Crestfallen knights

a.k.a. Heraldic Surgery...

What's this about? Well, let me tell you:

Somewhere in the 90's I collected a small number of GW Bretonnian miniatures. I loved the Perry sculpts and the look and feel of the army, but it never really got off the ground, due to lack of interest in WHFB in the erstwhile gaming club. The army got mothballed, but I never could let the miniatures I did collect for it go. Which is much to my advantage now, as it provided me with the knight and retinue I've shown in my recent posts. In my opinion, the new GW Bretonnians just have nothing on those classic Perry sculpts and designs.
This week I had been digging through this small stash of Chivalrous mini's again, and had a lucky break:
I knew I had the classic Grail Knight on foot twice, as well as a mounted grail knight with a sorta-kinda matchin crest. My original plan was to use one Grail Knight on foot with the mounted one as a single character, and sorta gloss over the non-matching crest. Which didn't really sit all that well with me.
In my digging, I discovered I somehow also had acquired a second one of said mounted Grail Knight!

Which led to an enthousiastic bout of sawing and glueing. Because 2 foot knights, 2 mounted knights, and 2 pairs of matching crests plus some tools and glue lead to this:

(In this pic, the unmodified models are the two closest to the centre, the two on the outside are the "swappees")

I took a jewellers saw, and one each of the mounted and foot knights. I then carefully sawed off the crests on both of them, just under the torse (the twisted cloth ribbon around the helmet). There is a natural dividing line there, and the underside for the torse creates a sharp shadow over it, making it easier to fill any gaps and hide the join.
I then simply swapped the crests around and glued them back on. I still need to fill the gaps and resculpt the knots at the rear of the torses. But once that is done, I have two more matching mounted and dismounted knights. Which means two more potential retinues for a Chivalry/Chanson de Geste game!

Sadly I don't have enough of the old GW archers and men-at-arms to provide them both with a full retinue, and certainly no squires for them. But I'm not too worried about that. The old Bretonnian infantry still pop up on Ebay and second hand markets regularly, plus the Perry twins have their lovely Agincourt to Orleans range. And I'm in no particular hurry, so I could also just wait for their recently previewed/spoilered HYW plastics to be released. And if I'm not to worried to stay in the HYW/Bretonnian/Perry style and look, there are plenty of other nice medieval mini's to choose from.
I really should be concentrating on painting suitable monsters, beasts and villains for them and dungeoneering in general at this point anyway so I have plenty of time to make my choice...
All I can say is, it is, or soon will be, a good time to be a feudal lord!