Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

5th was peak bretonia. It seemed like every other army across the table was full of wedges of noble knightly cheese. Very much the shining armor, questing for the grail, noble sort.

While Empire might be the nominal POV race, Brets were the SM of the era, where they were so pervasive you needed to be able to deal with them in the meta.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
4th was High Elf and Goblins, with cardboard standees?

If so, it was defo 5th that the refreshed Bretonnians arrived, as they didn’t get a 4th Ed Army book, but were in the 5th Ed boxed set along with Lizardmen?

Correct. The Bretonnians' only appearance in 4th edition was in the 'get you by' army list pamphlet included in 4th, which was also the last appearance of Chaos Thugs.

Overread wrote:True, but these are models for the battlefield. Where the wizards are specifically encouraged to use their powers. So it makes sense that they'd be throwing fireballs and summoning aids and doing all the things that otherwise might get them burned at the stake.

"Good work in the battle there, Mr Wizard. Now report to Brother Magnus at the chapel for, um, 'debriefing'."

Space marines occupy a niche that Bretonnians don't.

People are only looking at the 'armoured elite' trope and ignoring a whole host of other things that marines have.

Marine chapters are individual, they each have their own stereotype they follow - mongolians, vikings, crusaders, romans etc.

Bretonnians are all just french. Their colours are on their tabards, they don't have enamelled armour that you can paint for each chapter.

Space marines are also superhuman, while only grail knights are. Anyone can be a knight and any army can have knights, just being an army of knights isn't special. They are more like storm troopers to guardsmen than marines.


This is why GW created the sigmarines, to deliberately design knights that DID follow the tropes of the space marines, but even then not exactly and still don't have the market capture that marines do.

The Brits... I'm sorry, Brets aren't all French. They have a heavy dose of Aurthurian Legend... and Myths of the British Isles (the Green Knight).

Much of what we consider the modern Arthur myth was created by the french.

But the point is that there is not the cultural and thus aesthetic variation amongst the bretonnians that space marines have, which is one of the appeals of being able to create your own marine chapter.

No matter what knights you make, they're still bretonnians.

 Nevelon wrote:
5th was peak bretonia. It seemed like every other army across the table was full of wedges of noble knightly cheese. Very much the shining armor, questing for the grail, noble sort.

While Empire might be the nominal POV race, Brets were the SM of the era, where they were so pervasive you needed to be able to deal with them in the meta.

Well, it does help player adoption when you're also the shiny new plastics in the affordable starter set gateway box for the edition as well.

Lots of frogs among these wizards...

Interesting how experience varied. My memories of 5th was lots of new players pushing bricks of Saurus and Skinks around.

Brets just never seemed as popular outside of a very committed fanbase. And once the 5th starter was history, they almost disappeared.

But yeah, I do think any fantasy faction would be the standard/most popular choice if it had been in every starter box like Marines always are.

Tyel wrote:
Interesting how experience varied. My memories of 5th was lots of new players pushing bricks of Saurus and Skinks around.

Brets just never seemed as popular outside of a very committed fanbase. And once the 5th starter was history, they almost disappeared.

But yeah, I do think any fantasy faction would be the standard/most popular choice if it had been in every starter box like Marines always are.

Well, Lizardmen were the other half of the starter. But the side that was less popular locally. And to get them playable, you needed a slann, and those were a bear to build and paint. Where a lot of brets just had a guy with a fancy paint job in front.

Plus broken rules. Not that I’m bitter. But in an edition known as hero-hammer, they could have 75% of their list be characters, got extra bonus vow powers, easy rank bonuses where everyone could fight, etc.

 Nevelon wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Interesting how experience varied. My memories of 5th was lots of new players pushing bricks of Saurus and Skinks around.

Brets just never seemed as popular outside of a very committed fanbase. And once the 5th starter was history, they almost disappeared.

But yeah, I do think any fantasy faction would be the standard/most popular choice if it had been in every starter box like Marines always are.

Well, Lizardmen were the other half of the starter. But the side that was less popular locally. And to get them playable, you needed a slann, and those were a bear to build and paint. Where a lot of brets just had a guy with a fancy paint job in front.

Plus broken rules. Not that I’m bitter. But in an edition known as hero-hammer, they could have 75% of their list be characters, got extra bonus vow powers, easy rank bonuses where everyone could fight, etc.

There's a reason Lance Formation was called 'the Cheese Wedge'.

 Hellebore wrote:
Much of what we consider the modern Arthur myth was created by the french.

But Bretonnians also had "Robin Hood" and masses of Agincourt longbowmen. They're definitely a smushing together of French and British stuff.

The nobles are French while the peasants are middle English.

So its really just middle ages England tbh.

Carcassonne, Bordeleaux, Aquitaine, Montfort, couronne, lyonnesse... I could go on.
All reference to french cities, region, food specialty or just the french word for crown.

Well they clearly went for a more Celtic mystic setting in Albion to cover the Brittish isles analogy, and the chivalrous knights properly set in france anology.

I can admit when I am wrong...

I did some digging into the topic...

According to the designers and writers of the Warhammer Fantasy universe, the Bretonnian army is based on medieval France, rather than England. The Bretonnians are a faction of knights and nobles who are inspired by the chivalric culture of medieval France, and their army is modeled after the armies of the French nobility during the High Middle Ages.

In an interview, Bryan Ansell, one of the co-founders of Games Workshop and a key designer of the Warhammer Fantasy universe, stated that the Bretonnians were intended to be a "French-inspired" faction, with a culture and aesthetic that was reminiscent of medieval France.

Similarly, Rick Priestley, another key designer of the Warhammer Fantasy universe, has stated that the Bretonnians were inspired by the chivalric romances of medieval France, such as the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

The Bretonnians' armor, heraldry, and architecture are all inspired by medieval French culture, and their army is modeled after the armies of the French nobility during the High Middle Ages.

The Bretonnians' emphasis on chivalry, honor, and nobility is also reflective of the cultural values of medieval France.

To be honest, given the Crown hopping that went on? There’s not such a big difference between Medieval what would become France, and Medieval what would become England.

Bretonnians literally having snails on the sprue wasn't enough of a give away?

The irony though is that by incorporating the French chivalric romances about King Arthur, etc, what GW actually created was an army based on the medieval French perception of a legendary version of medieval Britain.

I keep getting impressed with how the old lore writers had exelent historical knowledge to build their fantasy around.
It makes the setting instantly recognisable and easy to relate to.

These days its more based on knowledge about what videogames the kids like.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Bretonnians literally having snails on the sprue wasn't enough of a give away?

I mean, we are getting into the rabbit hole. The king was called Louen Leoncoeur, otherwise known as the Lionhearted. Clearly both English and French sources of mythology were used in the Bretts, and they also are intrinsically mixed in their origins as well.

 Fayric wrote:
I keep getting impressed with how the old lore writers had exelent historical knowledge to build their fantasy around.
It makes the setting instantly recognisable and easy to relate to.

These days its more based on knowledge about what videogames the kids like.

The forge world of Lucius is famed for the production of the super material luciun. i Iz WrItEr!

 Fayric wrote:
I keep getting impressed with how the old lore writers had exelent historical knowledge to build their fantasy around.
It makes the setting instantly recognisable and easy to relate to.

These days its more based on knowledge about what videogames the kids like.

My understanding is that Priestley and co were all history graduates and like all eager uni leavers, want to ply people with their knowledge as much as possible. It's this grounding in realworld history and warfare that has given all GW's settings a grounded feeling, a tangibility that makes them almost real.

Alas modern writers are mostly adult fans of Warhammer (AFW), so modern WFB and 40k are written more like fanfic than the historically-mined inspired stories of yore.

Hellebore wrote:It's this grounding in realworld... warfare that has given all GW's settings a grounded feeling

Wut.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Interesting how experience varied. My memories of 5th was lots of new players pushing bricks of Saurus and Skinks around.

Brets just never seemed as popular outside of a very committed fanbase. And once the 5th starter was history, they almost disappeared.

But yeah, I do think any fantasy faction would be the standard/most popular choice if it had been in every starter box like Marines always are.

Well, Lizardmen were the other half of the starter. But the side that was less popular locally. And to get them playable, you needed a slann, and those were a bear to build and paint. Where a lot of brets just had a guy with a fancy paint job in front.

Plus broken rules. Not that I’m bitter. But in an edition known as hero-hammer, they could have 75% of their list be characters, got extra bonus vow powers, easy rank bonuses where everyone could fight, etc.

There's a reason Lance Formation was called 'the Cheese Wedge'.

Emperor Dragon in 1,500pt lists

I think he means that you can take Old World and basically impose a faux medieval/real world history view onto the setting and fill in all the gaps that the stories and art and such don't tell you.

Eg you can mentally picture how serfs in Bretonnia farm; what tools they have; the kind of crops; the clothes and so forth. Now of course this might all be utterly wrong on the specific details; but you don't need much information to create a fairly representative mental picture.



In stark contrast its very hard to do the same for Age of Sigmar. In fact trying to do so often creates a lot more questions than answers. What measures do farmers have to consider in a land where there are storms of rust particles; how do you gather water when the local lake is literal quicksilver (and save off the madness exposure causes). What happens when you wake up the land transformed from flat fields to a mountainside and how do you deal with it when it then becomes a craggy steppe a month later.

These are questions AoS thrusts at the casual reader and sadly GW don't really have the answers. It's an exciting amazing fantastical setting full of awesome magic oozing from every inch and full of epic elements - but its so epic and overdone that its hard to imagine how anything operates.

Fundamentally that's how the setting was made - it didn't have maps or nations; it didn't have ground rules or much in the way of structure by design. It was made as a massive catch-all setting where anything goes created by fans of modern epic fantasies who grew up on video games.


Fundamentally its a very different approach.

Now granted Old World gets a boost because it also based itself heavily on DnD and Tolkien so a lot of the heavy legwork was done; but still it was indeed just that bit more "grounded"

By based off, you mean ripped off near piece by piece, yes?

chaos0xomega wrote:

Hellebore wrote:It's this grounding in realworld... warfare that has given all GW's settings a grounded feeling

Wut.

Poor phrasing.

It feels.familiar and more real because it incorporates reality. Fictional world's break down at some point because the author can't write every little detail. Adopting wholesale history gives you a faux sense of weight and depth, completeness.

As overeead says, AoS fails at this because they tried to make a pure fantasy but that requires you create everything rather than rely on the familiar of real-world history to act as a surrogate.


It's a reason that urban fantasy and legends are so popular. By piggybacking all the boring reality stuff you get 'stolen' legitimacy and a connection t tangible things people experience making the fiction more believable.

Loved the General, he looks so Vintage.

Loved the wizards even more. Elementalist, necromancer, the other one in that order.

Do you’ll think we will see empire drop in December? Man I hope not, I’m on holiday and dropping some money. Need some time to recover!