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fantasy knights

  • timbus the thirteenth

    I was thinking a lot about fantasy knights recently, and what I might want out of a modular kit for them. This is definitely something that exists, but most of the kits are either very early 2000s Warcraft styled (Kings of War Basileans) or very Crusader/Templar styled (Fireforge, Victrix, WGA!). Also, while this could be more of an upgrade sprue for a more historical kit, I don't think that would be able to do the concept justice! 

    Anyways, using a quiet lunch break and some shoddy MSpaint skills, I sketched up a theoretical sprue. Basically, I wanted a good mix of "could be actual historical", "could be ceremonial historical", and "pure fantasy". I also took some inspiration from the wonderful Excalibur and Sword of the Valiant movies, both of which are absolute classics and you should go watch. Right now. I'm not asking.

    I imagine a kit like this could be used for a lot of things, including dnd, turnip28, warhammer, and greathelm, whenever that comes out to us non-kickstarter peasants. Part of the idea behind it is that you can kind of mix in historical and other fantasy bits, and that everything should be as modular as possible. While historical knights were usually wealthy and highly ornamented, their fantasy counterparts run the gamut from "broke adventurer" to "literal demigod" so stuff like decorations, shoulderpads, etc, would probably be seperate. Let me know if there's anything else you might want to add, because I really love drawing knights (in case you couldn't tell). 

  • BV

    @timbus the thirteenth I would just focus on pure fantasy aspects if it is possible to imagine just fantasy armor and not real world hunderd years war armor, etc. Leave historical for historical sets since at the end of the day the fantasy human set should be 100% compatable with the historical sets. 

  • timbus the thirteenth

    Fair enough, the only thing would point out is that most houndskull bascinets tend to come with integrated neck chainmail if we were to be historically accurate. It's an iconic helmet in the fantasy world, so it would be nice to have a variant that can be put onto plate armor, given a plume, etc. but some variation to make it more than pure historical could help it feel more worth its space on the sprue.

  • BV

    @timbus the thirteenth I get what your saying, but given my experience with tiny plastic knights, the simple way to do that on the manufacturing end with historical knight heads is to sculpt the chainmail neck guard (wiki says its an aventail) exclusivly on the torso which most of it will be on anyways normally so you can reuse the helmet on non-chaimail bodies.

    Given WA's historical sculpting thus far, any future knight sets would likely already be set up to do just that.

     

  • timbus the thirteenth

    Fair enough, I'm thinking of the perry agincourt miniatures where the neck is attached to the head. I seem to remember 28mm agincourt guys popping up in the sprue game, which wouldn't be my top option but maybe it'll happen someday.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Not to distract too mucy from a full-on fantasy knight set (a "death knight" set might be the best option there), but for most fantasy knight purposes, the Baron's War knights seem like a fine starting place.  A "fantasy upgrade sprue" for some of the more outre fantasy weapon and helmet options would, I think, get a lot of mileage from there.

     

    Speaking of the Baron's War and fantasy knights, this weekend's sneak peak looks like a fun source of fantasy monk, cleric and cultist bits:

     

     

    The Baron's War has been already a treasure trove for fantasy gamers, and just keeps getting better!

  • BV

    @Yronimos Whateley well, Late Roman, Viking era, medieval and Reni sets often are great for fantasy gamers since the basic default fantasy setting most wargamers think of is Europe from that year 400 AD to year 1600 AD timeframe.

    Its also why doing human fantasy troops is almost unneeded if the manufacturer  is already doing those eras in plastic and the parts are interchangable (I mean you can buy foot knights and oh, late romans and just swap enough of the parts around you can get some pretty fantasy looking foot troops for 1 or more factions right there). 

  • timbus the thirteenth

     the problem is that I am an absolute nutjob for medieval and medieval-fantasy armor. so to me, it's obvious that historicals don't work! but I don't think it matters much to someone who isn't interested in fantasy. to put in the terms of something I know people on this forum like, it's like trying to kitbash near-future/cyberpunk models out of ww2 kits. also there's only four ww2 kits, and they're all in totally different scales.

    back to knights, the main problem with the barons war kits is that they don't have any plates, just chainmail. they look super antiquated and unprotected next to kits with proper plating. the surcoats look fine, but theyre attached to legs wearing nothing but chainmail! the only other knight kits out there are perry, which are awesome quality but much smaller than wga/victrix. even then, if you want cool sculpted armor, or pauldrons, or surcoats that don't look like a baggy tshirt, or any helmet beside a greathelm or a tiny sallet, you're screwed! trust me, I've spent the last couple weeks trying to come up with some knights, and it's goddamn nightmare!

    see, the real issue here is that historical kits usually just aren't built for modularity. a good fantasy knight will have sculpted pauldrons, and a flowy cape, and a giant plume of feathers, all of which were usually locked to specific eras or just plain old impractical. many of the most popular fantasy knight helmets would be either grotesque maximillian helmets (rare, usually somewhat ceremonial), armets (tilting more towards renaissance era, i've never found one in a kit before), and the frogmouth, which didnt exist outside of jousts. anyways, I've certainly yapped enough now, but I could easily go on for another couple dozen paragraphs here.

    anyhow, to cut a very, VERY long story short: historical kits are cool for generic, grounded designs. great for foot troops, certainly. but if someone (me) wants to make anything remotely more unique or fun to put together, we need better options. wga's whole fantasy line is geared towards cool, retro, and somewhat whimsical designs. a knight kit full of weirdo armors would fit that perfectly. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

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  • BV

    @timbus the thirteenth well, I don't know what to say since I actually can and have made  near-future/cyberpunk like models out of ww2 kits (WA ones at that), though I admit it isn't easy and I cheated with most of them (I gave some Panzer Lehr Ironcore guns, sort of made them look like JSDF troops form 1990's animes like patlabor, which is cyberpunk enough for most gaming I have in mind). Likewise it is sort of an eye of the beholder thing with near future/cyberpunk what with research arguments versus rule of cool arguements (shouldn't near future troops have body armor? yes but they didn't always in the cartoons I grew up with😆).

    Flowy capes and a giant plumes of feathers, while its true that I have not seen them in the same set, I have gotten both from diffrent historical sets and pauldrons do exist though getting them all together and knowing where from would be hard for a newbie on a budget, not mention fitting the parts together .

    As to helmets, I think I have actually seen armet and grotesque maximillian helmets if wiki isn't lying to me in the perry's Italian Wars foot knights set, but those old IW sets only really kitbash with each other and the old Wargames Factory Vikings/Saxons sets  that Warlord is still making and maybe the Warlord's Landsknect sets depending on who you are  (like I have no issue with mixing them but other folks do). 

    So you do have something of a point about both and for sure on the frogmouth, that said the helmets  that is the most fantasy I have seen design wise quite a bit has been what could best be called scale pattern helms that tend to look like the example in the middle:

     

    One of the armor kits I have seen thats clearly pure fantasy (Arc's armor from skeleton knight in another world) includes that helmet design and runs with it for the whole armor sort of  giving it a sort of bearded dragon look. 

    And yes he does normally wear a cape with it:

    So yeah to  my knowledge there are no real world historical helmets that look like that (at least not in western europe😆), so that would be a good add to a fantasy knight set.

    Other helmets I think should be considered for fantasy knight helms at least as a base inspiration would be the more exotic real world WW1 visor helmets like the swiss era M17 helmet with visor: 

    Don't know why but the swiss M17 always reminded me of the FF Dragoon helmets even though they seem to have now relation:

    There is also the Franco Americian expermental Dunand helm which I think actually has been stolen already by fantasy artists for TCGs and backround mooks:

  • timbus the thirteenth

    I've done quite a bit of toying around with the italian wars knight kits, and it's definitely the best you can get for a fantasy knight. The only issue is they're so tiny! Most of the time I'm trying to put models on a 32mm or even a 40mm base for gameplay reasons, and they look so small. The helmeted armets from perry are genuinely more skinny than the average bare head from wga.

    The best route currently is to use arms from the perry kits along a torso from wga or victrix, then a teutonic helmet from victrix. My results are below, and I think they look pretty good, but that's also at least half a decade of armor obsession poured into making them look half-decent. Also, in order to get them looking distinct and fantastical, you need to have parts from easily half a dozen or more kits, including the forbidden games workshop. People new to the hobby shouldn't have to do all that nonsense!

     

    Here's another example: recently I wanted to convert a model based on one of my favorite rpg models, the vilderavn. A pretty simple design overall!

    Vilderavn Evil Fey Unseelie - Pathfinder RPG PFRPG DND D&D d20 fantasy ...

    Unfortunately, that kind of sword isn't historical, so it might as well not exist. Same with the helmet. Or the feathery cape. Or even something as simple as slightly pointy shoes! Eventually, I gave up on making it physical and moved over to heroforge, where it took me about ten minutes to make. Moral of the story is, historicals are great as a starting off point, but to make something look half-decent, you really do need to have either dedicated bits or be way better at greenstuff than I am. 

    Also, to respond to your points more directly: those are some pretty sick helmets. But even still, they're pretty basic compared to how weird and amazing they could be. Especially because they lack any kind of decoration, I would consider all of those pretty 'low fantasy', except for the skull knight helmet, obviously. Capes do exist, but they're all templar capes, with big fur ruffles around the neck and not actual texture to the cape itself. And with how much love WGA has given to making a fleshed-out range of awesomely diverse, interesting, accessible sci-fi humans, I'd love to see some of that love extended to the world of fantasy. We're definitely getting there when it comes to civilians, but I wanna see more weirdos! 

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  • M

    @timbus the thirteenth i'm not surprised the barons war kits eend up looking archaic compared to plate armored figures. the barons war game is centered around the 13th century, which is a good 200 some years before even the earliest true plate armor and a good 300-400 years before the styles we tend to think of when it comes to plate armor. While for a long time Plate armor was the sterotypical 'medieval' armor, it actually only appears after the transition to the early modern period. and the steroetypical versions mostly date to near the end of it's existance as a non-ceremonial tool of warfare.

    fantasy settings are usually full of anachronisms, like 15th century plate armor next to 16th century Landsknechts, and 9th century peasant archers, but ironically in the case of the baron's war minis it's probably the lack of anachronism that is causing the brain to reject the combination, given that the typical footsoldier in fantasy settings tend to be generally modelled off 12th to 13th century footsoldiery.

     

    and the be honest i find most of the exaggerated/stylized 'anime' plate armors kinda hilarious.. because it is clear the artisits drew more inspiration from American Football's Padding and Helmets than they did from historical armors. just worn on top of the clothing rather than underneath it.

    admittadly sports padding does draw on some of the same ergonomics lessons that plate armor did, but still..

     

    (spent a few years as an equipment manager for the team where i went to college for my bachelors, which means i got to see and work with the pads a fair bit. including reassembling them at times.)

     

  • timbus the thirteenth

    @Mithril2098 yeah, I've never been too fond of "anime" armor and its many impracticalities. it's funny though, I never drew that connection! 

    I think one of the issues is also that fantasy knights tend to be solo or in small groups. meanwhile, most historical knights that I'm aware of would either fight in big cavalry bricks or behind loads of peasants. sadly some of the coolest armors come from time periods with pretty boring tactics. but maybe someday the hussite wars will become a popular setting, and hopefully armor choices increase.

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