RESERVE WARD Knights: First Five

It's been a long time since I advanced this army and painted some knights but here they are - at least half of the unit. The miniatures are a combination of Griping Beast and Crusader Miniatures - my two favourite manufacturers for knights of this era.

These five gentlemen represent the first half of the Reserve Ward knights for Simon de Montfort's rebel army. It is the last unit of ten knights I have to paint for this army so I suppose it represents a benchmark.

The second half of the unit is already underway. I don't normally paint half-units but as I wanted to represent them fighting from horseback as well as on foot, ten figures in heraldry is quite enough to be getting on with at one time.

I am representing these knights on foot as well as horseback becasue I want them to be capable of acting as Simon de Montfort's bodyguard. As such, I've developed a Special Rule for Hail Caesar rules and for the time being I'm calling it 'Household'. Quite simply, 'Household' enables a unit with this special rule to ignore a failed break test by resorting to fighting on foot - representing them becoming dismounted. If it's not obvious, this represents the horses taking the hit.

I'm not at all sure this unit is a labour of love exactly, but it took quite some effort to paint some of these heraldic designs by hand - twice. I'm pleased enough with the results but can't say I appreciated it so much at the time.

I have kept the foot base simple but the second one has a wounded and fallen horse writhing amongst them. As I've gone to such trouble in researching the knights present, I'm labeling them all on the bases. I need to re-base most of my army on 5mm MDF and all of the other labels are ready to go.

I haven't yet textured or flocked most of this army so that's coming up. For this crew I laced the four shades of blended static grass tussocks with some white and yellow flower tufts I ordered on line from China somewhere. I intend to be sparing with them and one tuft is cut into at least quarters so they go a long way. I do feel they can be overdone.

There's also a couple of my last remaining bought grass tufts. You might notice I gave the simple putty base texture an off-white to extremely pale grey paint job to represent the chalky hard ground of the Lewes Downs.

 

You'll also notice I've labeled the bases with the surnames of the knights on that part of the edge nearest the figure. I decided if I was going to all the effort of finding who they were, I'd need more than their heraldry to remind me who they are into the future.

As you can tell, no decals were harmed in the making of this unit - all ten are hand painted.
 

I neglected to paint any of their helmets with colour (I clean forgot) so the next five will have that represented. Also, at least two figures had near sugarloaf helms which I filed back to period specific shapes. That I did remember!

I'm finishing off with this figure (who I may make the overall unit commander and give him a pennon). I'm doing so becasue during the base texturing, he broke off the base at the horses ankles. I may have expressed my unhappiness at the time. I had to drill and pin the rear legs of this horse model but I also drilled a hole underneath the front half and fixed a clear perspex rod for extra support. Did you spot it?