A New Bretonnia

With the End Times approaching the Warhammer world, there is much debate amongst the fantasy gaming community about when or even IF Bretonnia will get a new army book.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Bretonnian Army book is now over a decade old and while is still usable is generally starting to show its age. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the inevitable power creep that Warhammer books inevitably suffer from in an effort to sell models by Games Workshop (a practice that I cannot overly fault them for although it is sometimes rather painful to watch) and more than ever it feels like we have been forgotten by the development team.

This situation is further aggravated by the seemingly never ending avalanche of Space Marine books that are constantly re-released along with a new box set and a new chapter. While Space Marines are clearly Games Workshop’s cash cow, along with others I feel that they are so busy milking this beast that they have forgotten to feed the rest of the herd. When this cow finally stops giving milk, and make no mistake about it one day it will, they will leave their shed and find the rest of the heard has long since left to pastures new or else starved to death waiting for attention – then ladies and gentlemen we will have a very real situation on our hands.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: Bretonnia!

There are a variety of rumours flying around the internet, many little more than wish listing, about the new Bretonnia book being released at the end of 2014 (unlikely as Christmas is normally reserved for those god-awful Lord of the Rings Games that people buy, play once then try to sell for double on eBay for the next twelve months) or the start of 2015 (again, seeming unlikely as Space Marines will have gone more than two months without a release by that point and they will need to have some attention).

But WHY? Why is an essentially fully functional army, that needs only minor modifications here and there and maybe a single new units being left to collect dust when it could so easily be released and make Games Workshop a fair old amount of money.

And it comes down to one simple factor in my opinion: they are struggling to Warhammer it up!

What do I mean by that?

Well, look at any Warhammer Army and you will notice that each one has something fundamentally unique to the Warhammer world, differentiating it from the regular fantasy Orcs, Vampires and so forth. As these are unique to the Warhammer World, Games Workshop can therefore copyright it and by doing so ensure that other companies cant muscle in on their turf and steal profits/customers.

A skeleton, zombie or Orc is too generic to copyright: they exist in worlds from Tolkien to D&D to Warcraft, where as a Terrorgheist or Mangler Squig are very much Games Workshop intellectual property.

Perhaps what illustrates this best is the relatively recent release of the Empire Book. Perhaps out of the blue came the Demigryph Knights and the Luminark Kit, even though most Empire players felt that at times they didn’t really suit the army very well. This is down to, once more, intellectual copyright: a Halberdier or Handgunner is so generic that a dozen other companies out there make those models and some would even argue better than Games Workshop. This new, unique copyrighted material means that players have no choice but to buy Games Workshop models.

So, once more back to Bretonnia.

If we are being totally honest there isn’t a whole lot of Bretonnia that isn’t a bastardisation of British Arthurian legend! Games Workshop are already playing a little loose and fast with copyright law in aspects such as the Green Knight, Questing and Grail Knights etc and while I would not advise it I would argue that there would be a case to be made that GW would struggle to prove that ownership!

Now, without a way to “Warhammer” it up, Games Workshop are in the difficult (I use that word with great hesitation) as to what to do in regards to our beloved Bretonnia. Most players are older players who own their army and to produce a new book with no real new units would not bring in much money from the older player base and the newer players may be lured away with models produced by companies such as the Perry Twins or Fireforge models.

Yet I get the feeling that they have already played their trump cards with Empire in regards to the monstrous cavalry and other books with certain unique units. Bretonnia are either going to have to do with essentially recycled units from other books (replace the Luminark with a Shrine to the Lady, Demigyrph Knights with some type of generalised Monstrous Bret Cav) and a slight readjustment to the rules.

I hope that I am wrong, that GW do have a plan up their sleeves in regards to the Knightly realm of Chivalry but I do fear that any effort or ideas that could have been dedicated towards us has instead been siphoned off into other armies to cash in quickly and allow the dev teams more time to keep milking that great cow more commonly known as Space Marines!

Recent works

I have been worryingly absent from the painting and gaming table as of late due to a number of reasons completely out of my control.

However, just to very, very quickly touch base I have at least started working upon my Longbowmen!

I have gone for a rather dirty, on campaign look for these men: they are not shining examples of Knightly Virtues but instead soldiers who have been marching and foraging for the last few months and whose uniforms and equipment is starting to show!

Long absence, a green Knight fiasco and new horizons…

A long time has passed since I last posted on this rather small blog which was intended to be a regular update on my Bretonnian army progression. This reason for this was a rather painful back injury that required morphine and some exams I had to sit taking up the vast majority of my time, thus relegating my brave Knights and rather dirty peasants to their respective boxes until such a time came that I could do them the justice they require!

Now that time has come and for the last month or so I have been active on the forums that I lurk and with my brush flailing away with red and blue and now I have got the time to update my blog I thought that the time was ripe!

Firstly my Super-Lance/Pain Train is completed: 14 Knights of the Realm a Sorceress and a Paladin make for a rather hard hitting force that in theory can break almost any unit they come across provided they charge! Sporting the blue and red of Carcassonne, they are a rather cool sight as they charge across the battlefield meeting out death on those foolish enough to challenge our might!

However this is where my Green Knight Paladin has encountered a few issues. The idea was for him to sport blue, white and red on his barding and a red and white on his torso while the crests on his head and his horse were going to be painted a bright red, orange and yellow to give the impression of flowing flame.

Unfortunately I figured out that orange isn’t as easy to dry brush with as the darker or more solid colours I normally use and so rather than have a bright red highlighted with orange I instead have a murkey-reddish-brown-orange colour (which in itself isn’t nasty just not very bright) with some very dubious yellow highlights!

I am hoping that once I get the rest of the model painted it will look ok but if not I’m afraid this poor chap is going to have a swim in the paint stripper for the 3^rd time in his life (got to love metal models!).

That brings me nicely onto the prospect of a new Bretonnian book! Rumours are abound of when we will receive it but there does seem to be good odds for this summer! Even more debate rages on what we will get in this new book!

The biggest split between the community so far seems to be if we need foot Knights or not: many feel we need them to make certain games (Watchtower) possible while others think that our Grail Pilgrims should just get a boost to make them a little bit more competitive and retain the heavy cavalry list that we currently have.

I am on the fence! I certainly don’t want to see our list become The Empire in different clothes nor turn away from our list being a Cavalry one but I can see the logic in popping some Foot Knights in there both for gaming purposes and purely to sell new models.

Other arguments involve war machines and the possible inclusion of some Crossbowmen? Who knows, Games Workshop in their infinite wisdom…..yeah, in their wisdom will undoubtedly get it perfect or utterly wrong, there seems little ground for in-between these days!

And while I haven’t got around to much painting, I have managed to paint my Empathy Paladin who is looking heroic and ready to club some vile Orcs or Vampires to a pulp and also convert a model to represent him on a horse, who may be my General! Not sure yet, I need someone suitably heroic and that seems a rather illusive thing to achieve!

Will continue to update as and when things happen but for now, Ta-ta!

Kind Regards

Viscount “Wolf” Blackwood