Tag: Bretonnia

The walls of Malko need manning, for vengeful dwarfs are about! If you’ve been following the last year or so of posts on the blog you’ll know that I’ve been painting models and terrain for a Warhammer campaign set in the Border Princes region of the Old World. One of the armies I painted for this campaign is a small force of Bretonnians, not as a player controlled faction, but rather to act as a roadblock to players attempting to take the central map section: the town of Malko.

Alongside the new set of rules for Warhammer Old World an army list covering Bretonnian Exiles was released, which was both timely and very useful for adding flavour to this small army. The army list however requires the inclusion of a regiment of Knights of the Realm, either mounted or on foot. Horses not being particularly useful atop castle walls, I decided to opt for the foot version. With the new plastic foot knights kit being released a few weeks back (Australia has been getting delayed releases for all Old World stock unfortunately), I set about remedying my lack of knights.

These new knights are very cool models (Those axes are monstrous though! Talk about heroic scale!), and were a) fun to put together, and b) fun to paint! They are quite tall compared to older models, and my poor general is definitely “petit” next to them.

The box art for these and the transfer sheet that came with the box are geared towards the uniform look that Games Workshop have been proposing for Bretonnians in this era of the Old World, where the knights wear the livery of their lord. I opted for the old style rainbow knights where the knights wear their own colours, and regiments look like bowls of skittles. I was helped along there by having an old Bretonnian transfer sheet which had a lot of different heraldry.

Needless to say there was no batch painting these, I painted them one by one which was rather fun and a lot less monotonous than usual unit paint although it was a lot slower. You might notice that there are two main bodies in the photos above (barring the command models that is). There are five distinct bodies in the kit, which are repeated four times for a total twenty knights. I’ve only painted half the box so far (enough for the campaign army, the other half will come when I take the army to 1000pts), and to avoid repeating colours on the same bodies I made sure I painted the knights with the same bodies next to each other. This makes these first ten a bit samey, but hopefully as a unit it’s not too noticeable.

If you remember I opened this post with a mention of Dwarfs being about? This was not merely flavour, but a true representation of what is happening in the campaign. That’s right the campaign has finally started after all this preparation (just about a year’s worth!).

I’ve been recording the player’s moves on a digital version of the map that I drew way back in April 2023.

There are five of us, using the following factions (clockwise from top left): Dwarfs (green), Ogres (magenta), Beastmen (red), Orcs and Goblins (black), and Lizardmen (teal).

We’re up to turn four now, I’ve included the moves for turns one though four below.

Turn four is still in progress, because as you can see my Dwarfs have attacked Malko, and we need to play out that game, which was dependent on me getting these very knights painted. The campaign has been on hold since that happened, but now the knights are done we can resume!

I’m looking forwards to seeing these knights on the table, although I won’t be controilling them as one of the other campaign players will be playing them as my Dwarfs try to get into the city! Should be fun, and I’ll try to remember to take some photos of the game for the next post!

Back this time around with another character model, and in this case it’s the model that takes me to 500 points of Bretonnians! This rounds out my small defenders of Malko force, a small army that will defend the central town in our Border Princes campaign.

This model is (I think!) an old Questing Knight, which I’m using as a Paladin with the Virtue of Empathy (fights on foot with the peasants!). I really like this model and wanted to save it for last for this small force of defenders of Malko.

In my last post I showed a boar’s head on the men-at-arm’s banner, representing their lord’s heraldry. This model is said lord so he of course needed a boar’s head on his shield. I think the version I painted on his shield is an improvement over what I had on the banner which is the right way around!

Just like for the Damsel I went with a richer green for this model, to make him stand out from the peasant soldiers which have a much more earthy green. The yellow is also more saturated on him than on the other models in the army for the same reason.

As he marks a milestone for the army (and in fact all I need to paint for the campaign), it’s time for a group photo!

It’s nice to see them all together, and this now means I have the minimum I need for the campaign across the three armies (1000pts of Dwarfs and Vampire counts and the 500 points of Bretonnians). This of course doesn’t preclude me adding more to them, but now the blocker to the campaign shifts to the terrain we need for the locations on the map, so I might spend more time on terrain in the short term.

The latest unit off the painting table is some reinforcements for the small Bretonnian garrison for Malko, the town at the center of the Border Princes campaign map.

These are a unit of Men-at-Arms, the other main peasant unit in the army, the first being the archers I painted a while back. Just like the archers, these models came from a second hand lot I got on ebay at the start of this project. Little did I know that a few months after I got these, the relaunch of Warhammer as the Old World would be announced and that if I’d waited I could have just bought new models!

If I sound a little bitter it’s because these weren’t much fun to paint to be honest! I’m pretty comfortable stripping plastic models, so had no issues with the one-piece archer models, but on these men-at-arms I encountered a different enemy: glue.

As you can see, these models are covered for the most part with large shields, and I knew I’d want to remove those for painting. The previous owner had generously doused the joints with glue and I ended up having to pry the shields off which resulted in some breakage. This left the models with some rather unsightly joins and I’d rather no one had a look too closely at the left arm on these!

The magic of ranked up models hides a lot of issues though, and while the damage dampened my enthusiasm for these, I do think they look pretty nice all ranked up. I had a great time painting the banner and the shields. For the shields I tried to paint on some basic heraldic looking patterns, with each shield being different to the others as you can see in the photos below.

For the banner I tried to free hand a heraldic boar’s head, as that’s the emblem I decided the noble leading these troops would have as his device.

On the other side of the banner I went for a sword motif to represent the men-at-arms.

I expect to have to do a lot of free handing when I get to painting some knights so this is great practice!

There you have it! While the process wasn’t the most fun, I am happy with how these look and glad to be that much closer to the goal of 500 points for these Bretonnians!

Following on from my last post I painted more archers from my set of 5th edition Bretonnians for the garrison of Malko. This is the second sculpt these models came in, and just like last time I had 12 to get through.

Panting-wise these are identical to the last batch so not too much to comment on there, but it’s nice to have these all done. Just like the previous ones, I tried to have no duplicates in terms of colours which kept painting 12 of the same model more interesting.

There is plenty more Bretonnian infantry is on the way, but that’s it for archers!

Earlier this week some LED light panels arrived in the post, and I got to try them on this post’s photos. They made lighting the photos a bit easier, and offer some interesting possibilities for photos with coloured light as you can see in the photo at the top of the post. Keen to try these out and see what I might be able to do with them!

I hinted last post that I was going to start on another faction for our Border Princes campaign. If you remember, right at the start of this project I drew up a map of the Border Princes that the campaign will be fought over. At the centre of that map is the town of Malko, one of the major objectives of the campaign. We decided that Malko should have some neutral defenders, to provide some opposition to any players trying to take the town.

In come these Bretonnian archers! The Border Princes is a region outside the more civilised areas of the old world, but is home to some that try their luck in the wilder areas. This includes quite a few Bretonnian nobles that decide to strike out with their retinues and make a life there. As such Bretonnia was a clear pick for the neutral faction that occupies Malko.

These archer models are the ones that were found in the 5th edition Warhammer starter set. They are single part models and there are two poses. You’ll notice all the archers in this batch are the same pose however, as I decided to paint 12 of the one pose and then do 12 of the other pose later.

While I’m talking about these models, definitely check out the Hammer the Backlog blog, especially posts like this one, with photos of the fully painted starter set in question! Lee over there has done an awesome job of bringing them to life.

To break up the uniformity of the models I decided to try to differentiate them by changing the patterns of their clothes. I think it worked pretty well!

Painting-wise these are nothing special, mostly my usual basecoat > wash > highlight process I do for my “bulk” army models. Here are the colours used:

Undercoat: Vallejo Primer Dunkelgelb

Yellow: Undercoat (left as is) > GW Agrax Earthshade > Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown

Green: Vallejo Heavy Green > GW Agrax Earthshade > Vallejo Heavy Green > 50/50 Vallejo Heavy Green/Vallejo Russian Uniform WWII

Wood (Bow/Arrows): Vallejo German Came Medium Brown > GW Agrax Earthshade > Vallejo German Came Medium Brown > 50/50 Vallejo German Came Medium Brown/Vallejo German Camo Beige WWII

Leather: GW Gore Grunta Fur Contrast > GW Agrax Earthshade

Silver: Scale 75 Black Metal > GW Agrax Earthshade > Scale 75 Black Metal

Brass: Scale 75 Necro Gold > GW Agrax Earthshade > Scale 75 Necro Gold

Light Skin: GW Bugman’s Glow > GW Reikland Fleshade > GW Bugman’s Glow > GW Cadian Fleshtone > GW Kislev Flesh > GW Carroburg Crimson (Noses only!)

Dark Skin: GW Bugman’s Glow > GW Contrast Cygor Brown > 50/50 GW Bugman’s Glow/GW Contrast Cygor Brown

Base Rims: Vallejo US Field Drab

These were fun to paint, and very quick! I have the second batch sitting in paint stripper, and they should be ready soon. Good chance then that the next post will be more archers unless I get distracted by something else along the way!