Knights Errant

Knight Colour Scheme

To emphasise the difference between my Knight units I decided on a pretty simple format, with the colour scheme and heraldry becoming more and more elaborate depending on the unit. This would help me get my free-hand painting skills to develop as I progressed, and should hopefully avoid confusion on the table for my opponent as to what was what (one of my personal pet peeves!)...

Knights Errant: Blue, Yellow, and Red - minimal detailing
Knights of the Realm: Blue, Yellow, Red, and Cream (Bleached Bone)
Questing Knights: NFI
Grail Knights: Any colour - fair amount of free hand and detailing

Knights Errant

I've got a fair amount of the older Perry Twin's Bretonnian Knight Errant models, so it was an obvious no-brainer as to what I was going to use for these guys. The only problem was a few head swaps were in order so that the entire unit didn't look like something from a Panteen commercial with their flowing locks.

I decided to keep their colour scheme basic to represent the fact that they weren't fully fledged Knights yet, and to build on this I tried to keep the individual heraldry pretty simple too.

I took a knife to a few of the horses to make it look like they were rearing to fit in with their impetuous nature... which is kind of hard to tell in this photo.

Grail Reliquae

I wasn't completely sold on the idea of a bunch of fanatical peasants collecting the relics from a former Grail Knight, and decided to go with something a little different.

So, rather than a band of fanatics carrying the corpse of a Grail Knight, I went with a unit of battle hardened men-ar-arms carrying into battle their either somewhat insane or impoverished lord. Leadership 8 would represent the lord's leadership, or their loyalty to the 'not-all-there' Knight. The fact that you can't strike the Reliquae would represent the Men-at-Arms protecting the lord, or even the lord's cowardice by avoiding combat until the bitter end.

The Reliquae itself had to have the Knight sitting atop (albeit uncomfortably) a palaquin carried by his personal retinue. So I decided that the Knight was either so poor, or just plain mental enough to bring everyone that served under him to battle. Hence the Reliquae having his Torturer/Executioner, a Jester, Priest, and Village Idiot (just a normal Reliquae model with a head swap) on the base.

Bretonnian WFB Army

Bretonnians were an army I was always fascinated by. Perhaps this was due to growing up on some unhealthy amount of viewing movies like Excalibur, Braveheart, and in later years Kingdom of Heaven (director cut which was a much better movie), and getting my dirty mits on games like Medieval Total War (and now MTW2).

Bretonnians first grabbed my attention back in 5th edition with the awesome Michael and Alan Perry sculpts, but for one reason or another I never got around to purchasing many models in the range. Which was something that I later regretted.

With the 6th edition release I went about building up a small Bretonnian army based on the Order of the Knights Templar, with a few Hospitaller allies for pure cosmetic reasons. Something was still missing though. I definitely liked the new barded horses, they were definitely the goods, but something just wasn't right... I still wanted those Perry models. My collection wasn't going to feel complete until I got them.

I'm now in the position where I have managed to get my hands on a fair amount of these models that I grew to love well over 10 years ago, through sales in the WTS Thread here on WAU as well as Fleebay.

So I'm overhauling my entire range. My Templar contingent will remain as it is, although it will get a few fix up jobs along the way. I'll still be using those models in larger games.
As for my new purchases, and a few repainted units, they will loosely be based (for pallet purposes only) on a Medieval English army set somewhere around the rein of the Three Edwards. This gives me a pallet of predominantely Red and Yellow to work with, whereas the Knights will get a pallet of Red, Yellow, Blue and Cream (Blue and Cream which Edward the Third's adopted to support his claim to the French throne) to add a little variety and differentiate them from the lesser foot sluggers.

So here goes...

Men-At-Arms 

I wanted these guys to look like the absolutely disorganised pathetic mob their stats reflect. Their equipment would be in bad condition, the weapons would be whatever was available at the time (hence a few pitchforks) and the standard had to look like no-one in their right mind would see any value in capturing it.

 Jules