bretonnians - in before the squat!

Obligatory army shot... ohh shiny

I painted up most of this Bret army over 12 months ago but I never got round to basing it up. So over the last couple of months I decided I needed to put the effort in to get it all ready for the tabletop.  In part this was spurred on by the rumours of them being removed from the game for the next edition, so figured I should get them played before they disappeared.  Just to be clear it didn't take a couple of months work to base it up, I was just doing odds and sods around painting other things.

Fireforge Knights

The main feature of this army is that the figures are pretty much all non-GW models.  The only exception being one box of knights which I use for my characters and the peasant archers.  The bulk of the knights are from Fireforge Miniatures.  They are a bargain at £20 for 12 knights and they also do a mounted yeomen equivalent which I also used.

like these, you can't have them. (oop ex-ilis)

The peg knights were actually the first models I bought for the army, they are by Ex-Ilis but unfortunately I only ever bought 6 of the models and the manufacturer then went out of business and they’re basically impossible to get these days.  So to supplement them I picked up a few of the Mantic Elohi models which aren’t quite as nice sculpts but more or less fit the theme.  The one thing with them is they have tiny heads so I replaced them with GW knight heads I had left over from the one box I’d bought.

The trebs are also Ex-Ilis as it was 2 for 7 on a discount site selling off the last of their stock.

Token GW models and some Gamezone knights

Finally the Grail Knights are from the Gamezone feudal knights range.  They are beautiful figures but an absolute pig to assemble and it’s a struggle to rank them up because they are so huge.

The other thing I was looking to achieve with this army was a quite striking colour scheme but also one which was pretty easy to paint (it’s another reason I went for the Fireforge Knights as the horses cloaks are less ornate).  The thinking on this went all the way back to assembly, so you’ll notice that virtually all the knights have full helmets so no flesh is visible.

I also have fronts angle shots!

So speed of painting in mind the whole lot got airbrushed white then yellow to give a really bright yellow base colour with minimal effort, that then gets a wash of cassendora yellow (actually an orange wash).  I then put down the basecoats on the horses & blue by brush.  The metals are my standard cheaty approach of flat silver then a drakenhoff nightshade wash.  That is about it as far as painting the models is concerned.

Peasants - dirty scum.

One thing I did try to do was make the peasants not look quite as glorious and shiny as the actual knights, presumably they don't get their clothes washed as often.  So the yellows on these guys were done with a much darker yellow base colour and the blue got a wash over the top to darken it down.


The basing on the army is a lot more effort though!  Pollyfilla goes down on the base to level out and give some texture, a few stones and some cork into that to give rocks, then once dry sand over the top of the filler.  That is all then painted Rhinox brown, then drybrushed layers of: doombull brown, mounfang brown, karak stone:mournfang mix, karak stone.  The rocks are panzer grey, tank blue grey, frostbite all shoved on in random mixes to get a transition of blue/greys.  Then GW snow mixed with PVA and Mininatur tufts to finish it off.

Obligatory overhead view which doesn't really show anything

So there it is a classic (he says himself) example of how to crank out an army with not too much effort that looks pretty decent (again so I say myself) on the tabletop.  Will it win awards, I very much doubt it!  Will it score max paint points under most systems, yup.

3 colours minimum - tick

Basecoat, shading/highlights, based & trays - tick

cohesive - tick

As ever this army would be easy to go back to and add a bunch more detail should I desire it to look even better, I'd say this is the case with virtually all my armies, they are a solid tabletop level that could easily be improved on but I seldom do.  Anyone out there claiming to be unable to turn out a warhammer army to an acceptable standard I would point to the approach/techniques I've used and say there is nothing technically difficult about them (the airbrush steps could be replaced by spray cans as it's just flat coats on everything).

My key tips:

1. Pick a simple but striking paint scheme.  These models have 5 colours on them.  Yellow, blue, metallic and brown (there are 2 browns, horse & wood). Which then have 3 washes on them - cassandora on the yellow, drakenhoff on the blue and agrax on the horses.  But it has a load of contrast in those colours that make it jump out.

2. Think about what is visually important, in this army there are no silly pouches and the likes but the detail that does exist is just painted in one fabric colour and that's it.  Nobody will see it or even notice if they're looking from more than a few inches away so why bother.

3. Consistent basing and a little more effort here covers a multitude of sins.  I admit it above, I put more colours and effort into the bases than any part of the models and it helps make the army look way better than it really is!

4. Batch paint - I did the knights in batches of 10ish, so all yellow, then all blue, then all armour over 10 models, it's not great fun but it gets you an army done.  And break it up if you're getting bored, sick of painting knights, go do some peasants on foot, or a warmachine or in my case some peg knights as they're totally different.