Acceptable in the '80s: Warhammer Armies Bretonnian Update and 'Eavy Metal selection

This is a second post in a loose series about the Bretonnian releases from early in the 1990s. Previously, we had a little look at the 'Eavy Metal background to the 'look' of the models. Today, with an extract originally published in White Dwarf 137, we go a little further and analyse some of the models themselves, as well as have a glance at the updated army list.

Before any of that, I have a quote from the dark and brooding Rick Priestley concerning the 'Chivalry' game I was postulating about in my last post. He shed a little light on the project over on the Oldhammer Facebook Group. 

Rick Priestley: The Chivalry game was actually written up and developed by Nigel Stillman - based on an idea from Bryan Ansell - and utilising a range of models developed by the Perrys. So, yes Alan and Michael were involved - and did contribute to the game - but it was Nigel who worked up the game and Bryan who had the 'vision' for it. In fact it was many games that interlocked - with an overarching dynasty building game behind it - as I remember. There was a jousting system I think - and a man to man combat game that was based on cards - which I think I had a hand in. I remember playing it with the Perrys on the train down to Salute! Just one of the very many things that were worked on and abandoned back in the day.

Taken from a Facebook conversation about the game 'Chivalry'. March. 2015

The first 'new' figures that we see are the missile troops that head this page. Practically monopose, with simple variations, these models work well in big units - though their simplicity is a sign of things to come. The twenty man units look great. 

The second page contains, as you will have seen, the lovely new Bretonnian knights on foot: sword and shield men and those armed with double handed axes. Again, these are a variety of similar sculpts rather than a range of individual models - but the result really does look like a historical army. It sees that many gamers of the time were split into two distinct camps: those which found the models too historical for their tastes and those who were happy to collect them alongside the more fantastical stuff the early 1990s gave us. Which were you at the time, eh?

Most worthy of note is that cannon (I have always wanted one of them!) and if you can recall clearly, you will remember that there were a number of other new gunpowder weapons as part of this range. They are now, sadly, long gone and can fetch some pretty prices online. I have included the catalogue pages for the missing stuff at the end of this article. The levy is of course as old as the hills, being (mostly) the old Militia/Mercenary range that is still pretty much available from Wargames Foundry.

Finally, the updated page for Warhammer Armies reflecting how the Bretonnians have changed with the new miniature release. A useful document for anyone considering a later Bretonnian army and needs something 'official' to help tie up all the loose ends. Oh, and I found some rather poor quality scans of the 1991 catalogue to show off the rest of the brilliant artillery range. 

Enjoy the memories!

Acceptable in the '80s: Bretonnian Knights from White Dwarf 136.

The Perry's Bretonnian range of the early 1990s were the last great release connected to Warhammer Third Edition. If you were anything like me, you immediately feel in love with the sculpts and with the brilliant artwork that appeared in the magazine. I can recall desperately wanting the archer models that were shown for sale in the back of White Dwarf, complete with one chap sticking up two fingers in the historically accurate salute to all Frenchman. The article that follows was my imagination's spur. 

Thankfully, a lack of funds meant that I never did lay my hands on those lovely models. Perhaps that was for the best, eh? In order to save the world the need to witness the no doubt hideous attempts I would have made of all those surcoats. 

Now I have mentioned before the Medieval Battle Game (that may have been called Chivalry) that was bandied around the Design Studio before. As far as I can tell, it was written by the Perrys and wasn't set in the Warhammer World at all, but in fourteenth century Europe. Nothing else is known about it at this time, beyond that the memorable card game 'Chivalry' served part of the combat mechanic. Look here if you want to read more about this unusual game. 

Now, I am am going to go out on a limb now and make a guess. The painting that starts this article was possibly to be the cover of this game. Doesn't it just look perfect? And with all that space above the battling knights, there would be ample space indeed for any titles. I am sure you will agree that its a possibility. The image, by the way, comes from the back of White Dwarf 136.

So what does the article contain that would be of interest to the Oldhammerer? Well, in terms of fluff - not a lot. Its clearly not an attempt to expand on the background in any real way but focuses on the artistic approach the Studio took towards designing colour schemes for the Bretonnians. Having a read of the page above will give you a good idea of what was influencing the designers, medieval France, and gives some quite interesting detail about how heraldry was used, and how GW applied this historical theme to its own brand of models.

What I didn't realise is how precise the colours had to be, and what the stylistic devices used as part of the heraldry signified. I have ten painted Bretonnian knights on foot, taken from the Foundry ex-Citadel range, The Barons War, and I had left their paint schemes without symbols for this very reason. Now that I have a clearer idea of what to use, I shall (one day, ha!) be returning to the models to tart them up a bit. Perhaps you are in a similar situation with some of your foot or horse troops too?

The second page gives further detail about the heraldric devices and how best to use them, complete with a simple, if wordy, painting guide. The information about lineage was very interesting, to me at least, and had me imagining the narrative possibilities to a Bretonnian army and how you could create a whole series of aristocratic families with shared iconography. Sounds perfect for a Warhammer version of Agincourt of something! 

This page is probably the most useful. The suggested designs to paint on your lovely Bretonnian knights. One thing that is perhaps worth mentioning, is the historical (and there for fantastical) potential of painting armour bright colours, especially great helms. If you look in the centre of this page you can see a striking design of a purple and white knight complete with scarlet helm. What a fantastic idea! And certainly one I shall be stealing at some time in the future. 

The article ends with some painted examples from the 'Eavy metal team (or perhaps the Perrys?) in which you can get a good look at the schemes on a model. Just as inspiring now as they were all those years ago, don't you think?

Orlygg

Chivalry

I my last post I made reference to another one of those 'lost' GW games that never quite made it out of the Studio and into gamer's lofts. That game was, of course, Chivalry. A good read of the first page of the article will inform any enthusiast that Chivalry was a game involving battling knights set not in the Warhammer World, but the Fourteenth century and was being developed by Alan & Mike Perry, Dave Andrews and Nigel Stillman. 

Now that is quite a design team, is it not?

Sadly, all we got to see of this game is what I present to you here in this post. A card based system for fighting one on one engagements between two knights. Though with a little conjecture, we could easily suppose that the 'Full Tilt' game published in White Dwarf 215 some seven years later may well have its origins in the Chivalry project.

So what do we have here? In truth, its a fairly simple card game that should resolve a combat quite quickly and if played between to players who are familiar with the system, fairly frantic. Thanks to the enduring images of the knights on the cards themselves, many of which display the zany humour of GW at that time, I could imagine it easy to imagine your models leaping, and slashing and blocking away with gusto. The distract cards are particularly amusing, to me anyway, and remain something I have fond memories of, as are the cleave cards, complete with bloodthirsty depictions of limbs being removed. 

By favourite card has always been the boot card. Classy!

If you don't want to read the article presented in scans I shall give you the quick gist of how the card game works. Players roll a die with the highest scorer being deemed the attacker and the lower, the defender. Each player then selects six cards (attack or defence) from the decks. The attacking player can select one of his cards to represent his first strike, or risk picking the top card on the remaining deck. Once this card has been played its laid down on the table and the defending player checks his cards to find out if he can defend such a strike. If not, the number indicated on the attack card informs the player how many cards he must lose.

Play continues until one player lacks any cards at all. 

This being GW, there are several other 'special rules' to consider that further vary the game and add a little more depth. These rules are linked to the rarer cards in the deck. 

This being White Dwarf, there are suggestions about how the system could be adapted for use in Warhammer. They suggest that the cards are used to help resolve personal challenges on the battlefield and go as far giving you a few pointers how to tweak the system to accommodate it. 

Personally, it looks like a bit of fun and a desire to use it may well encourage players to issue personal challenges just to try out the system. I cannot actually ever remember playing it though, which is a shame, as I played practically everything else GW produced during this era but it is certainly something I hope to try out in the future. 

 

So then? Anyone else remember this card game from way back in 1990? Did any of you readers actually play it? As always, please share your opinions in the comments section below!

Orlygg

Bretonnia, Again!

Hello all! Problems abound once again and explain the fluctuating nature of posts here this month. But at least I can snatch a few moments to share these great old dioramas by the Perry's. Play spot the Bretonnian figure in these 'really rather historical' Citadel set-ups and marvel over the proper old school scenery too. 

The two scenes here are all rather 'too realistic' to be considered Warhammer don't you think? The tone of the the scenery is different in style to much of the stuff scene in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. For years I pondered this strange observation. But in recent times, I have uncovered threads that lead towards a 'yet another' unpublished GW game that would have put the Bretonnian range centre stage. For its seems, for a while anyway, that a knight vs knight wargame was being developed in the famous Design Studio. Sadly, shots like these, the outstanding Bretonnian range and few other sources are all that remain of this project. 

Bretonnia!

After our recent discussions about the different types of troll that can be found in the Third Edition Warhammer World, I thought it apt to have a quick glance at another range that we haven't really given much love to here at Realm of Chaos 80s. During some recent research, I found these lovely two pages from the 'Eavy Metal section in White Dwarf 129 detailing the new (in 1990) Bretonnian range designed by the prolific Perry Twins - who also did some of the trolls we looked at last time!

This little selection serves a a prelude to what would be released some eight months later, with the full blown range of Bretonnians. I can well remember being absolutely fascinated by this group of miniatures at the time, partly due to the historical nature of the miniatures, but also because of the wonderfully bright and patterned colour schemes they came with. 

Something else worth pointing out is that each of the miniatures is named, though the references are far more historical and less pun-tastic that back in the 1980s phase. 

The article also moves on the showcase the mounted knights and the all new (then) plastic horses to replace the rather chunky plastic originals. Again, they are given quasi-historical names, including the curious 'The Green Knight' who seems completely lacking in that particular colour. Unless the green is suggesting that he not yet tasted battle!?

A truly great range this. I look forwards to exploring it a little more with you in the future. 

Acceptable in the '80s: Marauder Dwarf War Machines, Marauder Wood Elves and Bretonnian Knights

Last time we spoke about the history of Warhammer Fantasy Battle Third Edition we took a little sidestep to have a look at the way Heroquest was launched. Over the coming months, there were several articles published for the game and more complex scenarios were provided for Advanced Heroquest. The astonishing success of the game helped encourage the company's future owners to concentrate on the younger market.

'Our Warhammer' still had a number of years to exist though, before 3rd edition made way for the radical change that was 4th, though it is worth remembering that The Lost and the Damned remained as a major supplement still in development. As I have said before, true Warhammer III articles were very much in decline though the later part of '89 and into the 1990s. Even the miniature releases slowed. However, Marauder Miniatures began to produce more and more Warhammer Third Edition army sets and started publishing them as army deals. I am sure that many readers of this blog who purchased White Dwarf during this period will remember the full colour adverts for these.

By issue 115, Marauder had been going strong for quite some time (around two years) and subsequently had a lot of models to release. I know, from Andy Craig, that the models that Marauder produced were painted by the 'Eavy Metal team as a favour to Aly and Trish Morrison. However, not all the models that Marauder produced were photographed in these adverts. The stalwart of 1980s advertising, the line drawn image, was used to illustrate some ranges, while photographs were used for others.

The releases from 115 concerned Dwarf War Machines and Wood Elves. So without any more waffle, let's have a look at them.  

At the time I loved the Marauder dwarf range. In later years, I began to loathe the models as they represented, to me anyway, the awful 'big hands oversized weapons' era of Citadel Miniatures. A lot of the blame was put on the step of Marauder, but after years of study and discussions with interested and involved parties I have come to really appreciate this range once more. The late-Medieval look was a great choice for the tone of the models and moved away from the Viking style stunties we had seen in the past. The faces were packed with character, vital for a dwarf in my opinion, and some of the better models tell their own little tales in 28mm. This page reveals to the world some of the siege engines that the dwarfs could field, namely the Organ, Siege and Swivel Guns, listed here with nostalgic prices when compared to today's collectors market. 

These models are well worth owning of you are a fan of Citadel or Marauder or indeed both. Especially if you have the spearmen as well. One day I have promised myself I'd work on a dwarf army of considerable size, and these models will be some of the first I will be chasing. 

The Wood Elves did not get so lucky. They were lumbered with this month's line drawn adverts. I actually own a few of the Marauder wood elves but I cannot recognise mine among these, so perhaps there were other releases. Not much can really be drawn from the images as its hard to appraise miniatures through drawings alone. I pick up a faint 'native American' vibe going on here, don't you? Something about some of the hairstyles and clothing reminds me of the really bad westerns that used to play on Sunday afternoons during the late '80s. 

The final miniature release relating to Warhammer Third Edition in WD 115 are these wonderful Bretonnian knights, designed to make use of the new Citadel plastic horse. These models are really much larger than many miniatures Citadel released during 1988 and are in some cases twice the size of the old 'Baron's War' range that served as the Sons of Breton for so many years. I think this size increase may have more to do with the limits of plastic casting technology at the time rather than any conscious effort to make things larger, but that is just my opinion. 

Having a glance over the models, you can see that the Perry's have produced another solid set of models here. What else would you expect? They have always produced solid sets of models. This are far more 'historical' looking that what would come later in 4th edition and I have always wondered if the historical market was in mind when these were originally produced. I have a number of these models kicking about and they are lovely to paint. I expect that a great number of these models still see service in historical armies to this day, explaining why some of them reach very high prices on eBay. 

What are your thoughts on the models discussed today?

Orlygg

Bretonnian Foot Knights

With the paint station metaphorically red hot at the moment I was able to finish off a unit of Bretonnian foot knights yesterday. In truth, they are part of a far larger unit, as I have a second rank of five to complete and a further eight models in the range to purchase. Though you will recognise these as Citadel Feudals, they are in fact modern Foundry castings picked up at Salute in April. For models nearly thirty years old, the quality of the sculpting and casting really stands up well today, though they are obviously much smaller than modern human sized troops produced by Citadel. Not that this actually matters, as people's heights vary in reality so why not in miniature form, and when the models are painted up and on a battlefield you really cannot notice anyway!

I had a go at a quick conversion to provide a standard bearer. Just a piece of brass rod replacing the old mace weapon. I need something to place on the top of the banner pole but have yet to decide. I though a severed head would do, but these knights look too prim and proper to be carrying around trophies of that nature - so any ideas would be appreciated! The chap in the centre with the droopy moustache is the unit commander, and he is a lovely, lovely model. I had fun exploring the uses of the Old School Citadel ink set with these miniatures, mixing in different amounts of inks with the base colours to create bright, vibrant shades that, to me anyway, seem appropriate to flamboyant knights. The banner was a quick, thirty minute experiment with flags and seemed to work quite well. I had no real plan with what I wanted to achieve, apart from I wanted results quickly. I am quite pleased with the end result, as the flag has shades of stained glass windows about it. 

The centre model this time will be the Unit Champion. A bloke with a large axe is a good depiction of such a character don't you think? As you can see, there are some lovely variations to the figures and I didn't feel the tug of dull monotony as I painted these, as I did with the Nightmare Legion. My particular favourite from the range is on the right of the photograph here. A moody axeman indeed!

The final four models painted so far are another good example of the range of poses available in this series. When it came to colour scheme, I knew it would be easier to paint the entire unit in the same colours, and I was indeed tempted to do this, but I wanted to play around with colour so opted to make each knight different. This was great fun but was time consuming. Background wise, I want these knights to represent a 'free-company' of knights with no actual lord, so they use their own personal heraldry. This way, its simple to ally theme with any good forces narrative wise. They will also then fit in to my Old School Bretonnian army as a nice big unit among the Lords other retainers. 

A Bretonnian army indeed! I remember when I started out this blog in February 2012. I had this idea of painting an army for each of the forces arrayed in Warhammer Armies. This was before the whole Oldhammer Community thing 'happened'. There were about four or five of us really, painting and collecting these old miniatures, and one thing that was fairly obvious back then, was how difficult the human forces of the Empire, Norse, Nipponese and Bretonnia would be to build. The models on eBay were of limited supply and expensive. Now, all four of these armies can be 'bought' off the shelf from Bryan Ansell's Foundry, in the original Citadel form too! 

A couple of years ago this would have been impossible! If you are interested in the Bretonnian (or Baron's Wars) range, its can be found here and bought for £80 odd quid. Which is very, very cheap for an old school Oldhammer army I can tell you. 

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/our-ranges/medieval/barons-wars/early-medieval-knight-collection-bcmed001/

While you are visiting the Foundry, why not have a snoop around the other ranges as there are some fantastic little models that you can find. Just look at these brilliant mushrooms! Wouldn't they be perfect for Nurgle or Goblinoid forces?

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/our-ranges/general-purpose-animals-carts-and-baggage/wildlife-collection-bcgpr003/miscellaneous-manic-mushrooms-gpr041/

Orlygg