Bretonnian foot units

A big part of this project for me, is to replicate the Bretonnian forces shown in White Dwarf in 15mm. One of my earliest memories of reading WD was an article about Bretonnian heraldry and I also enjoyed seeing the same distinctive units appearing in different photos across the issues. It made my younger self wonder about the history of the different units and what brought them to the depicted battle. 

The unit which stuck in my mind the most was this one:

Now, until I got a copy of WD137, I had no idea about the name of the Baron who led them. Until then it was just the retinue's bright livery which caught my attention. 

This particular issue of White Dwarf has an army list update for Bretonnia and pictures of several different units. Further down the page from the one shown above is another interesting unit:

Both of these helped inspire me to collect 15mm versions of old Bretonnian regiments. To this end I bought some figures from Essex Miniatures and attempted to duplicate the original units as closely as I could. 

Here are the results:

L'Hommes Du Renault

 Like the original unit, this is a 14 strong regiment armed with double handed weapons and accompanied by a standard. To add a few options, I also painted up a musician and champion so I can field either the original 'White Dwarf unit' or a slightly beefed up one.

As this makes the unit 16 strong, it is also useful for getting an increased rank bonus when arranged in 4 ranks:

Next up, Baron D'Angon and his foot knights. I didn't paint any additional figures for this unit (at least, not yet!).

It certainly made me realise that heraldry is going to be a bit of a pain to paint on 15mm figures! Time to refresh my brushes and invest in some 000 size!

Overall I think this has been worth pursuing so far. It was really satisfying to finish these first two units and my overall goal has given me a decent and achievable objective, which has been highly motivating!

Hopefully I will soon be posting the archers, crossbowmen, artillery and peasants also shown in WD 137. And of course, lets not forget the knights from other issues. I'm currently working to find good pictures of the heraldry on each of them, which is a fair challenge in itself!

As ever, please feel free to comment below, or follow the Twitter feed for this blog, @oldhammer15 , where I occasionally put up work in progress images and generally chat nonsense!

Thanks for reading.