Odo D'Outremer and Suliman le Saracen (sort of)

Back to Bretonnia.

I recently saw what looked like a metal Warhammer lord for sale on ebay. He was sculpted to be riding a horse, was missing his weapon and head, and seemed to be wearing a big cloak. I bought it for a few pounds, thinking that he was either Bretonnian or a mercenary. 

I was surprised to find that he was an old model called Odo D'Outremer, a character from the first Bretonnian army book. The book contains loads of named characters, many of whom didn't have models, which cover most of the knightly stereotypes: a jouster, a merry troubadour, a huntsman, and so on. Odo is a crusader.

I gave Odo a new plastic head, made from a peasant soldier with its ugly face replaced with a beardy historical head, and used a bit from a Mantic skeleton to make his magical morning star. I added a feather to Odo's helmet, so that it would brush the morning star and give it a bit more solidity. He got a plasticard shield. Here he is in his repaired glory!

In the army book, Odo has a friend called Suliman le Saracen, a warrior from Araby who he befriended while fighting the evil sultan Jaffar. This is probably inspired by Sir Palomydes from the King Arthur stories, a former enemy from the Holy Land who joins the Round Table. Odo clearly needed a friend. The only problem was that I didn't have a Suliman model, and the original miniature goes for a lot of money online.

So I made one! I used a pair of plastic elf legs, a Perry Miniatures Afghan head, and two arms from an ancient Mordheim mercenary. The sword came from a skeleton. The upper body was just a T-shaped bit of sprue.

I sculpted around this with mixtures of green stuff and milliput. A lot of Suliman's body is hidden by robes and cloaks, which helped greatly, and the difficult hands and head were already there. This is the finished sculpt. It's actually quite similar to the original GW one - in posture, if not in quality. I'm not sure where his horse's metal head comes from.

Now for painting. I used similar colours for them both - red, white and purple - which are remeniscent of crusaders. They look linked, as suits the background. Painting the little crosses on Odo's barding and shield was a real pain.

Not the easiest project, but I got there. That's the first 5th edition plastic horse that I've painted. I'd better get used to it, as there will be a lot more!

*

This week, Games Workshop announced that they would be effectively retiring their smaller, old-style space marines. Only "Primaris" marines (or Bigmarines as I think of them) will remain. End of an era.

I'm not sure what I think of this. On the one hand, I stopped caring about space marines a long time ago. The fluff does nothing for me, and the apparent fetish with making them bigger, Bigger, BIGGER!! just isn't interesting. It's been almost a decade since I played Warhammer 40,000, and it seems to be a wildly different game to what I recall. 

But it does mark another piece of my gaming history fading into the distance. Another chunk of the slightly goofy fun that I used to enjoy is replaced by larger, more boring models and tedious grimdark. But really, it hasn't been replaced. I can still make Oldhammer models and miniatures from other companies - in fact, that's pretty much all I do now, and I enjoy it. 

So goodbye, small marines. You weren't what 40k wanted you to be. Fair enough. I just hope the ebay prices don't go crazy.