Bretonnian Infantry Command, painted as Standard Bearer of Dralas

I got this nice little miniature on eBay. Could not recognize the code, and didn't record the year before basing it. I just know it's Bretonnian and it comes from a command group. It could easily be Perry-sculpted, as far as I know.

I bought him together with a bunch of other Bretonnian infantrymen, with the idea of creating a group of guards to use in WFRP games. I toyed with the project of painting them all with the colours of Dralas, the homebrew city in the Border Princes where most of my scenarios start. After a long time, only this guy has been painted, and the other will most likely follow in another livery, that of Artesia, the bordering princedoms that usually poses as the villain of the campaign.

Dralas is a port city and its colours are white and blue, like the sea and the foam over the waves. The city sits at the mouth of the river Zaffirio, so sapphire is the stone associated with the city heraldry. The other association is the Sea Serpent: according to legend, Dralas was originally founded by Elves and abandoned in the distant past, then a Sea Serpent set its abode under the murky waters of the ruined elven harbour, until the hero Dalphis slew the reptile and reclaimed the ruins, becoming the founder of the city.

Dalphis lived some 15 centuries ago and since then Dralas has seen many events: the city was a capital and then a subject, it had kings, princes and councils of citizens. Until recently it was ruled by a prince, until he was forced by an elven adventurer and pirate to surrender power and the hand of his sister. Nowadays it is the Regent Gelmir Lindarian who controls the government. This, however, does hardly mean that he holds power: Dralas is a famously seedy port where a lot of deals are made under locked doors, and the real power rarely resides where it appears to be.

The Regent directly controls the Black Guard, a group 30 of mercenaries who helped him conquer the city, commanded by general Achille. The Palace Guard's loyalty is divided between the Regent and the Prince: they are about 30 well trained warriors. The City Guard (90 members) follows the orders of the Regent as long as it gets paid regularly. The City Militia, being the largest force in town (450 members), obeys its Captains, who in turn are nominated among nobles, and so they follow their own interests and are generally raised only in case of foreign invasions.

This guy probably belongs to the City Guard and is therefore the most flexible. He could be used to police the streets, guard locations or escort important people in town. He wears a padded leather jacket and a helm, and is armed with a sword (so he is probably an official) and carries a standard with the city device.

Fantasy Visuals: John Blanche - Part II (the '90s)

Continues from Part I.

In 1991 Bryan Ansell sold his shares in Games Workshop and left the company, and Tom Kirby took over the top management. More interested in the business side than in art and games, Kirby delegated the supervision of these activities to other managers. John Blanche was already Art Director but he was mostly involved in the Warhammer 40K setting, launched in 1987 and quickly gathering fans; but for Warhammer Fantasy, at that time the core business of the company, work had been directed by Ansell with the assistance of many designers and artists. With Ansell missing, Blanche was able to give a stronger personal touch to Fantasy art.

Unfortunately, in the following years many of the earlier artists that had helped define Warhammer left the company: first Paul Bonner and Adrian Smith started to work on other projects, including comics magazine Toxic! managed by Pat Mills; Russ Nicholson and Ian Miller didn't like the way things were managed and soon left as well, and Tony Ackland also reduced his contributions. eventually John Blanche, Dave Gallagher and Wayne England were the only artists left from the '80s team, and England left not long after. The only new addition to the team was Mark Gibbons.

At this time, Games Workshop was starting to become massively popular, and instead of adapting its products to existing settings - like the world of Tolkien, Moorcock, Lovecraft and Judge Dredd - the company found itself as the plagiarized one. In order to defend its business, GW embarked on a policy that changed its history forever: drop all references from other settings and develop their own lore and style, setting it apart from everyone else to better defend it from copycats. It was the birth of the Warhammer IP.

Cover for WH40K 2nd edition (1993)

While in the '80s Warhammer had thrived on the variety of styles on many artists, now the management wanted to have a single, clear style, which John Blanche was tasked to develop. He had to define, in his words, "the visual language of Warhammer". And the grammar of that language was made of skulls, scrolls, giant banners, bulky armours, fancy helms, oversized weapons, mohawks, masks, tattooed latin mottoes, grotesque shapes, mixing of organic and mechanical, leather, bolts and spikes. 
 

Empire Army (1992)

High Elf Hero (1993)

High Elves (1993)

Undead Army (1994)

Bretonnia (1996)

Night Goblins (1996)

Chaos Thugs (1998)

In Warhammer Fantasy, Blanche's touch was, in a way, more limited but also created a more marked break with the past. The realistic and somehow creepy or melancholic touch of previous authors was lost in favour of pure fury and rage: most of Blanche's art on this setting consists of massive battle scenes, where heroic characters fight in messy melees. It emphasizes combat over subtlety, and epicness over horror. Honestly I don't know if this was intentional or simply a reflection of Blanche's more superficial interest in Fantasy: but the departure from the 80s was significant, and it influenced the whole studio.

Skaven Shaman (1992)

Orc (1995)

To be fair, Blanche also worked on some single character studies, but again they were mostly focused on combat, with monsters wielding weapons and keeping aggressive stances. The new mood was set, and Warhammer Fantasy art would never again be the same.

In Warhammer 40K, Blanche's passion was more evident: he produced marvellous concept art that defined the setting forever. Its sheer breadth and variety is unbelievable, and possibly Blanche reached the zenith of his creativity in this period. Compared to the 80s, his style developed into more sketchy and focusing on surrealistic elements, that distort proportions and convey a feeling of grotesqueness and madeness that eventually became a trademark of 40K.

And they shall know no fear (1993(

Golden Throne (1993)

Squats (1993)

Cupids from Necromunda (1995)

 

Ratskin Ganger from Necromunda (1995)

Adepta Sororitas (1997)

Ecclesiarchy (1997)

Cover for WH40K 3rd edition (1998)

Battlefleet Gothic (1999)

By the end of the '90s, both Warhammer Fantasy and 40K bore the mark of John Blanche. One, in my opinion, more successfully than the other. The following decades would see each develop according to the groudnwork done in the '90s.

And for what concerns John Blanche, everything is detailed in Part III.

Bears Head Miniatures Undead Ogre

Bears Head Miniatures is a British company run by Philip Hynes. They started business around 2017 with a remarkable kickstarter about Undead, which I promptly backed. I'm a big fan of unusual Undead, you see, and Bears Head was just offering those: Dwarfs, cattle, minotaurs, peasants giving the middle-finger and butchers holding human heads. It was great. This is the first of their miniatures that I post on my blog, but others will follow. So without further ado: the Undead Ogre.

Now, I know its proportions do not follow those of the usual Oldhammer Ogres. It's too tall and too proportionate. But how cool is it? Caught in the moment preceding the swinging of his ball and chain, screaming his blind rage. Half naked and with bones coming out of his leg and shoulder. It's a great piece.

It's so great I decided to make specific rules to use it in Mordheim, within my Restless Dead warband. Here they are:

0-1 Large Zombie
50 gold crowns to hire

This large undead creature may have been an Ogre, a Troll or similarly sized humanoid monster that has been reanimated shortly after death to serve a Necromancer.

M 5

WS 5

BS 0

S 4

T 4

W 3

I 2

A 2

Ld 5

For any other purpose, the Large Zombie is treated like a regular Zombie.

If you try it, let me know what you think!

The Champion of Xiatapek - Diehard Miniatures Eru-kin (2017)

Yet another Eru-kin off the painting list. After attending BOYL 2019 and seeing so many colourful Slann I was inspired to veer away from the usual green and experiment with something else.

This particular figure has been painted as a Champion of Xiatapek, the Slann god of violence, brutality and rage. Represented as a monkey, Xiatapek shares many traits with Khaine and Khorne: it is a warrior god that revels in bloodletting and the ritual killing of opponents.

Xiatapek's colours are black and vermilion. His temples are often built of black stone and his ritual weapons are the mace and the macahuitl, often equipped with obsidian blades, but many sacrifices are also carried on without weapons: victims are beaten to death with fists, kicks and headbutts, and their throats are then ripped open with a bite.

Followers of Xiatapek are rightly feared by anyone with common sense, as they are often violent adrenaline junkies just looking for trouble. Many among them are protagonists or mercenaries. In battle, they spurn complicated tactics in favour of sudden charges that are as likely to take the enemy by surprise as they are to end in a bloodbath on both sides.

In spite of the bad reputation of its devotees, Xiatapek is a surprisingly popular god and almost every Slann settlement has a temple or shrine devoted to him. He is, in fact, a slayer of monsters and daemons and images of him are often carved on doors to protect a household from dangers and ill-fortune. Before going to war, it is customary to offer a sacrifice to him among Imperial and Savage Slann alike.

A secondary aspect of Xiatapek is the dominion of fear. He is said to be able to instil fear in enemies and remove it from the heart of its followers. Priests of Xiatapek are often completely immune to any fear and they are known to celebrate festivals with competitions of courage that involve walking on this poles over gaping pits or being covered in poisonous snakes or scorpions.

Galentil Wavesinger - Citadel Wood Elf Horn (1991)

These days I just can't get enough of Sea Elves, so I'm painting a lot of them: the aim is to build a warband and eventually a small army to bring to conventions. 

This particular figure was issued by Citadel in 1991 as part of the Wood Elf Command, under the name Horn 2 and the code 074213/28C. It was sculpted by Jes Goodwin. It bears many similarities with an earlier figure, part of the Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers (1987) and was possibly built with parts of that.

This Sea Elf represents a character, born in the early 2000s as a character for WFRP: Galentil. It was the last character I played before stopping for many years, and I have a relation of love and hate for him. Galentil's story goes more or less like this: he was very young and hailed from a family of dirt-poor Sea Elves from the coasts of Yvresse; shy, contemplative and possessed of a strong sense of justice, he left home looking for fame and fortune and ended up on a ship that travelled most of the Known World in several adventures. During this time he met an Elf girl, a wandering rogue and entertainer named Lilegon (another PC), who stole his heart. The two had a very intense love affair that ended quite badly as elements of Lilegon's past surfaced: unbeknownst even to her, the girl was the daughter of a Slaaneshi Dark Elf and a Wood Elf Witch; abandoned by the father and losing the mother to the Inquisition, she had been brought up by travelling artists. Finding her mother reincarnated in a lynx was the beginning of an emotional roller-coaster for the girl and a train-wreck for Galentil. When Lilegon decided to explore the heritage of her parents, Galentil left her heart-broken and became a hermit, sailing the seas on a small boat with only the company of the winds and the waves, making strange music with shells and horns. Eventually, he became a priest of Mathlann, the elven Sea God, and acquired many powers over water and weather.

After reacquiring a new balance, Galentil has taken up adventure again, hiring himself to Sea Elf crews in need of blessings and protection from ill fortune.

Lavinia von Enzesburg's Retinue - a Mordheim Warband

This warband was first put together to antagonize the Coldwood Smugglers, for the simple reason that I had a number of spare Undead to use. I choose the Restless Dead" rules to build it and I must say it came out alright, and it is actually quite fun to play.

The leader of the warband is of course his Majesty the Liche King, C18 Undead from 1983 (sculpted by the Perrys, I suspect). I found this beauty on eBay, already painted, at a ridiculously low price some time ago. It's really beautiful, but since it is really small compared to the rest of the warband, I decided the Liche King is actually a Queen. What follows is the story of how she came to the Wasteland.

Lavinia von Enzesburg was the only daughter of old Graf Maximilian. At her father's death, she inherited vast lands in east Stirland, to rule with her husband, young and handsome Udo, at her side. However, Lavinia was not interested in lands or husbands: her one true love was knowledge, which she had pursued since early childhood under the tutelage of many respected teachers. History, astronomy, mathematics were her daily bread, but the field sheloved most of all was magick. Her father had first forbidden this, then allowed some simple rudiments to be taught, but when he finally died Lavinia was free to pursue the study of magick under several famous teachers. She would spend most of her time studying, delegating government to her council. Her husband did not complain: blonde-maned Udo had always been more interested in the company of men than women, and he often scoured the country on wild hunts with a number of young and merry companions. All seemed well, until the Black Year came: storms striked first, flooding the country and ruining crops; famine followed, and then plague spread through every village, taking its grim toll in lives. 

Lavinia, avoiding council meetings, was oblivious to the gravity of the situation until it was too late: one day an army of peasants wielding torches and pitchforks laid siege to her castle, raising as their grim standard the impaled corpse of her husband Udo, a shameful reference to his sexual habits. Only then did she realize how unfitting her council was to rule, a flock of corrupted sicophants who had grown rich and fat off the power she had entrusted them with. The peasants were calling for their heads and a new, more fitting lord, in the person of her cousin Luther the Just, standing among the rebellious scum in his gold-inlaid ceremonial armour.

Lavinia had never been good with people, talking to them or understanding their motives, but she was used to be in charge and she would not bow to any mob of rioting curs. The fat was in the fire, but she would not go down easily: someone else would pay for this, and dearly.

She fried the first speaker of the rebels, the town mayor, with a bolt of lightning, just to remind everyone of what she was capable of, and stated she would only negotiate with her cousin. Luther was a reasonable man, and he was happy enough to receive the title of Graf from Lavinia, along with lands and castles she did not care for. The former Gräfin was exiled in a remote manor, well provided of lands and revenues to sustain her for as long as she needed. Anonimity and isolation would be a benefit, not a punishment to her. The bloodthirsty mob was satisfied when they were allowed to unleash their rage on the councilmen, and that evening their heads were mounted on pikes on the battlements of the castle.

Dunkelulm was a good abode as any to Lavinia. She had space for her studies, a selected few servants and no courtiers to distract her. Those were happy years for her - no one would stay awake to spy ar the strange lights at night coming from her windows, nor wake her up during the day for boring social activities; no one raised questions about the teachers who would visit her. In a way, Lavinia had too much freedom, perhaps. Someone was concerned for the corpses disappearing from the local graveyard, but then those people disappeared. A few priests came to visit and left in a hurry, terrified by nightmares and visions or forced to flee after infamous accusations were made on their good names. For Lavinia, the years at Dunkelulm were fruitful: she delved deeper and deeper into her magick studies, and her fascination for forbidden knowledge and the dark arts grew out of control, even her own. Lavinia's descent into darkness was slow but steady, until one day, in her old age, she achieved the ultimate goal of the scholar of the dark arts and the necromancer - lichehood.

Unlife was not much different than life for Lavinia, who had been a night ownl and a reclusive for years. Now, however, she could no longer meet any outsider, nor could she conceal her immortality. She then took an apprentice, a young man with a basic education and a fascination for the dark arts: Adalbert Keller. After a few months she adopted Keller as her heir and by the end of the year he announced his adoptive monther's death. A mausoleum, built in the hills behind the castle, would be her resting place.

The mausoleum was now a perfect place to be for Lavinia: she needed no food, no sleep, no air and no light, only quiet. It was surrounded by a hunting lodge where no one was allowed and conveniently linked to the keep of Dunkelulm by a tunnel. Adalbert Keller, now Adalbert von Enzesburg, lord of Dunkelulm, was the proxy of Lavinia and her tool to keep her unlife of research quiet and funded.

Liches have few needs indeed, but one thing they cannot do without are the spells that bind together their black souls and their rotting corpses. Such powerful spells are not eternal and need to be regularly renewed and fuelled with raw magickal energies, normally found in specific places of power, where the leys of the earth cross and the winds of magick meet. Such places are never unguarded, though: within the Empire, the local Inquisitions maintain permanent lodges of witch hunters there, and out of the Emperor's bound there are creatures and monsters that feed off the steady flow of energies. Lavinia is now getting weaker and tired, and she needs a new ritual of undeath: weeks ago, while she was looking at the stars to divine future events, she observed a rare phaenomenon, the fall of a rain of comets, which she traced to the borderlands between Marienburg, Reikland and Middenland. There, in the ground, she knows, there are pieces of stars made of pure magickal energy: each shard could easily fuel a single ritual, and so she set journey for the Wasteland, gathering her retinue for the long and dangerous trip.

 

During her life Lavinia was rarely able to move without the protection of her loyal guards. In unlife, she keeps them around: Captain Ulrich Krieger (Grave Guard), Dieter, Irmingard, Friedrich and Karl (4 Skeletons), all built from the Vampire Counts Skeletons set from GW.

The Necromancer Adalbert Keller is the only living person Lavinia trusts, and the only link between her and the world of the living. He travels with her mistress, now garbed as a travelling scholar, and drags behind him 3 zombies reanimated from bodies of travellers and villagers found along the way. Keller is completely submissive to Lavinia and is constantly fawning at her feet, hoping to receive one day the secrets of High Necromancy. Keller is a GW Necromancer and the Zombies are also from a GW set.

Citadel C04 Nathpiniel Sneaker the Cut-Throat aka Palliard (1986)

The C04 series, by the Perry twins, is one of the nicest series in terms of variety and dynamism. This one, presented in the Jan 1986 flyer, is called either Nathpiniel Sneaker the Cut-Throat or, on the tab, Palliard, being a word for "beggar" or "vagrant" (not to be confused with paillard, which is a thin slice of meat, so be careful when you google it).

With his ragged tunic and good and bare feet, the Palliard looks perfect, as he turns to strike an unsuspecting victim, probably ambushed in a dark corner, with his club. Poorest of the poor, meanest of the mean.

He's been cast as "Petty Thief" in my Coldwood Smugglers warband for Mordheim. I suspect he'll come handy whenever my WFRP players meet some cut-throat in some city or town.

Elke the Forest's Daughter - Diann the Girl Thief from Citadel Dungeon Adventurers Starter Set (1983)

This is probably one of my favourite miniatures ever; certainly my favourite among pre-slotta figures. Why? Well, it's so simple, and yet the balance of everything is perfect - the pose, the proportions, the delicate traits of the face and hands, the way the dress and cloak fall around her body. The way she seems to grasp her dagger tightly, almost hiding it behind the cloak. She has a shady air, looking at something and planning to dash for it, blade flashing.

She was included in the Dungeon Adventurers Starter Set sold by Citadel in 1983, and referenced as Diann the Girl Thief. Sadly no sculptor was credited.

To me, she is Adelheid - Elke for her family and friends - also known as the Forest's Daughter. Growing up in the Coldwood between the Wasteland and Nordland, she displayed strange powers over plant and beast since childhood, and she was sent to be apprentice of Old Maud, Priestess of Rhya and Taal. By her fifteenth year, Elke could bless the crops of the village, protecting them from blights, and summon squirrels to her bidding; when running in the woods, she could jump as far as a deer and walk in the rain without getting soaked. The denizens of the wood adored her and would treat her as a holy saint.

She would not join her older brother Roel de Rood and his band of Outlaws, but would instead help the local Border Watch against any invasions from creatures of darkness, such as Giant Spiders, Goblins or Beastmen. That is, I use her as a Priestess of Taal and Rhya in the Drakwald Border Watch warband I use in Mordheim (based on the Stirwood Outlaws).