking over the models, and the new plastics are great. The range is wide and diverse - lots of cavalry too! - and I like almost all the models in the army (only the Goblin Wolf Riders are let down by the old plastic wolves, but if I decide I need wolf-riders, some conversions may be in order...).

So...all that's a very long-winded way of saying...I like Orcs. ;)

I opted for a unit of Savage Orc Boys to start off with.

They're assembled now, and I aim to start painting either later this week or next week. Next post I'll pop up some pictures of the assembled Orcs and discuss their equipment...