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Sunday, May 29, 2022

Bretonnian Knights - Conversions

Between all the rank-and-file knights I have been working on the characters and command groups. Wanting to make them more distinct and fit my backstory a little better, I wanted to do some conversions on them since... forever. Seriously, some of those guys were my first attempts at conversions, first experience with greenstuff, etc. Of course, I had to change some of them to not be embarassing, but the idea stays mostly the same. I apologize for the mess with the undercoats and paints - I was convinced many times that they are ready to be painted, only to get them back to the conversion phase later, after already starting.

First is the "main character" of the whole army, Earl Sagremor, based on the "paladin with an axe" model from bygone ages. Main idea - his horse is a manmade unicorn, fitting his heraldry - this horn may be actually from 2008, those are easy to make. Second idea - the shield should be covered with a dragonskin - and this is perhaps the 4th or 5th attempt. Third idea - he should have a big sword. The first version of this was a translucent plastic sword that I got once in a restaurant to eat french fries with! It broke off sadly, was brittle as hell. Everything else on him are "modern" conversions to fill him up with details.


Second one, his older son, the Battle Standard Bearer. His horse is also a manmade unicorn of course.

Here, having already made a pretty impressive standard for a different knight, this one needed to be extra extravagant. So, my 2008 self sculpted this whole big "altar" on top of the standard, with the rays and shields. I only shortened some of the rays for better effect, but overall, not that terrible. Only the "ribbons" on the back side were super bad, so I remade them according to my current skills.


Now the younger son, a champion for the Errant Knights.

Nothing too complicated here, just some bits to make thim stand out more. And a unicorn-hat on the horse, of course.


Standard Bearer for the Errant Knights.

This one was actually a magic standard used on WFB 6th edition, it cheaply made Errant Knights significantly stronger - so it was always used. I liked the fluff description on how it was carried through countless errantry wars, was tattered and sewn together from many different smaller pieces, so I wanted to represent it on the tabletop. Nowadays I would probably give it more tattered parts and make different stitches, but it works good enough here too. This conversion is almost unchanged since 2008, only the hanging chains were added recently.


Last conversion for now, a champion of one of the Knight units. The idea came to me when I saw cardinal Richelieu's heraldry and wanted to do something similar - right after that the concept evolved to make him a priestly knight. Such a function probably doesn't exist in Bretonnia's fluff, but the aesthetics work well enough.

His helmet has this "bishop's hat" style and there is a lot of flowing details, all to make him regal and important.


Only one conversion still isn't made - Cadret the Black, a special character of my own invention. That one involves reposing the horse, sculpting the barding from scratch and many other details, so that one will come much later.

Sunday, May 22, 2022

Knight Errant #01

A slight change - an Errant Knight this time, one of the younger, inexperienced knights. They are using the same kit, the only visual difference being they don't use the extravagant helmets of standard knights - that's why I'm working on them at the same time as the others, it's just a long production line anyway.

Wanted to give them another difference, I decided to paint their lances wooden-color, thinking that maybe they break their weapons so often, nobody really bothers to paint them properly. At least it'll make them more distinct as a unit.

I don't even remember how I came up with this heraldry and colors, but now I can only think of him as a German or Belgian football fan...

Monday, May 16, 2022

Knight of the Realm #07

A late post, unforgivable! Sorry, I had the photos prepared, but the internet broke down when I wanted to set them up online...

Another knight - this time in a white-blue color scheme, I don't think I had any of those. I decided to use light gold and yellowy-brown for the leather parts to make him all look rather bright and friendly. That's definitely a pleasant change of pace. I'm not sure how to excuse having a breaking wheel on his coat-of-arms in-universe, but I still think it looks cool and I wanted to make something like this since I saw such a heraldric concept on Wikipedia a long time ago.

Sunday, May 8, 2022

Knight of the Realm #06

Okay, now this guy was an experiment. I try to combine all the allowed colors in all sorts of ways in my unit - and one of those combinations is black & white. Kinda like Teutonic Knights. To make things more interesting, I decided to give him a "white tiger" theme, with the stripes and fitting heraldry. No gold details, the horse is black, leather gray, only a reflection of my lamp shows up as a spot of warmth on top of his head. If not for the grass and the base, the pics could be desaturated all the way down and nobody would notice.

What do you think about him? Is it still Bretonnia in such a color scheme?

Sunday, May 1, 2022

Knight of the Realm #05

This time, a musician. I wanted to paint a knight with a black-red-white color scheme and he did fit well. Nothing too particularly fancy, just another brave dude to the collection.

A comfort-zone miniature, so to say.