State of the Blog

It's been a while since I've properly blogged, or indeed properly painted or played anything! Frequent followers of the blog or the Twitter account will know this is down to my relocation halfway across the country back to my birthplace of Bournemouth.

Here's a picture of what I'm currently dealing with!

On the right you can see part of my rule book collection. On the left, on top of boxes, are Rennaisance figures from Minifigs which will form my Empire army, along with some Estalian mercenaries. At the bottom of the picture are boxfiles containing work in progress Bretonianns and Undead. 

So what I really need to do is get cracking on sorting this room out. It's going to be a general purpose hobby room (not just wargaming, mind!) as well as housing our DVD collection, so as things go, it's not going to be a chore to sort it, but it's just a case of finding the time. 

In other news I don't know if I'll continue the magazine reviews in their current format. I might, instead change the page dedicated to them into a more simple list, which I can add comments to as I go. I'll see. 

That's about it for now. I'm hoping the next post will outline my Empire army when I've got more figures sorted and based. Until then, thanks for reading!

The Bretonnian Knights (Part 1) (and an interesting discovery)

As frequent readers of this blog know, I am trying to recreate the GW studio Bretonnian army, as depicted in the pages of White Dwarf during the later part of the 3rd Edition era.

In most cases this is fairly straightforward. Units recur quite frequently and are easy to identify. Bretonnian knights are a little more difficult though, as they don't always appear together and it seems there were a few units that WD used in a 'mix-and-match' kind of way.

Issue 129 of White Dwarf introduces the new range of Bretonnian miniatures, with painted examples from the Perrys. These figures are also included in dioramas in issues 130 and 131. What is interesting about these, is that they are effectively medieval dioramas, with the combatants being exclusively Bretonnian.  It's also notable that in issue 130 there were rules for 'Chivalry', a simple medieval combat card game which was explicitly historical rather than fantasy based.

Issue 129

Issue 130

Issue 131

 

Later, in issue 136, an article appears about Bretonnian heraldry. The examples here are pretty simple, in nice bold colours. Nothing wrong with them at all, but quite a contrast to the more detailed Perry heraldry. The pictures which accompany the article show a new unit of Knights painted accordingly, although eagle eyed readers will spot a Perry unit fighting in the background!

Issue 136

So there seems to be a bit of a shift in focus around this time, from the distinctly historical looking knights to ones which look a bit more 'Warhammery'. It is the latter unit of knights which I want to replicate for my 15mm Bretonnian army. As it is not quite possible to discern the details of the heraldry on all the knights pictured, I dug around other issues from the time to try and find different photos of them. At this point I noticed something quite interesting was happening with Bretonnia in White Dwarf!

But first... here is a list of what White Dwarf contained about Bretonnia between issues 129 and 158:

129: First showing of new figures painted by Perrys
130: Perry diorama (and rules for Chivalry game)
131: Perry diorama
132-135: Nothing
136: Heraldry article
137: Amended army list. Pictures of new units. Army pictured in battle against Skaven.
138: New unit of knights, general, army standard, wizard. Heraldry revisited.
139-142: Nothing
143: 'Guest appearance': Pictured in Coaching Inn modelling article
144: 'Guest appearance': Pictured in modelling article
145: 'Guest appearance': Pictured in Elf/Empire v Undead battle
146-147: Nothing
148: 'Guest appearance': Pictured in rivers modelling article
149-152: Nothing
153: Battle report vs Dwarfs. Testing of 4th ed Magic rules
154: Nothing (Although army from 153 pictured as part of army deal offer)
155-158: Nothing

So looking at this list it seems like something quite odd happens with the Bretonnians. First, they are released to a bit of a fanfare and look rather historical. Then, from issue 136, that side of things takes a bit of a back seat to slightly more fantastical miniatures (although they all still look pretty much like medieval French). In 138 there are some new knights painted up along with some characters. This issue talks about work being in progress on the Bretonnian army and that it will be revealed properly when it is all painted. And after that.... pretty much nothing! All you really get is a few pictures of what you have already seen to accompany other articles. Even as early as 141 and 142 you get other armies shown off (Wood Elves and Undead). What happened to the Bretonnians?!

Issue 138

Issue 138 (but note, the 'new' knight on the far right is the one leading the charge in the picture from issue 136. The scamp!)

To add insult to injury, pretty much every issue from 146 until 4th Edition is released has articles and rule about The Empire. So it seems, perhaps, that Bretonnia wasn't 'fantasy' enough and was ditched in favour of The Empire. Not that that makes a great deal of sense, as the Empire is basically a historical army too (just with more Steam Tanks...!). Maybe Bretonnia lacked a distinctive theme running through it. Was that why it was reinvented as a pseudo-Arthurian nation for 5th Edition?

In a final touch of irony, it is the Bretonnians who fight the Dwarfs in issue 153 and get offered as an army deal in 154, even though they are effectively being dropped at this time as they get no army book for 4th Edition...

So what started as a exercise in finding out what heraldry was painted on the Bretonnian knights turned into something a little unexpected... I wonder if anyone else noticed this shift at the time, or if it is only apparent when you sit down with 30 copies of White Dwarf and go through them all in one sitting! That is two and a half years worth of magazines after all!

Did you or anyone you know play with a Bretonnian army during the 3rd Edition period? Did you shift to using another army during 4th Edition? All comments and input welcome as always!

My basing problems...

Who would have thought that choosing a base size for a 15mm project would be so hard?!

My original thought was to go with 10mm, but when I tried this it definitely seemed on the small side, strange given that DBx uses a 40mm frontage for 4 figures! With the next convenient amount of mm being 15, I cut up a few of those. Now the problem was they seemed too big!

Here's a picture for comparison:

And here is another reason why I went off 10mm squares... my standard bearer just wouldn't stand up!:

Then I saw this post on TMP asking a similar question. The first reply caught my interest. 'Nazrat' said he used a 1/2" square as the basis for his WAB basing. It had never occurred to me to use inches... 1/2" is 13.7mm, not something I would want to measure out a hundred times using metric measurements! But the convenience of a half inch can not be denied. So I went ahead and cut out a base to see what it looked like (middle):

Seeing the results I am pretty much converted to the idea. Not too small and not overpowering, it seems a good fit to the figure size. So the next question is, what do I use for cavalry and larger monsters?!

Off the top of my head I can see the convenience of 3/4" and 1" frontages for them, but I'll wait and see when I get some cavalry for my first army.

Which rules I use.

There is much discussion on the interwebs about what exactly can be regarded as 'Oldhammer'. Whilst the majority seem to be in favour of the 3rd edition of the rules, there are also many (including lots of the aforementioned majority) who believe it to be more about the ethos and approach taken by the players. 

This is something I wholeheartedly agree with and is how I generally approach games. Because of this, I am perfectly happy to enjoy 4th edition along side of 3rd. To me, this is the edition in which the Warhammer World truly came together and became what I would recognise as being 'modern' Warhammer. I love the army books (easy to collect now without spending much) and the background they contain. I love the simpler rules which give quick, fun games. I love the unique and different troop types and warmachines which emerge during this period. It is just plain fun. BUT, it is best approached with an Oldhammer mentality. In fact the magic supplement for this edition specifically recommends placing a limit on some of the power. If you agree to limit magic and heroes then 4th is a perfectly good edition of the game (and isn't the Oldhammer spirit all about cooperating together to play great games?!)

But to me, it is 3rd edition which is more serious, detailed and full of depth. It is the flip side of the coin. There are many things I like about third which are missing in 4th, but there are also plenty added in 4th which I miss from 3rd. To me, which I play depends on what kind of fantasy game I want. The more bonkers 4th or the more serious 3rd. And there is room in my collection for both!

So while this blog primarily covers my adventures in 3rd edition, you can expect to see some 4th as well. 

And as for Warhammer 40k, well, I only own and play Rogue Trader, so I'll leave that side of the discussion to someone else!

What rules do you use for your Oldhammer games and how do you approach them?

Comments always welcome. 

Why this blog?

Welcome to my new blog! I decided recently to undertake a whole new project, inspired by pictures in the original Warhammer Siege book. Within this venerated and ancient text lie many fine photographs depicting epic assaults against mighty fortresses. These instantly captured my imagination, but I knew I could never recreate such a thing myself. Or could I?

I pondered the possibility of playing Warhammer in 15mm. I've already got some figures I intend to paint up for Rogue Trader in this scale, so why not it's sister game? The tipping point was finding some of the pictures of Bretonnian regiments I remember in old issues of White Dwarf. What if I could aim to recreate these in 15mm? It soon started to sound like a fine plan! Most of the old units were of reasonable size, so it would not be too expensive to do this. There were also plenty of ads for Marauder Miniatures in old WDs where you could buy a whole army or allied contingent. These immediately gave me more goals to recreate in 15mm.

So what will this blog cover? My aim is to embrace the Oldhammer spirit, but in a smaller scale. Within this broad aim lie the following goals:

• Recreate the units shown in White Dwarf using 15mm, especially Bretonnian ones. 
• Report games of 3rd Edition Warhammer using the above figures. 
• Embrace the modern variety of 15mm sci-fi figures and use them for Rogue Trader. 
• Retain small armies of my existing 28mm Warhammer forces and report on games of 4th Edition with them. 
• Ruminate profusely on the issues of transitioning my growing armies between 3rd and 4th/5th Edition!
• And generally chat about anything related that comes to my mind. 

So if the above sounds like fun to you, welcome on board. I can't guarantee how frequently I will be able to post, but the game is afoot and I hope to post again soon!

Thanks for reading!