Friday, 15 August 2025

Brettonia Redux: My First Painted Models Ever

The first models I ever bought and painted were a bunch of ancient Eldar (now sadly gone) and a load of metal Brettonians. I got the Brettonians from a kid called Alan for very little money, mainly because I wanted to play Fantasy Battle and they looked like King Arthur guys, which I recognised. I painted the Brettonians over a week and proudly fielded them in their first battle. They were the only painted miniatures in the game and I was so keen that I gave every one of my knights his own name.

They were garbage. My opponent exterminated them, and so I failed to take the hint and bought some more. What I didn't know then was that, at the time that I was starting to play Warhammer, the only armies that GW cared about were High Elves, Empire, Orcs, High Elves, a bit of Chaos and High Elves. My main opponent had High Elves.

For a long time, Brettonia was literally the Empire without any of the good units. Fighting High Elves was like a medieval army fighting the Battle of the Somme: they just got mowed down by bolt throwers. The only way to win was to buy the minimum number of actual Brettonians and to pack out the army with manticores (I do miss those general lists of monsters available to all armies, which gave them a lot more options).

But now, Brettonia has two army books and even a new list in the Old World. Hmm...


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Repainting the Alice in Warhammerland models got me thinking about my old Brettonians, and Lasgunpacker's comment on my last post pushed me over the edge. I've considered repainting my Warhammer Frenchmen before, but have been deterred by the complexity of the heraldry involved. However, painting old harlequin models has given me a bit more confidence - at least, in painting checks. 

Here are some of my old models. I'm putting these pictures up as a bit of a record, as I'm going to strip and repaint them. They've got no real shading and are extremely basic, but they're not bad for my first efforts.

(Incidentally, the first GW Brettonian army was painted in flat block colours, without shading. It looked very basic.)







So there they are. I also found a few blister packs in a box at my parents', stashed away for many years and testament to a time when even GW were desperate to get rid of the Brettonians. Back then, as my friend with the High Elves pointed out, £1 was not a bargain.








So there we are. I am going to paint a load of Brettonians in the near future. Not a very big load, certainly not a proper army, and I will paint them pretty slowly. But I reckon they might look nice, and it'll be an interesting project.

Now I'm going to paint some space orks.




5 comments:

  1. If you did not have the emotional attachment to these, they might well fund a new (small) army.

    Your "basic paint job" originals are very good though! Wash and highlight and they could continue to serve.

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    1. That's a strange thought! Some of the poses are good, but they feel quite simple and unexciting models, and you could easily replace them with, say, plastic Perry miniatures. But yes, they do have an emotional attachment, so I'll hang on to them.

      Thanks about the painting! I think I was surprisingly neat back then, although I'd not got the hang of details!

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    2. Incidentally, you can get some of the old Brettonian metal models from Foundry Models.

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    3. Yes, I know that, and you know that, but as soon as you put "Brettonian" on that label, that is a 20% bump. New in blister is of course much more!

      And totally understand the attachment!

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    4. Good point! I will eventually paint them, although I've got a bit distracted by some space orks...

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