Two More Knights and a Lot of Men at Arms

 Well, it's nearly the new year, so I guess this is probably going to be my final post of 2025. I know it's customary to do a yearly round-up of the things I've made, and from a purely painting point of view it's been a very good year, but I can't really be bothered right now. So instead, here are some more Bretonnians. For some reason, I associate knights with Christmas. I think it's because King Arthur met his knights then, as seen in the very weird recently film of The Green Knight. 

First up, two more plastic knights from the Battlemasters game. Pretty!

I bought a few more men at arms to round off my unit, including some musicians from the 1996 army book. One model, a halberdier, had a broken weapon that was going to be difficult to mend. I carefully cut away what was left of it and replaced it with a pole, made from the ramrod of an Empire cannon crew. It has a nice bobble at one end.

I'm not really a fan of paper banners. They seem to look very tatty very quickly, and I prefer the sculpted plastic ones that you get with modern boxed sets. So I made this guy a banner out of plasticard and green stuff. It's rather small, but I reckon that (a) men at arms aren't important to get big banners; (ii) this guy is tired out and is holding it lower down instead of waving it around; and (3) I want to be able to fit him into my miniatures case.

I also painted some friends for him, including a drummer. They take up the front row of the picture below. And that's the unit finished, painted in the colours of Les Hommes de Renault from White Dwarf 137 all those years ago (May 1991, to be precise). They're a bit grottier-looking than I'd first intended, and I'll need to get a movement tray for them, but overall I'm really pleased with the results.

On to the next models, and the next year! Happy New Year everyone!

EDIT: Wow, my men at arms are on the front of the Oldhammer Facebook group (for now)! Cool!

A Load of Conversions

 It's nearly Christmas Day, and what could be more festive than some random models I've made out of various sprues? The answer is "almost anything", but that's not going to stop me.

First up, a couple of jolly fellows from the merry land of Blognia. On the left is a peasant girl, made from the ever-reliable Perry Miniatures Afghan sprue. To make her smaller, and turn the model's coat/shirt into a skirt, I cut the feet off above the ankles (as high as possible), and cut off the bottom of the model's baggy trousers. I then drilled two small holes and glued the legs back into them. Her gun is from the Afghans and her head is from Frostgrave with green stuff hair and a shawl-type thing on her waist. 

The satyr is simply a Frostgrave demon. The demons aren't my favourite Frostgrave models, to be honest. They're a too bulky to mix well with other plastics, and they feel a bit cartoony. I get that Frostgrave isn't a horrific game, but they still look rather goofy to me. Anyhow, he's a satyr.

Then, moving to space, we've got a maniac and a sniper. The maniac is a Wargames Atlantic Chinese Boxer soldier body with Frostgrave Cultists 2 head and arms. The Cultists 2 sprue is great, by the way. The sniper has a Bolt Action USMC body, a Stargrave head, and Perry Afghan arms. 

These next two are female soldiers from the Stargrave Mercenaries 2 frame, with arms from the Bolt Action USMC sprue. I really like how they've come out, especially on the random authority figure on the right.

Here are two noir-style private eyes, who I have named Laura Norder and Polly Sofficer. The bodies are Wargames Atlantic Gorgnards, with GW arms. I think the hats came from a Civil War sprue.

And finally, we've got a mystic leader for a Stargrave crew. This guy is an old metal Gates of Antares miniature, with a Stargrave Scavenger head. While Antares never seemed to take off, and the models weren't very exciting, a few of them are really nice. 

And that's it for now! I hope you have a very Merry Christmas, and get all the models you hoped for. Thanks for reading and see you soon!

A (Konflikt 47) Walker for House Escher

Here's a model that I've had lying around for ages. I think I got it in a sale. It's a Warlord Games Coyote walker from their Konflikt 47 game. Oddly, when I bought it, Warlord sent me an entire resin kit and then a spare pair of arms and legs which were exactly the same, but metal. This miniature has the resin torso and metal limbs, for what it's worth.

I decided to use it as a support unit for my Escher gang. In new Necromunda, gangs can take robots called Ambots to support them. I'm not sure what they are or do, but I thought that this model might make a good equivalent.

The Coyote is a pretty nice model and a lot bigger than I'd anticipated. It also has a lot of blank space that you can use for interesting colours. I decided to paint mine to reflect the rest of my Escher crew, and used the tank from the 1990s film of Tank Girl as a basis. Much jollier than the standard olive green! The only modification was the addition of a little aerial to the top. I left off the guns, as I don't think that ambots carry them.

He's a happy little (big) guy!

The (Grail) Pilgrim's Progress

 It's time for a quick update on the Bretonnian project. I've reached the first milestone, in that I've painted ten soldiers from each of the main groups.

There will be three principal infantry units: archers, foot knights and men at arms. I'm expecting to end up with about 20 archers, 15 knights and 20 men at arms, which should provide some solid and nice-looking blocks of troops. I'm also hoping to do some squires (which I plan to paint green, in a homage to the old Bowmen of Bergerac unit from the Stillman codex) and maybe even some mounted yeomen, but that remains very much to be seen. 

Anyway, for now I've made 10 of each of the main groups. My main thought is how good these ancient metal models are. I think they were sculpted by the Perry twins, and they're full of excellent details. I think the men at arms are particularly varied and dramatic, with loads of good poses and as much of a sense of movement that old models in a packed-in unit could be expected to provide.

So, here are the men at arms:

And here are the knights:

And, finally, here are the archers:

To be honest, I don't think these photos do them all that much justice, but you get the idea. We're slowly getting there. I really like them as units.

Also, as a bonus, here is the first model that I have sculpted from scratch. He started off as an alien egg, but at the last minute I turned him into a Ghibli-type creature. Sculpting is difficult!

Ogryn Bodyguard for Necromunda (or Stargrave)

A tedious bit of real-world stuff: this hasn't been the easiest year, in terms of my job and my writing "career", and while nothing terrible has happened, I've found that I'm getting more entertainment out of painting models than usual. When it's difficult to get much satisfaction from my work or the world of publishing, it's good to be able to look at a finished model and think "I did a decent job of that".

I've also realised that, while repainting the Bretonnians is fun, a lot of what I enjoy in this hobby is altering and converting models, which I'm not going to do with my knights (although some repairs might be required). So, this week I've done a conversion that I've been thinking about for ages.

Years ago I bought the ogre Blood Bowl team. It's not bad, as you get four ogres (much better miniatures than the usual fantasy ones) and a lot of gnoblars in funny poses (again, much better models than the fantasy versions). I thought it would be cool to turn one of the ogres into a Necromunda hired gun. 

This was one of those conversions that got bigger and bigger as it went on. I decided to replace the belly-plate on the ogre with sculpted trousers and a belt (the buckle comes from the side of the plate). Then I decided to give him a vest, and then a sleeveless jacket, and before long I was rebuilding a lot of his upper body. Well, it's all good practice in sculpting.

What else is there to say? Hmm, well, his shoulder pads are plasticard, and he's got a lot of bits and bobs that looked suitably technical and futuristic. The odd bobbles on top of his left (our right) shoulderpad were inspired by the jackets in the Cyberpunk 2077 computer game. His pistol is an Imperial Guard grenade launcher and his cigar is a bit of wire. The box on the ground by his feet was from a plastic Van Saar ganger. I have no idea what the objects in it are supposed to be. Ammo? Cans of baked beans?

Anyhow, here's the finished version. I think he's come out quite well - the sculpted bits don't look too blobby, which is always the risk when I attempt anything with green stuff. 

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I've also been painting a few more minions for the Bretonnian army. At present, the Peasant Progress looks like this:

Archers: 10

Foot knights: 6

Men at arms: 10

That's about a third of the way through the foot troops. I'll post more pictures once I've got a few more done. I'd forgotten just how many guys you need for a Warhammer army.

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.

Tank Girl and Friends

Here's one of those slightly irritating "How it started/how it's going" posts you see on social media. This week, I have been repainting one of my last Escher gangers. This model is a juve with a stub gun and a pick. I've mentioned before that the Eschers seem to have been influenced by Tank Girl, and this one really looks as much like her as GW could manage. She's even got the slightly pigeon-toed stance that Jamie Hewlett often used to depict her.

This model is particularly interesting to me, as I first painted it about 15 years ago, and thought at the time that I had done a really good job. It was always one of my best-painted models and I was somewhat reluctant to strip it and start again. So, here is the old paint job:

And here is the new one:

I definitely think I've improved, and I'm surprised at how much better the second one looks to me. Sometimes it's quite hard to tell that your painting - or maybe any artistic work? - has got better until you stop to actually make the comparison.

Here are a couple of other Eschers, both of whom use the same not-Tank-Girl colour scheme (and unusual boob armour). There's less room to personalise these models than there is on the Eldar harlequins, as a lot of the Eschers is either leggings or bare skin. I've tried to vary skin colours to provide some extra variety, which I think has worked quite well. We've got a heavy with a massive heavy stubber that looks as if it was first used at the Siege of Stalingrad, and a ganger with a shotgun and pistol who is definitely showing off. As ever, the sculpting and details are superb.

Also, I made a few more horrid little lowlifes for the Scavvy horde. The advantage with making inbred, filthy lunatics who live in a rubbish tip is that you can mix and match pretty much anything to construct them. The guy with the musket has a zombie body, and medieval arms. His friend has a WW2 body, and arms and an axe from the Frostgrave cultist sprue. Both have cultist heads. Weirdly, the musketeer's shirt ends just above nipple-height. Perhaps he ate the rest of it.

Back in the day, scavvy gangs could take mutants, who had pretty daft, cartoony miniatures. One of the options was to have a big claw. I found an old Mantic zombie body and added a claw from a plastic daemonette and a Stargrave head. The whole thing was a good opportunity to try some shading with glazes, which I enjoyed. I like the results and might use this technique more often. Here is the nasty little creature:

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I've also decided to keep a tally of how my efforts to paint the Bretonnian footsoldiers is going. I'm not going to post my progress until I've finished a load, but I'll provide a weekly update (hopefully). The plan is to do three guys every week. So far, I'm ahead of the curve!

Peasant Progress:

Archers: 10

Foot knights: 6

Men at arms: 6