Made-to-Order Classic Bretonnian Characters

With some of the last waves for The Old World Games Workshop offered some models as made-to-order. I used this service in the past, for example with the Skaven characters or the Halfling Blood Bowl Team. Production time in the store is usually stated with 180 days, but they arrived within a few days after ordering, pre-brexit sometimes even the tuesday or wednesday after ordering them on a saturday.

Are they bargains? It depends on what you take as a baseline. They are certainly not cheap, but usually less than buying them on eBay and you don't have the remaining risk of buying an overpriced recast.

What is new about these, is that they actually have clam shell blister packs and not as often in the past, just the white boxes from the Mail Order. This leads me to believe, that at some point, we might see this in store and not just as a made-to-order / mail order exclusive product.

But what did I pick up? Under the new names they are Paladin with Hammer and Shield, Paladin with Sword and Shield and a Lord with Sword & Shield on Pegasus. The Paladins were 12 EUR each and the Pegasus 32,50 EUR. Certainly not cheap, the 12 EURs for the characters on foot is above what I would usually pay for these (about 6 Euros, maybe a bit more if unpainted and a pose that I really like), as for the Pegasus Lord, this one is rather uncommon and I have seen him usually above the 50 EUR bracket on eBay, so that was a reasonable offer and complete.

Back in the day, they were "just" Grail Knight Hero on Foot and Knight of the Realm Hero on Foot, as well as  Hero on Pegasus. If you fancy browsing the old Citadel Catalogues (also known as Annuals) I highly recommend SoLegends for a proper archive.

The two heroes on foot are single piece metal miniatures and come with square bases in 25mm diameter (when they were released they initially had 20mm squares) and in case of the Paladin with Sword & Shield it even comes with a plastic sprue of shields from 1992. The former Grail Knight has shield his an coat of arm on it.

As for the Bretonnian Lord of Pegasus, I never knew he came with a lance, as I really only saw the picture of him with a sword. And as you can see, it is the same miniature since the late 90s. He got rebased for the made-to-order run, but it seems to be same model, with the same paint job and it is amazing to see how crisp is what, but just didn't come along due to the old pictures.

The Pegasus Lord was a joint model by Trish Card and Alan Perry. Alan sculpted a majority of the Bretonnian range, and Trish was known for monsters and mounts. She uploaded some greens on her facebook page (Trish Carden Miniatures and Design) along with some furtther information on the process.

The first sculpt was released in the late 90’s as a Brettonian Hero, the rider was sculpted by Alan Perry. The greens I show are of this figure.

The second flying Pegasus was a few years later, released in 2004. Dave Thomas did the bulk of the work on this kit, with me providing the base Pegasus sculpt.

You can see the greens here for the first sculpt, though one half of the body is damaged (the rear leg should still be attached) and the tail is missing. I made the Pegasus in one piece on a tinned copper wire armature and then cut it up. I used Green stuff to sculpt it…the reason it looks darker here is because it’s covered in graphite powder which was used as a mould release agent.

After I’d removed the head and tail I cut the body in half using a jeweller’s saw. Each body half was hollowed out with a dremel so that it was lighter and used less metal. I added a skin of Milliput inside each body half to strengthen it and stop it distorting in the mould. Set Green Stuff still has a slight flex in it whereas Milliput sets extremely hard and won’t bend. I made small fittings for each side of the body, the tail and the head and filled in any gaps where they met. Then it was off to be moulded!

As for size, these fit the old / classic range and the heroes are a bit taller than the regular rank & file troops. The pegasus is more slender than the regular horses but has a bigger presence due to the wings. It is not as much of a size difference as with the newer Pegasus sculpt.

While I am waiting for the squires on foot (I've been after the last two poses for ages) I'll draft out a small warband of Bretonnians for a Mordheim event in Berlin August hosted by Fritz the Brushzerker. So expect a WIP post on them soon.

There are a few more things coming as made-to-order around the corner, especially with the monsters that will be (re-)released with the Orcs & Goblins. I am excited.