Sir Skofis's Workshop: Bretonnian Battle Standard Bearer: conversion evolution through time

The Battle Standard Bearer conversion for my Warhammer Fantasy Bretonnian Army is something that was unfinished for quite along time. It has been finished but not for too long as a little after I usually decided that something should be changed and changed it. The last changes were the arms and the banner and the only thing that I had left for quite a while was only to paint them, but instead of doing that I decided to strip the model and change the colors used for the ones that I really want my bretonnian army to have in the future. Below you can see the result of the finally finished model.

The bretonnian players must have a Battle Standard Bearer, and the miniature has an important role in the army so its better if it looks nice.

My first attempt of a conversion of a Battle Standard Bearer was made at the end of the year 2006. At that time I was obsessed with making the model with a frontal banner and I even bought a Black Tree knight command group on foot that I liked quite cheap.

In the first version I just cut the standard bearer at the hip and also I cut out his head. Then I mounted it on top of some 6th edition plastic knight legs filling the holes with some putty and place on top of it a bold head from the men-at-arms. To give the banner a better look I placed on top of it a reliquary that has a representation of the Lady of the Lake and a couple of candles.

This version alone in the field looked okay, but once placed among other knights it was quite tinny. The next step was then to cut the arms from the model and fix them to a plastic knight body with some putty. In order to do that it was necessary to first cut out the left arm from the plastic body. I also decided to change the sword for one from the wood elves and the head for a helmet one from the 5th edition plastic kingdom knights with a representation of the Lady of the Lake. Also as I was already changing things I decided to modify a little bit the bard of the warhorse. I replaced half of the shield for half a fleur de lis. Another change was to replace the reliquary for a fleur de lis as carrying the candles while ridding seemed a little unrealistic. I finished painting this version in September of the year 2007.

I considered the Battle Standard Bearer finished for a little more than a year, but the arms weren't great in this version and screamed for a change.

So I started by replacing the left arm as it was the more evident one that needed to be replaced, but also I end up replacing the right arm and the banner itself as it was quite complicated to cut the arm from the banner. At first I toyed with two ideas, making a complete banner with GS or using the one from the knights a little bit modified, at that moment none of them seemed right and a third one appeared, to use the banner from the men-at-arms that was bigger than the knights one. With this decision the banner was no longer a frontal one but it wasn't the end of the world. Back then I rarely tried to do freehands so I decided to sculpt what I wanted the banner to show after filling out the shields that the banner originally had.

There aren't any spare left arm in the plastic knights as it isn't possible to change them so I had to make a new one from scratch. In order to do it I take a good look to the sword arm for the champion and tried to do a symmetrical version of it with putty. It isn't perfect but it is way better than the one that it had.

I placed the new banner in the banner arm from the plastic knights and on top of it I placed the crest from a pegasus knight that had a horse head circle by a crown. I also changed the helmet again and chose a one with a pegasus carrying a banner, with that change I also eliminated all reference to the Lady of the Lake.

This version was as you can see it in the picture above in July 2008. Until October 2013 I didn't get around to finally painted it.

I didn't quite fancy the blue color scheme so instead of simply painting the arms and the banner I stripped the model. I don't know why but I really like the idea of mixing the color red and the green in a color scheme and that were the new colors for the model. I spent quite a lot of time painting the miniature, is probably the miniature to which I dedicated more time to do the paint job. I tried to give lights and shades to all the parts of the model, even the metallic ones, and used the NMM techniques in a couple of things. I know it isn't a really impressive work and I know that out there are real pieces of art but I'm quite satisfied with the result.

Some people may find weird how I decided to paint the sword but I tried to represent a sword of might that in Spanish was translated more like "espada de poder" ("power sword") and is the object that I usually equipped the model with in our games.