Guards! Knights! Squires! Prepare for battle!

Over the past few months I've been painting models for my Bretonnian army. I never got around to posting finished models due to a lack of tufts and the ambition to make a flock box (it failed). Today I decided to just grab ready made tufts and finish and photograph a whole bunch of models at once. Here's (most of) the planned core of my army, consisting of ten Mounted Knights of the Realm, a Paladin bearing the Battle Standard of Mousillon, Duke Maldred of Mousillon on his Royal Pegasus and his illegitimate daughter Malory leading the first cavalry wedge with her duelists' blades drawn and her visor open. 

O Fortuna
Velut Luna
Statu variabilis

When GW released Warhammer The Old World I read somewhere that the studio decided to tone down the heraldry of the Bretonnians to make it easier to paint and collect an army. That sounds very reasonable, but it also had the effect of making me very determined to do just the opposite. Instead of mass painting a bunch of knights in uniform colors, I decided to go full on individual paint jobs; with  some appropriate conversions, just to add more spice. 

Malory (not officially) of Mousillon 

The first knight I build was the daughter of the duke Malory. According to the background she dressed in knight's armor and enjoyed defeating the 'no girls allowed in our gendered profession'-scions of other houses. After beating other knights she'd pull her visor aside to let them know they'd been bested by a woman. I had a blast opening up a Bretonnian helm and adding a face cut from a spare metal Die Hard Miniatures head. I know the crusader style helmets the Bretonnians wear do not have visors, but I didn't want to use a more appropriate bascinet helmet so I ignored that detail.

I can't believe this face still looked proper when I painted it.

I appropriated an arm with a chaos blade for her main duelers' blade (a bit of foreshadowing that doom awaits there) and a dagger from an empire kit in her other hand. The horses' head is also from the Empire General's kit, I added the fleur the lis shield after an attempt at a scythe broke of one time too many. I had a blast freehanding a pattern on the caparison and actually found the courage to attempt to freehand the fleur de lis pattern of house Mousillon on her shield. 

Help! Race cars keep following me around! I can't figure out what to do about them!

Don't worry, I'll try to be a bit more brief with the other knights (warning: I'll fail). I painted the twelve models in the two lance formations over the course of about two weeks, painting a single model and its horse every evening. I painted single models per sitting to prevent repetition on the models (and to lie to myself that I'd stop this insane project after that particular evening). This model needs a second snap of the back...

Is that 'ol Yorrick? I know him: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

...as it is the musician of the unit. I 3D-Printed this happy jester, but I can't for the life of me recall where I got the sculpt. It still makes for a very fun unit musician. I was forced to glue him to the horse so I could keep the rider separate for proper painting. It was quite a challenge to paint the jester. 

The trick to painting nice looking knights with little effort is to repeat a pattern of squiggly lines on the caparison. 

This unit's standard bearer flies a yellow banner of Mousillon with a black shield containing a white fleur de lis. It was only when I wanted to slide a white transfer in place that I discovered there are no white fleur de lis transfers on either the old or the new Bretonnian sheets by GW. I thought the price of the 'special' sheet was a bit outrageous and I couldn't find any Sisters of Battle sheets, so I tried freehanding. I'm willing to admit that I'm rather proud of my effort...

I'm slowly running out of nonsense to type in the caption boxes. Don't worry: running out of nonsense has never stopped me from making up some more.

...especially as I managed to mostly repeat it on the other side of the banner. I'm rather happy that I could use transfers for most of the other shields. Properly fixing and sealing transfers is a skill too, but it is a lot easier than freehanding.

Once every few knights, I gave myself permission to keep a pattern simple.

The red and blue 'Knight of the Lion' provided a bit of a break between all the freehands, linework and checks. On this model you can see I painted most of the tack a simple black (why do more?). I also blacklined all the models with paint (instead of a (pin) wash). It's a very old school technique, but it still works wonders if you want to increase contrast and readability of a model.

I wonder if his castle's drawbridge is known as Pegasus Bridge.

Speaking of checks. The yellow and blue knight was one of my better attempts. It really helps to reinforce the thin black line between checks after adding the basic color for each of them. What really makes this model pop (in my humble opinion) are the highlights within the checks. I saw this effect on another model while checking the internet for inspiration and thought it'd be an immense effort. It turned out to be quick and easy to do and turns out quite nicely (I think).

Cue country music song: I lost my hearts to narrow stripes.

I planned to add hearts to the Friesian Knight's pattern. It was a bit of a wink and a nod to the provincial flag of Friesland. I even had the hearts lined up (cut up Biel Tan hearts to be precise), but I couldn't fit them between the stripes I painted. So I left the knight without his hearts. I think there's a ballad for a minstrel somewhere in the previous sentence. Having said that: the Friesian Knight still looks quite dapper and rounds out the first unit of six knights (one duke and five knights).

Oh dear I see some undead iconography, let's hope nothing bad happens to Mousillon in the future.

The second unit of knights is under the command of this brave turquoise and yellow fellow (as yet unnamed). I decided to have a bit of extra fun and applied an ancient undead transfer to add more foreshadowing to the doom awaiting Mousillon. 

My passion for big banners is well sated by this army.

While building the kits I decided to go wild with the Battle Banner. It just had to be bigger than sensible. It took almost an entire evening of swearing, drilling, ruining plastic banner bits to finally arrive at a rather ugly mashup on a brass rod. It does make an impressive monster of a banner though. I used transfers to make a reasonable approximation of the duke's own heraldry and painted (a less than sterling) freehand to get the Mousillon sigil on. 

Painting checks on caparison's with pre-sculpted shields is quite a challenge.

To be honest: I'm not entirely sure why I used a black shield with a white fleur de lis as the heradry. All the examples I have around me right now show a yellow shield with a black fleur de lis. I'm reasonably sure my white on black came from somewhere in the old army books (I literally went through all of them to get what I could on Mousillon background). On the other hand: a few healthy sips of 'Belgian Trappist' may have been involved in the decision making proces, so there's a chance my banners are just off.

Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah!

Painting the caparison of this musician's horse was a fun experiment. I started out with a boring and basic quartered (red and yellow) design. Then I sat down to and added short stripes of the opposing color on the quarters. I added a blue shield for contrast and couldn't resist another hint at a possibly vampiric future by adding an undead transfer to the trumpet's smaller banner.

I have to express my joy at having a lot of spare Bretonnian transfer sheets to hand. Many, many transfers were lost due to clumsiness and a repetitive urge to put the left side versions on the right (or is that starboard and port on horses?).

Sorry for the length of this post. I hadn't quite realized how much bla bla I would be able to spout about these knights. This one has (slightly uneven) checks on his caparison. I painted this one (and most of the other knights) with the new synthetic sable round brushes by Winsor&Newton. They are quite nice (and cheaper than the nearly unobtainable Series 7 ones). Unfortunately the synthetic's don't hold their point for very long. 

This started out as an attempt to make a very simple caparison pattern (based on an older Bretonnian army book), unfortunately the shields got in the way.

On the subject of heraldry: I tried to find out if the helmet ornaments should be painted or if a (heck of a lot quicker to paint) metallic look was in order. I only found proper examples of these extreme decorations on an overview of garter knight's artifacts. Those where painted in simple colors, so I decided to follow suit (and shame on you if you think evil of it!). It was a bit more work, but I think it looks quite proper and knightly. Looking at the knight above, I suddenly remember what I did with the hearts that were supposed to go on the Friesian Knight :).

A bit of splattered mud helps tie a model to its base (at least I like to think so). Glue is also very helpful, but in a different way.

Because this rambling post is way, way too long anyway here's a shot of the back of this guy. I added a wine barrel to his equipment as you (obviously) can't go to war (let alone win hearts of fair damsels) without a proper vintage at hand. Looking at this shot, I must also confess that I saved a bundle of time by not painting the hooves of the horses. They are stamping through soggy marsh soil, so I covered them (and the weird 'lifted earth to make the connection to the base sturdier') with a very basic paint job, followed by appropriate globs of my basing goop (AK Wet Ground). I also added splashes of goop to all the caparisons (and had to make a Challenging (+0) Cool test each time to do it).

Fluo knight is ready to party in the nineties. 

Last, but certainly not the least of the knights is this very brightly painted blue and yellow madman. He's in the same boat as the other 'I need a break from this madness' knights in the two units. I did paint a few triangles on the bottom of the caparison as compensation. 

Granted: he looks quite impressive on his flying horsie, but what a hell of a time it was to assemble this duke.

My duke Maldred of Mousillon is flying along on his royal pegasus. To make it fly, I drilled a hole in the belly of the pegasus (and in one of its hind legs, but that pose was just too much). I'm not quite up to speed on the latest official 'opinion of the internet', but I heard rumblings that I wasn't the only one unhappy with the complexity of this kit. Building it was a nightmare: it has individual strands of hair for the mane that almost made me bin the bloody model. 

Anyone who thinks 'they're just decals' has never spent half an afternoon lining up square, transparent, bits of thin paper while trying to follow a 3D shape.

The rider itself was a mess of fiddly parts too. When the time came to glue on his sword and cape, I discovered I misread the manual and it was too late for that choice. At this point I decided that it's never too late for a hobbyist with a razor saw and a scalpel. I tossed the cape and the arms in my bits box (at least in the general direction of it) and instead added the chained on sword from the old knight's kit. I used a spare replacement head I had lying around to give the duke a face (a different one than the standard 'prince Valiant' option on the regular sprues. At that point I cut of the duke's other hand too and replaced it with a 3D-printed hand holding his helmet. Remember: only helmets (and steel eyepatches) prevent Hastings' style accidents.

Let me tell you about the temptation to use a My Little Pony color pattern for this flying horse.

I can't quite recall how many times I've restarted the paint job on this guy. There's just too many fiddly details on the sculpt and attempts to paint them, ruined other bits I painted before. I'm still not entirely happy about the white 'fleur de lis line' on the blue saddle blanket. Another hold up was my plan to freehand a fleur de lis' pattern on the caparison. This wonderful idea was counterbalanced by a lack of motivation to paint a few dozen of them. In the end I bought a laser printable transfer sheet, grabbed a bunch of stock photos and made myself a huge collection of extra fleur de lis transfers (except white ones because you can't print white). As easy as that sounds, I still had to individually place all of the fleur de lis prints on the caparison; taking care not to move the other ones. It worked like a charm though (when it was finally fixed in place).

Oddly enough he looks nothing like Kevin Costner.

Finally, to wrap this endless post up, I painted these rather famous rascals to serve as the command part of a second unit of archers. I especially enjoyed the contrast between these models with a few fun and sensible details versus the plastic duke and his rococo-like vomit of oversculpted bling.

Side by side we’re proud to ride with Mald(uh)red.*

* uh needed to make this fit in the meter.

And with that my sally of knights can ride forth to get their sorry butts kicked on tabletop battlefields. It was a bit of work, but this wall of color moving forward looks awesome (at least to me it does).

"Prepare for the fight scene!"

As an aside to the proud knights: don't all sally forth from the castle, it looks very cool, but your castle might get stolen out from under you by rascals!