This was one of my earliest miniatures I bought back in 2001. I was just getting into AD&D at this time, and somehow I got my hands on a printed catalog of Reaper miniatures. Naturally, I was hooked instantly. I bought a couple of the early Reaper Dark Heaven Fantasy minis and I loved them. Among them was a very classic English Knight/Templar Knight, which I repainted after 18 years.

The Knight Templar (02119) was sculpted by Sandra Garrity. I remember well that back in the early 2000s, Reaper only needed 4 digits for their products. I bought it because it looked like the perfect paladin warrior to me. Not only that, but I hadn’t seen many miniatures then. Today, I still like the figure. Even though I haven’t used it very much recently.

Back when I got the miniature, I already painted it. In 2001, I had only painted model planes before; and I painted with oil colors. Acyclic colors were completely new to me when I really started painting back in 2014. So with the oil paints, there was no highlighting or shading. The paint smelt very bad and the stains would never come out again. But! Oil paints had excellent metallic colors.

Basing and Priming

The original miniature came with a sculpted oval base. I glued it on a standard 1-inch plastic base and added sand and small pebbles. I did not prime the figure, as I wanted to keep the metallic paint. This is how the mini looked like for about 14 years:

Painting

The figure already had a very simple color scheme – red and white. The figure itself is a nice sculpt, but it’s classic as it is probably also really simple – which comes from the mold process, I guess. Today, the process is optimized, the tools are different and many people even don’t use molds anymore at all and use 3d printers for their miniatures. But older miniatures clearly show a “middle line” where the two parts of the mold come together. This is also true for the Knight Templar.

I already said I wanted to keep the metallic paint. Furthermore, I also wanted to keep the overall color scheme. Just renewing the paint with highlights and shadows would be good enough for me. And that’s what I did. Here is the finished figure:

I used the red signature colors again. So now I had a couple of minis wearing the same colors that are thematically linked! Here are the combat clerics and the paladin of the Order of the Aster! 😉