For Myrmidia, Averland and the Blazing Suns!

It's been a while since we've seen any of my own work (rather than commissions) so galloping over the hills come my latest addition to my Empire army, the Blazing Sun Knights.

The Blazing Suns are a knightly order of the Empire in the service of Myrmidia, goddess of strategy and war. She's very much a southern Empire/Tilean goddess, in the north much of her role is taken by Ulric. Given that Averland is very much in the south of the Empire, having a contingent of them seemed like a winner. Plus, Charlie also has a unit of Blazing Suns in his army and I wanted the political problem of brother knights on both sides of a civil war!

The models are a bit different to the regular run-of-the-mill Empire knights, they've had the heads replaced with Outrider heads - a significant improvement on the original - and I wanted Tilean-esque shields for another point of visual difference with the usual Empire "heater" shield shape. These were ancient Greek shields nicked off've one of Warlord Games Grecian sprues.

The shields are the most obvious parts of the models so we'll take a look at them first. Grecian shields being big flat areas, they rather cry out for some freehand work on them. The symbol of the Blazing Suns is, well, the blazing sun... but we've also used the Grecian style helm seen on depictions of Myrmidia as a symbol for the order. I mixed the two symbols about evenly through the unit and I think it added a nice touch of variety to the otherwise very uniform unit.

The symbols also repeat on That Banner. Let me say this: This banner can do one. It really can. It's a complete git to paint and I'm glad I've only got the one in the army. I added some of the Empire not-quite-Maltese crosses to the end of the pennant to finish off the design.

Other than the shields, painting wise, these models are fairly straightforward. Brass armour for that Blazing Sun bling, black and brass horse armour to prevent them being one giant gold-ish blob and the usual Averland colours on the cloth to indicate the allegiance of their chapter.

These have been a slow unit to complete, I think I started them about six months ago and every now and again I'd do a few layers and then put them aside again. However, for all the dear-gods-why of some of the freehand pain, I love this unit. They've got a lot of character and whilst clearly still being Empire knights they stand apart from the usual unit look. I like 'em!

More shinies soon,

TTFN