Knights of the Round Table - Review

I was planning for this instalment to be about the colour scheme for my not-Bretonnians. Unfortunately, when I dusted off my paints, I discovered I didn’t have any black paint left and my white paint was a disgusting mess that refused to adhere to the models.

Since I’ve not painted up my knights of the realm, this seems like a logical place to talk about the other Fireforge Games’ knights I bought.

Photograph of three boxes of 28mm miniatures from Fireforge Games. From left to right, the boxes are: Albion Knights, Teutonic Knights, and Western Knights.

Knights of the Realm

In an earlier post, I talked briefly about assembling my mandatory unit of knights of the realm. This was achieved using only components from the Teutonic knights sprue.

Photograph of the Fireforge Games Teutonic Knights box and contents to show what sprues are included; sprues of knight components, horses, and bases.

Photograph of the Teutonic Knights sprue showing the knight components: shields, lances, hand weapons, bodies, cloaks, and helmets.

By using the more elaborate helmets from the sprue to represent the knights of the realm, I was able to save the less ornate heads for knights errant.

Photograph of the Teutonic Knights assembled to represent Warhammer Bretonnian Knights of the Realm.

Knights Errant

My knights errant are primarily built from the western knights sprue. This sprue only contains 4 closed helmets (the others are open face helmets that I’m saving for the wealthier peasants in my army).

Photograph of the Western Knights sprue showing the knight components: shields, lances, hand weapons, bodies, cloaks, and helmets.

Rather than being limited to the same 4 heads, I mixed in the odd helmet from the Teutonic knights to make my knights errant. To further differentiate them, I also left off the cloaks. The premise here is that they gain their cloaks, and thus acceptance into the knights of the realm, by demonstrating their valour.

Photograph of the Western Knights assembled to represent Warhammer Bretonnian Knights Errant.

Questing Knights

My questing knights also use the Teutonic knights box but wielding the flails and axes from the kit instead of lances. I also left the cloaks off this unit to symbolise them shedding their knights of the realm status to prove themselves once more.

Grail Knights

My grail knights are built using the Albion knights sprue as this is the only kit that is more fantasy themed, giving me the most elaborate and distinct helmets.

Photograph of the Fireforge Games Albion Knights box and contents to show what sprues are included; sprues of knight components, horses, and bases.

Photograph of the Albion Knights sprue showing the knight components: shields, lances, hand weapons, bodies, cloaks, and helmets.

The banner comes from the Teutonic knights box as this is the only kit that includes a command sprue.

Horses

Since they are common to all the kits, I’ve given the horses their own aside. The sprue includes two barded heads and one without barding. Since I was going for the traditional Bretonnian look, I only used the barded heads throughout my builds.

Final thoughts

In my first post about these kits, I touched on the price point and how they compare favourably to some other mounted units. Price isn’t everything though, and sometimes it’s worth paying a little extra for better sculpts.

As far as the Fireforge Games kits go, the sculpt quality is good with enough detail to sell the unit as a proper unit of knights (I don’t need so much fine detail for my rank-and-file models that you spend hours picking out every nail in the horses’ shoes).

In terms of assembly, the units go together easily enough with the exception of the cloaks. In some cases, to get the cloaks and heads to fit together and look straight, I had to raise the heads up by snipping some bits of the sprue and packing the neck joint. Not a major obstacle but one that makes the kits a little less ‘beginner-friendly’ if you use the cloaks.

Scoring each box out of 10, balancing price against model variety, I’d say…

Western Armies Western Knights – 8/10

Dropping some points for the lack of command parts. Just a single pennant to make a banner would have been enough to gain another point.

Military Orders Teutonic Knights – 9/10

Good price point with decent sculpt variety and a command sprue. The only thing stopping this kit getting a 10 from me is the need to mess around with the cloaks.

Albion Knights – 8/10

As with the western knights from the Deus Vult range, dropping some points for the lack of command parts. It would also have been nice to see some different weapons compared to the historical kits to reflect the fantasy setting of the kit.