I’ve finally added some Knights to the Crusader army. With over 130 troops painted it’s good to finally have something that we all associate strongly with the era. I’m not sure there’s anything more iconic to the Feudal/Medieval period than the Knight holding a lance atop a charging horse.

Again, these miniatures are Legio Heroica.

The bulk of them are from Mounted Knights (CRU04) with some Knights with flat top helm (CRU21) mixed in.

There are a couple of command figures as well from some of the commands sets(CRU01 and CRU03). The rest of these will appear later on some commander stands. There’s quite a bit of variety here in the figures. All the horses are unbarded, but there are 4 different horses in the pack. When you combine this with the 6 variants from CRU04 and 3 from CRU21 there’s plenty of variety. The different horse and shield colours end up making this quite a diverse looking group.

The miniatures are based on 40x30mm bases, and represent either Medium or Heavy Knights. While the rules state these two unit types should be differentiated by either 3 or 4 miniatures on the base, I’ve not found that 4 figures fit on a base. Even with 3 mounted Knights it’s fairly cosy. So while you could probably do it with an overhang on each base this wouldn’t work in-game as you figures are typically in lines together so your frontage would get all messed up.

Colours

The only new colours are for the horses and related equipments. Otherwise they are the same as for the foot troops from the last few posts. The shields were again painted separately from the rest of the figure with different, random patterns.

• Bay:
• Shadow: Black Leather (SC-32) — Airbrushed
• Mid-tone: Brown Leather (SC-31) — Airbrushed
• Highlight: Orange Leather (SC-28) — Airbrushed
• Wash: Inktense Black (SC-79) — Diluted 3:1
• Chestnut:
• Shadow: Walnut (SC-29) — Airbrushed
• Mid-tone: Brown Sand (VMC 70.876) — Airbrushed
• Highlight: Light Brown (VMA 71.027) — Airbrushed
• Wash: Inktense Black (SC-79) — Diluted 3:1
• Grey:
• Shadow: Graphite (SC-03) — Airbrushed
• Mid-tone: Medium Sea Grey (VMC 70.870) — Airbrushed
• Highlight: Nacar (SC-02) — Airbrushed
• Wash: Inktense Black (SC-79) — Diluted 3:1
• White:
• Shadow: Medium Sea Grey (VMC 70.870) — Airbrushed
• Mid-tone: White Sands (SC-09) — Airbrushed
• Highlight: White (VMC 70.950) — Airbrushed
• Wash: Inktense Black (SC-79) — Diluted 3:1
• Eyes: German Camouflage Black Brown (VMC 70.822)
• Reins & Straps: Sandal Wood (SC-26)
• Fasteners & Bridle: Oily Steel (VMC 70.895)
• Saddle: Gobi Brown (SC-12)
• Saddle Blanket: Flat Brown (VMC 70.984)

I also pick out some of the legs and the nose bridges with white or black (I use black on the grey, white and Bay horses). This livens them up a little and just keeps them looking a bit more interesting. It’s also common on actual horses. I don’t include spotted horses, which were apparently quite popular. It was only in the Middle Ages that breeders moved away from spotted horses towards the single colour coats more popular today. More information on historical horse colours can be found in some scholarly articles where scientists have used ancient horse DNA to determine what types of horses they were using:

• Coat colours and mitochondrial lineages of ancient horses to document domestication by Michael Cieslak
• Abstract
• Another paper Spotted phenotypes in horses lost attractiveness in the Middle Ages by Saskia Wutke et al

If you just want a quick guide on what a Crusader Knight may have been riding then the Abstract will do you fine, but still it’s interesting to see what we’re still able to uncover about history. At least I think it’s interesting, but then again I’m writing about painting little army horses. But, I guess you’re also reading about the same so maybe you’ll find it interesting as well.