Imperial flags and some notes on heraldry

 

Here are the flags for the Imperial Estavian army. Need a little more touching up with a lining pen here and there, but otherwise complete.

Top to bottom, the 12x line regiments, below them Garde zu Fuss, then 3x Cuirassier regiments, below them Garde zu Pferde and at bottom Dragoons and O'Hara Chevauxleger.

As noted elsewhere, the game come with heraldry for the four SK powers; a fleur de lis for Bravance, white eagle for Hrvatska, black eagle for Argozia and lion rampant for Arcadia.

In expanding the game to include the various other states I needed to come up with heraldry for each of them, which would appear on their flags. I thought long and hard about how I was going to produce flags; I never intended to hand paint them as I've done. Instead, I had great plans to produce something on the computer. Sadly I lack the necessary skills and early experiments revealed scanned colours turning out different from original prints, bleeding ink and all sorts of problems. I needed heraldic symbols and attempts to download same came to nought. I then hit on another source.

Some time back in the 1990s, I bought a pack of GW heraldic transfers, intended for their fantasy figures, but basically medieval symbols. I had intended to scan these in or to use them on printed out flags produced on the computer. Again, experiments were discouraging and the end results were not what I had imagined. More in desperation when faced with putting flags on Bravancian figures, I ended up painting them. The success has encouraged me to continue.

While in theory I could paint anything on the flags, I have stuck with the symbols from the GW transfers with a few additional Veni Vedi Vici decals (acquired when still wedded to the idea of transfers). So Naevaeron has a blue boar, Cleve a white castle, Dupanen a white unicorn and so on. Estavia sort of ended up with a Jerusalem cross; I then derived a back story from it being formed of the Hereditary Lands (gold cross on crimson / red), The Midlands (white cross on green) and the Bravacian Marches (border frontier) and being the Zweikreiss Reich, formed from an amalgamation of the two crosses into a Jerusalem cross.

For the flags, I was very influenced by Thirty Years War Imperial and Austrian WAS striped flags. So the cavalry are basic red and white with variations. The Garde a large cross on plain background and the foot incorporate their facing colours. I admit they have not turned out how I originally thought they would, although I only had vague ideas of what they would look like. They now incorporate a bit of a Venetian vibe which was never planned.