Knights Panther

It's taken a while, what with interruptions from life, work, and a bout of Covid that went through the whole household - me and the missus are double vaccinated, so no worse than bad flu, although we still both get tired easily a few weeks after.  The Little Miniature was largely symptomless, and managed pretty well considering she was stuck indoors and away from school and friends for two weeks.

Anyway, continuing with my efforts to paint as many as I can of the Empire miniatures from the mid 1990s, here is a unit of the Knights Panther.

I'm pleased with the overall result and look of the unit.  Whilst I generally enjoyed painting them,  they certainly took much longer than the Reiksgard I did a while back, and not just because it's a slightly bigger unit.  The models overall 'look' is much more ornate than the Reiksgard, even thought there are still only a limited number of poses (two knights, a standard bearer and the Grand Master).  The armour has more detail, the crests are much more fancy and complex, and you have those Panther pelts to paint up as well.  Of course I then made my life more difficult with the colour choices.

Speaking of colour choices, it was an issue I spent a while pondering.  The Knights Panther are supposed to be a fairly wealthy secular order, so I used a lot more gold detailing on the armour, on the fluting and on visors etc.  I think they contrast nicely with the more austere and uniform Reiksgard.

Although generally painted with a blue appearance these days, this order's earliest appearances used black and gold themes, starting with John Blanche's well known painting, and then onto their first appearance as a well described unit in the 3rd edition army list published in White Dwarf.  The blue colouring seems to have started to appear when they were first sold as a boxed unit for Warhammer 4th edition, and has stuck ever since.  In the end I went with the blue theme as a contrast to my other Empire units (which mostly use the black and yellow of Averland) and because, well, I just like the colour!

John Blanche's famous image

As represented in White Dwarf issue 147

 

The mid 1990's 'Blue' period

The banner was scanned from White Dwarf 147, printed out and then glued.  I could have gone with a more blue version from later illustrations but, in keeping with aiming for that early '90s vibe, and to provide a contrast to all that blue, I went with this one.

The Knights Panther, a brief history

 

If you're interested in the history of this order in terms of the game fluff and narrative, the Wiki is a good place to start. This is more about there appearances in my own memories of Warhammer.

The first reference I recall to the Knights Panther (and I don't have the book to hand to check this unfortunately) was a very brief line in Ravening Hordes, the army list book for the second edition of Warhammer.  They then got referenced again in the 3rd edition 'Warhammer Armies' - where they were mentioned as one of the secular orders of 'Hohensknechtes' that are a unit option.  It was about this time that the first named Knight panther model appeared, a multi part metal model (torso, legs and arms).  It wasn't until issue 147 of White Dwarf that they started to get a fleshed out background and dedicated range of models, when the Empire got a whole new range of models and army list (arguably the precursor to the modern army list/books).

Panther, Leopard or What?

 

Just as an aside, those hides that the knights are wearing, which are described as coming from Araby, the Old Worlds expy for North Africa/the Middle East, would be more likely from a Leopard.  The nearest real world equivalent we would refer to as a 'panther' would be the jaguar, which is native to South America, the Old World's Lustria.

So why aren't they called the Knights Leopard?  So glad you asked...

The panther actually turns up a lot in medieval heraldry as a legendary creature (sometimes depicted breathing fire).

 

 

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112849863 

'Panthera' is also the genus (biological classification) that includes most of the big cats.

So well done GW, someone knew what they were talking about on this one!

Knights of the White Wolf next!