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!

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.

A New Army

We went to visit my family this weekend. My Dad had mentioned something about having a few Renaissance figures that might be handy for an Empire army. Turned out it was more than a few. I came back home with the following:

So I'm going to have a proper root through and see what there is I can use and how it would all fit together. I like that the figures are all old MiniFigs. Seems to be very fitting for an Oldhammer project. 

Thanks, Dad!!

White Dwarf 148

Continuing my look at old issues of White Dwarf, I thought I'd examine issue 148, which arrived in the post a few days ago.

This is an exceptional issue in the sense that it has zero decent gaming content for 3rd Edition or Rogue Trader!

The issue starts off with an article on modelling rivers, which may have some use. Unfortunately, the next piece of interest doesn't occur until just over 30 pages later (and even then it is a game report)!

24 pages are given to a battle report telling the tale of The Battle of Blood Keep between the Empire and an alliance of Dwarfs and Wood Elves. It's a fairly decent read if you like bat reps. I enjoy them but always find myself getting bored by the end! It's just an aesthetic thing really, I can't engage fully with written reports when wargaming for me is about the visual appeal.

The report is interesting for its use of the 'new' Empire army list, published the issue before, and also mention of the 'new' card-based Magic system, which would make an appearance in slightly altered form when 4th edition came out.

And that's it! The rest is mostly ads and 'Eavy Metal pages. I should mention for completeness sake that there is a rules article about the Chaos forces of Khorne for Space Marine as the Renegades expansion was soon to be released. 

So no stats or rules for 3rd Ed or Rogue Trader this month!

So why did I buy it?! Well... The piece on making rivers does contain a pic of Bretonnians fighting Undead. This gives me another view of the knights, which should come in useful when I'm painting them in 15mm! I also would like to play it out as a battle just to see what happens!

So there you have it. Not an issue I'll be referring to much, I'm sure! 

White Dwarf 137

Due to a delay in my painting schedule, I thought I'd get cracking on what I hope will build to be a comprehensive look at issues of White Dwarf from the 'Oldhammer' era. By 'comprehensive', I mean I hope to look at all the issues as I re-read or acquire them. I will mainly be referring to articles for Warhammer Fantasy and Rogue Trader in my write-ups. Each post will be noted under the tab at the top of the blog for easy reference as well.

To kick things off, I thought I'd take a peek at issue 137, notable for a change to the Bretonnian army lists...

Page 14-15 show some painted up figures from the new range. This is one of the things which inspired me to start this blog and reproduce the units pictured in White Dwarf, so I hope to have 15mm versions to show you soon. Although I am not playing in that scale, I do really like the old 28mm figures from that era. Much more pleasant to look at than the new ranges, which are far to 'busy' for my liking with every tiny thing rendered in complete detail!

Page 16 contains the stats for the new figures. I think this is a large improvement over the page in Warhammer armies. All of the options and variation is pretty much still there, but contained within fewer troop types. Plus you get the addition of Foot Knights as some harder hitting infantry. This unit type was to be done away with when the Bretonnians were 'reinvented' for 5th edition, but still existed in 4th edition during the 'dark days' when Bretonnia didn't warrant it's own army book!

Next up, Andy Chambers describes his Skaven Army. This is an interesting and thorough piece with plenty of pictures. Having just extolled the virtues of 'old' figures, I have to say I am not a huge fan of the grimy brown mass that his units look like. But never mind. It is interesting to read how the army came about from playing Mighty Empires. But even more interesting to read a reference to a 'new magic system "using randomly dealt power cards". This sounds more like 4th Edition, but this was a while off at this point. Guess they were play-testing at that point? I don't know of any such magic system for 3rd edition at this time...

For people interested in modelling, there is an article about how to build a 'fantasy townhouse'. I find it interesting to compare this to the house described many issues later. The one in this issue is quite detailed and you stick on strips of balsa wood for the timber framing. I'm pretty sure the one later on does the same with just card. In any case, it is an interesting article.

Finally, while not technically Rogue Trader, this issue has two parts of the ongoing serialisation of the Confrontation rules, dealing with combat and trading. Readers may know this is what eventually became Necromunda, although the original Confrontation was a much more complicated set of rules. I'll definitely have to give it a go when I collect all the issues. Probably worthy of having a few blog posts dedicated to it!

So that's it for this issue. There was also coverage of the Golden Demon finals and a Space Hulk scenario. Let's finish off with a pic of the back cover, depicting the noble Bretonnians from earlier in the issue defending a town against some rampaging Orcs!

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.

The curse of WYSIWYG?

Okay, maybe the title of this post is a little over the top, but I was thinking about how figures are armed and the impact (if any) on the game for two reasons recently. 

Firstly, there is a paragraph in the Warhammer Armies book which sets out a quite different approach to the one commonly accepted today. Here's a picture:

The above paragraphs generally state that as long as both players know what a unit is armed with, the absolute details on the figures don't matter so much. As long as several of the figures in a unit are armed in the way listed in the army roster, it really doesn't matter if the rest are armed differently. A good suggestion given is to put the 'appropriately' armed or armoured figures in the front rank for easy identification, and remove others as casualties first. 

All of this is really about common sense and fair play, an agreement and understanding between two like minded players. 

I like how it mentioned that the guidelines given are meant to help make things easier and specifically "not to restrict players, or make them use specific models." Compare and contrast that to attitudes from other times as you will!

I think the only line that really matters is:

"The important thing is that all players know what armour and equipment troops have. So long as both sides are happy in this respect, other restrictions are superfluous."

A good example of this is shown in the pictures of the Bretonnian army. Compare these two knights:

Without checking the book, can you tell me with absolute certainty which is classed as +4 Shock Elite and which is +1 Shock Elite? Probably not. 

In fact the whole of the two units pictured look pretty interchangeable. But you know, if your opponent says that the chaps with a particular banner are a certain unit, what more do you need?!

The second reason I was pondering this topic is more directly related to this blog. When you play with 28mm it is fairly easy to get close to the enemy figures and see what they are carrying. This becomes a bit more tricky with 15mm! Also, a lot of 15mm figures come in bags of 8 with some variation between them. So you need to think, does it matter if one guy in my unit looks like he has a two handed axe? Personally I am pretty sure no one would notice during a game unless you pointed it out them them.

I put a question mark at the end of the blog title for the reason that I don't even know whether "What You See Is What You Get" is even significant enough to be called a curse. Sure, in a tournament setting it helps, I guess, but unless you are trying to substitute goblins for ogres or something similarly daft, a quick consultation with the other player should still be able to sort it out. 

So how strongly do you feel about this issue? Do you adhere rigidly to WYSIWYG or is it not so much of a problem for you?

Personally I think the paragraphs in the army book sum it up nicely for me and reflect how I'd want to play. 

Comments welcome as always!