Knightly Order of the Blazing Sun (Part 5)

I have finally finished the four man unit of Inner Circle Knightss for my Order of the Blazing Suns list*. 

After getting the highlights done and a bunch of touch-ups, I painted up all of their feathered helms. Some have  metallic helms and some ha e actual feathers. The idea was that the feathers, as well as the subtle bands g differences on their lances, would set them apart individually. 

Their shields were all done by hand. Although the sun shape isn't as rounded as I would have preferred, I still think the finished result looks cool. 

After some grass tufts and leaves, these noble heroes were now done. 

But I do have ideas for adding a standard bearer to the unit. So I might be revisiting these guys at some point. It's a good start, and I think the whole project based around ancient Battlemasters miniatures gives the the whole thing a nice nostalgic vibe. 

* I suppose it's time to reveal this list that I am building towards. Obviously I can change this as the needs for a particular game demands, but foe now this is a good working template. And I am about halfway done with it! 

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Knights of the Blazing Sun [1246 pts]

Warhammer: The Old World, Empire of Man, Order of the Blazing Sun, Open War

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++ Characters [297 pts] ++

Chapter Master [150 pts]  (coming soon!)

- Hand weapon

- Lance

- Full plate armour

- Shield

- Order of the Blazing Sun

- General

- Barded Warhorse

- Enchanted Shield

- Giant Blade

Master Mage [147 pts] (I have yet to assemble him)

- Hand weapon

- Wizard [Level 2 Wizard]

- Empire Warhorse

- Blade of Silvered Steel

- Arcane Familiar

- Battle Magic

++ Core Units [555 pts] ++

4 Inner Circle Knights of the Blazing Sun [143 pts]   (The guys featured in this post)

- Hand weapons

- Lances

- Shields

- Full plate armour

- Barding

- Stubborn

- Inner Circle Preceptor (champion)

5 Empire Knights of the Blazing Sun [161 pts] 

- Hand weapons

- Lances

- Shields

- Heavy armour

- Barding

- Stubborn

- Preceptor (champion) [Ring of Taal + Burning Blade]

5 Empire Knights of the Blazing Sun [156 pts] 

- Hand weapons

- Lances

- Shields

- Heavy armour

- Barding

- Drilled

- Preceptor (champion) [Twice-Blessed Armour]

10 Empire Archer (i.e. Huntsmen)s [95 pts] Unfinished but 'battle ready'.

- Hand weapons

- Warbows

- Fire & Flee

- Scouts

- Marksman (champion)

++ Special Units [290 pts] ++

20 State Troops [155 pts]  (assembled and primed)

- Hand weapons

- Halberds

- Light armour

- Shields

- Sergeant (champion)

- Standard bearer

- Musician

Great Cannon [135 pts]  (needs work!)

- Great cannon

- Hand weapons

- Veteran

++ Rare Units [104 pts] ++

6 Pistoliers [104 pts] (unassembled)

- Hand weapons

- Brace of pistols

- Heavy armour

- Veteran (champion) [Brace of pistols]

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Created with "Old World Builder"

[https://old-world-builder.com]

So as you can see, I got quite a bit of work to do.  I am not kidding, it will be really satisfying getting this army finished. Since the rest of this force technically aren't Knights, they will get  their own post/threads. 

So, until then,..! 

Knightly Order of the Blazing Sun (Part 4)

 And now for the 3rd unit of this Knightly Order: The Inner Circle Knights.  These guys are all the same but I am going to slightly alter some aspects of each one's paint scheme in an effort to inject a bit of individuality to each knight while also maintaining their unit conformity.  

I knew early on that I wanted to add stripes to this unit's lances. I knew I could simply do it by hand, but I wanted to experiment with a short cut. Enter 'art tape'. In the past I have mostly used this for making grids on a dry erase board for work, but I know some people that  have used it to masking their art. Typically you can find this product in art and office supply stores. 

It was not my original plan, but after I accidentally painted all of the Knights shields yellow, I decided to divide them with a black and yellow side. So my first use of this art tape was on these shields. And it worked out well. The only issue was user-error on my part by not getting the dividing line ust right, but I was able to fix this without much effort.

Next, the lances. This was a bit trickier as the tape seemed to want to fight me with regards to going onto the model. I found that the longer the piece, the better i was at getting it to stick. being conservative about how big a piece i needed was not a good idea. 

In fact i have once piece slide up as I was painting the black on. i caught in time so the damage was minimal. 

After touch-ups, I think this might work out 

I need to get the other three miniatures painted up this way, and work out a few other details and these guys will be done. 

Knightly Order of the Blazing Sun (Part 3)

 

Unit two ready for action.

I have set my sights on getting more units for this army completed. In particular the second group of Knights. I took a different approach with these models at the priming stage. Instead of painting the whole model white, I instead only painted the riders white and primed the steeds black.  I painted the areas I wanted to paint with Contrast Paints using Corax White. 

Primed black with areas picked out Contrast Paints.

Everything else pretty much follows the same steps that I used on the first unit which I go into detail about in Part 1 and Part 2. The exception being that the unit champion for this unit has yellow wing feathers and all of their lances are yellow instead of black.

A regal champ.

I gave these models a bit more grass tufts on their bases than the first unit and I also added some fallen leaves as well. 

Sally forth! 

On to the next unit! 

Jacobus Vyne in the Old World

 

Warhammer Quest: Dark Water has some interesting models for sure. But as soon as I saw him I knew I had to get Jacobus Vyne and his animated leaf familiar. 

He is a way taller than his older counterparts, but that's cool. It reminds me how Gandalf the Grey towered over everyone else. The more realistic proportions give him a small head than the older miniatures which, to me, helps to imagine that he is a tall old guy. 

I used Contrast Paints almost exclusively on this miniature. Militarum Green, Creed Camo and Aeldari Emerald are the three dominant colors here. 

Anyway, the brevity of this post is a result of me not taking WIP pics or notes as I worked on this. I have to admit, I had a lot of fun jamming away on this guy. I even went just on the flocking stage giving him a variety of tufts, leaves and even a cat tail! 

Hopefully this guy will hit the table in the near future as I get my old Reiklanders rebased and battle-ready! 

Knightly Order of the Blazing Sun (Part 2)

 Tally-Ho!

The Knight of the Blazing Sun charge forth! As I stated at the end of Part 1, I was unsure if I could motivate myself to finish up the unit. Well, having two weeks off for medical reasons, I was able to find that motivation. 

Following the steps laid out in Part 1, the process was pretty simple. In fact I painted the unit's remaining four miniatures, including the leader, in a single afternoon. 

All-in-all, I am quite pleased with them, despite how simple they are. They'll look good on the tabletop, even though two of them have bent lances (hey, it happens! No judgment here).   Ending them back has been futile so  decided to just leave them alone.

Well that's unit one done, but I have at least two more units to go! Keep a look out for Part 3. 

Knightly Order of the Blazing Sun (Part 1)

 Recently I got a bunch of Battlemasters Empire Knights and Halberdiers for a pretty good price. I have the Battlemasters game but there is no way I was going to cannibalize it.  I really hadn't put any thought into doing an Empire of Man Knightly Order Army of Infamy but when I saw this offering on eBay I was totally inspired. Sure, the Battlemasters miniatures are now over 30 years old and showing their age, but painted well and massed up for battle, I think they'll work just fine. 

Assessment of the loot.

To test this out, I needed to model up the first squad. So I picked the guys on yellow horses and affixed them to the newer sized bases. And so far, they look fine. I had to clip off the old slotta bar from the horse hooves and super glue them straight on. It was more of a process than I want to describe but the in the end I think this should work out. 

Based.

After flocking the bases with some grit, I took them out and sprayed them with primer. 

Primed

I picked out a random guy to try out first.

Sir Rando the Chosen.

Then I painted the barding on the horse black. Abaddon Black specifically. The rider was painted using Black Templar Contrast Paint. I then dry brushed Auric Armour over this which produced a very satisfying result.. The horse was painted using Gore Grunter Fur Contrast Paint. 

Basecoated plus.

But this gold was a bit too bright compared to the examples I have seen from GW. So I I gave the armor a wash of Carroburg Crimson.

Auric Armour layer

A subtle layer of Auric Armour was applied as a highlight. I am very pleased with this look so far, and with how easy it is to do.

 Carroburg Crimson layer

The feather topper on his helm was painted using Bad Moon Contrast Paint which was glazed with Bloodletter a d finished off with a modest drybrushing of Averland Sunset. 

Emblem base paint.

I freehand painted the sun symbols on the shield and barding using Corax White. 

Badmoon yellow.

I then carefully went over these symbols using Bad Moon Contrast Paint. 

Touch-up time.

I did  touch-ups using Abaddon Black. I got to confess, this was way harder than I assumed it would be. The current Empire Knights kit comes with decals for the Blazing Sun but for what it goes for on the secondary market it.. .forget it. 

Finished model.

Sans flocking, this model is done. And I am fairly pleased with it. Now to motivate myself to do the rest of them! 

Huntsmen (Part 2)

 Maybe, once upon a time, these guys had names, but that info is now lost to me; assuming it ever existed. Since Part 1 was posted I kind of went a bit nuts with these guys. I broke out all the "earthy" toned Contrast Paints that I had and just went nuts. Note that these guys are still unfinished, but I think I have finished the Contrast Paint stage and think they look good enough to be considered 'battle ready'. 

One of the colors I am most excited about is called Ratling Grime. I used it on some of the coats that a few of these guys are wearing and I think it looks perfect. Grime was a great name for this color as it definitely evokes that feeling. 

There are two colors of green Contrast Paint that I predominantly used on these guys. Creed Camo and Militarum Green. 

Every band of merry men needs a Will Scarlett type of guy right? For the sake of being different, I gave this guy red pants. And a bright green bandana. 

A few of these guys have blue pants to sort of mix up the color pallette a bit. They come off looking like blue jeans, and I think that's just fine with me. 

A few if these guys have shirts pai Ted using Guilliman Fleshwash. The idea isn't to make them appear to be wearing g human skin suits (icky!), but to serve as a base to build up to a dirty white. 

The flesh on these guys are still at the state that I left them in almost 20 years. Some have just a Bestial Brown basecoat and a few others have an additional layer of Dwarf Flesh.  I will figure out what to do about that in the next post. 

The bows were all painted using Wyldwood Contrast Paint. Unlike the High Elf Archers I have been working, these bows are darker. Maybe they are stained, oiled or just worn compared to the elf bows which I like to image are freshly hewn. The ares are brighter which I want to think have just been fetched. 

And this is a good place to leave them off for now. I intend to get these up to higher level in Part 3. 

Huntsmen (Part 1)

 Here's a project that I started (and saddly abandoned) just over 18 years ago*. 

Nearly 20 years ago, over on Warhammer-Empire I had asked the users there to show us their Huntsman.  The idea was that I wanted to figure out a paint scheme and I just wasn't getting there on my own.  This was because the paint scheme shown in the 6th edition Warhammer Armies: The Empire was a bit small to really get a good vibe from the one picture. A picture of only three models by the way. 

The response from the Warhammer-Empire users was impressive to say the least, as many folks shared pics of their models, and they were all unique. If you follow the hyperlink above you'll see what I mean, but you'll have to look past the annoying Photobucket** watermarks. Inspired, I did build my guys. I used the Militia kit mixed with bits from Bretonian Peasent and Wood Elf sprues. I still like what I did with them. I even bought some thread to use as strings for their bows.  But....  I never finished it. The only thing I can think of is that I was pulled back to 40k in a big way around that time and just never got back around to revisiting the Empire range, let alone these particular models.  

This guy is the leader of the group. Not pictured here is his little dog and his Middenheim cloak. Expanding the bases on these guys is going to really benefit this fellow. All of them really, as I will have more room to add brush and grass tufts. 

Reinvigorated, I just dove right in and applied the base extenders to get them expanded out to the required 28mm base size. Then I added grit to help integrate the existing basing materials to the new area.

Then I  painted the bases using my trusty old Territorial Beige craft paint. I love that stuff, it does the trick very well. 

Next, I busted out the Contrast Paint, but for the sake of brevity we shall save the results of that for Part 2. 

Check back soon!

*Writing that hurt my soul.

**I am trying really hard not to rant about that ridiculous company.