Unleash the Kraken! (That never gets old...)

Greyjoy Elite Household Warriors

Asha with banner on left, Victarion on the right

Well, I've finally started moving things forward with this Westerosi project. Sometimes it's Dux Westerosum and sometimes it's Lion-Stag-Direwolf-Dragon Rampant. Here is the first unit - plus important leaders - of my Greyjoy core retinue.  I will expand with a few units from other Ironborn houses over time - after I have 24 points painted.  Shown here are six foot men-at-arms led by Victarion and Asha Greyjoy.

This retinue is built around an imagined longship crew of 48 men and leaders.

2 x 6 elite household warriors (foot men-at-arms in Lion Rampant)

2 x 12 sworn warriors (fierce foot in Lion Rampant)

2 x 6 scouts (bidowers in Lion Rampant)

They operate in two war parties of 24 - 6 elite/12 warriors/6 scouts.

Ultimately, this retinue will also work as a proxy for Saxons in Dux Brianniarum. i.e. 2 elite units of 6 and 3 units of 6 warriors.  My Lannister and Stark forces will also have enough models to proxy for Romano-Brits.

Victarion and his banner-bearer off their command sabot

Asha and command sabot

Three of six household warriors of House Greyjoy

Remaining 3 of 6. Figure in center will double as his lord's champion in DB - on a 30mm sabot

Six of 12 Ironborn Warriors (Fierce Foot) primed and ready for the brush

Six Scouts (Bidowers) waiting to mount the paint pots of transformation (West Wind Saxons with Pict heads)

Next Steps...

I'm working in groups of six to avoid burnout, alternating model types.  Six warriors, six scouts, six elites (still being assembled/primed) and then another six warriors, and six scouts.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Behind these, I have STARKS.  :-/

Banner Bearer Test Model

Foot Serjeant Test Model

Until next time...

Lannister Retinue - Shipping out!

Discretion is the better part of valor...

Well, as I have more money than time and more hobby ambition than sense of reality, I've decided to expedite this project after almost 2 years of languishing following its promising launch. That tale of woe is memorialized below in some of the earliest posts, but now it's "Excelsior" - onwards and upwards...

To achieve that, I am swallowing my pride to pay someone else to paint my models. My good friend Jay (Jay's Wargaming Madness) has done this for years, despite being a very talented painter in his own right. The problem is, when I started to do this a year ago, the painter he recommended (Steve Dake) was booked solid for the rest of the year thanks to...that's right - Jay (and my other friends from that circle).  Couldn't get a model in edgewise.  Well, everything in it's own time.  Now that I have my window, off go my Lannisters (while I paint the Greyjoys)

I will explain the design logic of my Westeros project in its own post soon (aka Direwolf, Stag, Lion and Dragon Rampant), but for now, the Lannister aesthetic is late 15th cent. Europe/WotR with visual unity through predominantly sallet style helmets and heater shields.

24 points of Lannister goodness (or badness)

House Lannister Retinue

This will be the core household retinue of what might become a larger force as I add diverse other bannermen houses as units in their own livery - Clegane, Brax, Crakehall, Marbrand and Lorch

6 pts - Knights of Casterly Rock

4 pts - Mounted Crossbowmen

4 pts - Foot Serjeants 

6 pts - Foot Crossbowmen with pavise

4 pts - Tribesmen from the Vale (fierce foot)

Horse

Perry plastic WotR MAA with Fireforge capes and heater shields
Perry WotR mounted crossbows no modifications

Foot

Perry Agincourt Heavy Infantry
(Pavises to be replaced with heater shields)

Black Tree Designs Ancient Germans
Appropriately shaggy and primitive! 

Bog standard Perry WotR crossbows with pavise

I'm very anxious to see how these come back. My good buddy had his Perry plastic HYW painted by Steve (the one's on his blog now) and they look great up close.  We're agreed if both of us enjoy this exchange, a Tully retinue is takes the same trip to Michigan in a couple months while I work on House Stark.

See their warrior pennants streaming - FINAL

As I warned weeks back, I've been consumed by finishing a masters thesis and a hellacious schedule at work with some signficant travel.  I've done some minor miniatures work but am at a bit of a standstill until Fireforge releases their Templar and Teutonic Knights on foot.  I need those cloaks and bodies to finish my Stark and Greyjoy forces. 

In the meantime, thanks to my talented and patient friend "Captain Z", the banners and artwork for shield decals are finalized.  Without further ado, I present to you the banners and lance pennants for my first three great houses:

STARK

LANNISTER

GREYJOY

I'm thrilled with his work and have a greater appreciation for the frustration of graphic designers with clients who don't appreciate how detailed good communication needs to be.  He'll be providing excerpts of these sigils on plain fields that I'll be sending off to a professional service that makes shield transfers. 

Sigils for Shield Transfers

Coming Soon - Testing out Dux Britanniarum!

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Well, after much waiting (transatlantic shipping, customs, and whatnot), my Claymore Castings arrived yesterday!!

And I discovered that, in my eagerness to order these, I accidentally ordered TWO sets of 20!!  D'oh!

Either I'll use them or maybe someone following here would like to trade for some other medieval models of one kind or another..

At any rate, with these three units of six levy-equivalents, my Stark "Dux Westerosum" forces need only one more unit of six men-at-arms to be complete.

Stark Liveried Pike - aka "Levy" in Dux Brit

As you can see, I've already made 3 head swaps using Gripping Beast hirdman heads.  I did this for two reasons: one, because there were too many kettle helms for my taste and, two, I wanted some visual ties to the other units.  Just need a bit of putty around the neck seam, but they came off rather well.

I'll confess I paused as I held the nippers poised to decapitate my $3 model that just traveled weeks from England.  But hey, gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet. Besides, I have another 16 models I didn't realize I ordered.

I'm moving on to texturing the bases and greenstuffing obvious joints and seams as I wait for Fireforge to release their Teutonic foot knights with the cloaks and bodies I need to finish the second unit of warriors/men-at-arms.

I'm happy with the momentum and my mantra is "Get them to the table."

Winter is Coming...

If the Lannister forces are mostly straight up Perry models, the Starks are where the real kitbashing takes off. The bulk of my Stark forces - Scots pikemen from Claymore Castings are currently somewhere between old Blighty and California.  In the meantime, here are the beginnings of my Stark forces...

Stark Archers aka "Skirmishers" in Dux Britanniarum

 These are comprised of Fireforge Foot Sergeants, Perry WotR arms and bits, and mostly Gripping Beast Hirdman heads.  I'm generally happy with the effect that they look more primitive than the Lannister "high medieval" aesthetic.  As with Lannister, I will build out eight more of these to use as "levy" in the SAGA translation to Westeros in my first post.

Carrying that forward to the men-at-arms we have:

 

Stark Men-at-Arms aka "warriors" in DB and SAGA

These are built from Fireforge or Gripping Beast bodies (there's one Perry WotR that's an early prototype), Gripping Beast or Fireforge heads, and mostly Fireforge Templar Knight axe arms plus a couple from Gripping Beast.  Shield shape will be a unifying element across each force with Stark getting these flat topped kite shields. However I may give the pikemen simple round shields. When my Tuetonic foot knights arrive I will likely pop the heads of most of these - and the as yet unbuilt second unit - to add cloaks with bits of fur and wolf pelt to make them more robust and more "northern".  Here are a few close ups of individual models...

Clearly there's more clean up and crack filling to be done.  My purpose was to assemble enough of them to see how they'd look as a group. I'll confess that I'm not feeling like "Voila!" but with the furred cloaks, I believe they'll create the desired impression without looking like they're lifted directly from real history.


On that score, this next batch has more of a challenge. For elite household knights afoot I may use these:

 

These are Black Tree Designs early HYW period.  In my schema, if the Lannisters, Tyrells and the Baratheons are the wealthiest houses represented by mostly WotR-era dress and armor - roughly 1460's. Stark, Greyjoy and Martel are at the other end of the spectrum towards Crecy/Poitiers in their equipment and look.  The other houses will be somewhere between Otterburn (1380's)and Agincourt (1415).  For Stark, there are not a lot of early HYW models out there besides BTD and Old Glory.  I rule out Foundry because my sense is that they're shorter and thicker than the lines I'm currently using. (I'm open to being persuaded otherwise by any commenter.)  To push their sillouette off of their real historical period I'm giving them kite shields and...

 I remembered I had these old GW Empire Knights of the White Wolf cloaks that I was hoarding to scratch build Mordor Black Guard of Barad-Dur.  I think a few will serve here.  I like these models insofar that their camailed bascinet has the same look as the Darksword miniature approved by GRRM hisself:

DISCLAIMER: I did not paint this model!!!!!

While I'm not a slave to them, these sculpts from Darksword are a useful visual reference for some of my design choices.  

And finally, for now, the first of the four elite cavalry...

Rikard Karstark

Simply a Viking head plopped on a Templar body.  He will either serve as one of the two sub-commanders (i.e. "nobles" in Dux Brit) with Greatjon Umber as the other. Or, he will lead the unit of four shock cavalry that could replace the six elite foot altogether.

I'm not yet completely sold on these conversions, but my sense is that I can see them all coming together once they are based and painted properly.  

The next installment will focus on the two lord commanders...

Interlude - Boardgaming Westeros!

Greetings!  Tomorrow I'll be posting pictures of my House Stark conversions.  In the meantime, I wanted to promote a couple of games I enjoy because of the great thematic flavor of GRRM's Westeros they provide.  The first is:

A Game of Thrones

Rated 8.04 out of 10 on Board Game Geek!

Fantastic Production Values

This game has thoughtful mechanics (concealed order tokens that are revealed simultaneously) and plenty of shiv-yer-buddy dynamics as everyone gangs up to pull down the leading player.  I'll be playing this Saturday night as a matter of fact.  If you've played this, what's been your experience? Are you playing the second edition?  If not, it's a significant refinment of the fisrt, incorporating its expansions!

The other game is a natural compliment to A Game of Thrones above:

Battles of Westeros

Battles of Westeros is a tactical wargame that's a big improvement on the silly Battle Lore basic mechanic of dividing the battlefield into 3 unbreachable zones (bowling lanes).  This version allows movement and command influence across the entire battlefield.  It also has some nice abilities for units and commanders that gives each army it's own flavor and the game plenty of variation/replayability.  I will acknowledge that set up can be a bit fiddly sorting all the miniatures, activation banners, cards, terrain counters, etc.  I think a better storage system will help here. Specifically, magnetizing the bases and grouping them in their natural units on a bit of tin flashing.  Then it's just plop, plop, plop on to the game board. 

It's really a nice, portable pick up game, when time and space do not allow for a full-blown tabletop battle. 

The soft plastic miniatures (~20mm) are not bad with a bit of hot water and straightening of lances etc.  Some hard cores even paint them.

What I think is particularly cool is that some clever fellow - Frank Stark - from Downunder devised rules for combining these two great games!  It's a 3 player game, with each player controlling two houses each in a de facto alliance.  Battles in A Game of Thrones strategy game get played out using Battles of Westeros skirmish rules.   Sure it adds to the time playing the strategy game, but it then becomes more of a map-based campaign.

For those of you who own both games or are just curious about clever variants, go check it out at Board Game Geek forums.

That may be a bit much to take on if you're not in a steady game group, but I heartily recommend either of these boardgames on their own.  

So it begins...with Lannister!

Hear Me Roar!   Particularly when I crazy glue all these fiddly bits to myself and not the model I'm trying to assemble.  But that's a blog post for another day...

Okay, time to put up or shut up. I told you (all five of you) that I'm going to do this thing.  So, I've thrown together some models to give me a rough sense of how things will look together - both models from different lines and parts of models across lines.

First up are my Lannister forces that are 75% assembled.  Again, I intend to use Dux Britanniarum (DB) - and occasionally SAGA - so my force composition will be:

1 Lord
2 Nobles
1 Unit of 6 "Elite" foot (or 4 Shock Cavalry) - i.e. Household Knights
2 Units of 6 "Warriors" - i.e. Men-at-Arms
3 Units of 6 "Levy" - i.e. Liveried Retainers
1 Unit of 4 "Skirmishers" - Archers or Crossbows

(SAGA, as you probably know, uses 4 elite, 8 warrior, and 12 levy, for which I'll build extra levy)

So, let's start off with the forces of Lannister, for which I'll use mostly Perry plastic WotR. My design logic is that the Houses of Lannister, Tyrell and Baratheon are the wealthiest and therefore equate to mid-15th century styles with some minor modifications and mix-ins to reduce the immediate association with WotR.

Lannisters with High-Falutin' Crossbows - aka "Skirmishers" in DB

Lannister Liveried Retainers - aka "Levy" in DB

I'm already considering swapping out pikes for bills and halberds and leaving Stark with primitive (and distinctive) pikes. I welcome your opinions in the comments.

Lannister  Men-at-Arms - aka "Warriors" in DB

I love these Perry pavisiers from the Agincourt range.  I have not decided on my second group of "warrior" equivalent troops.  My options are:

1. Get another six of these but in a different pose (standing)
2. Use my plastic Perry WotR bodies in full harness, with kettle helms, pavises and spear arms or sword arms from my Fireforge kits.
3. Claymore Casting Ottoburn knights on foot

 Again, I welcome your ideas, opinions and suggestions in the comments section. 

Lannister Elite Horse - aka Shock Cavalry in DB

Here I gave them cloaks and small heater shields from the Fireforge Mounted Serjeants to break up the obvious WotR sillouette.  Given the full harness they have on, the shields are intended to look almost decorative, retained primarily to carry the sigils of named Lannister bannermen from the books.  At the very least, red cloaks will look flash.

I will also create an alternative "elite" unit of 6 foot knights and I'm probably going to go with Perry metal Agincourt foot command/French high command, picking out the figures that are wearing jupons that can be adorned with bannermen sigils.  I may even swap some heads to align with these heavy cavalry pictured here. But if anyone has better suggestions, I'm open to clever ideas. 

Next up...STARK conversions!

Plans, Dreams, Schemes...

In this post, I share with you my plans - both baked and still squishy - along with the attendant variables and tangents.  Let's see if I can keep this on track, shall we?

Core Idea: Create 3 forces - Stark, Lannister & Greyjoy - in 28mm mixing and matching miniatures and parts of miniatures across such reputable and generally comparable lines as Perry, Claymore, Fireforge, and Black Tree. 

Game Systems: Initially, my plan is to use Dux Britanniarum with Stark and Lannisters following Romano-Brit and Greyjoy conforming to Saxon force composition, career tree and cards.  Having Stark AND Lannister allow me to introduce two gaming buddies - Jay and John - to the DB rules as I play parallel campaigns against each as the Greyjoy raiders. (Greyjoy's Rebellion)

Four classes of troops in DB will translate to: Household Knights (elites), Men-at-Arms (warriors), Bannermen Livery (levy) and skirmishers.  Initially, we will play un-modified DB with only cosmetic changes to the nomenclature until we're conversant with the original rules enough to know what we want to modify.

Additionally, I will build enough levy-level troops to also try a few games of a translation of Studio Tomahawk's Saga to the Westeros setting from Tabletopdeutschland with dice boards for Stark and Lannister.

Painting:  This is a dilemma for me.  I'm a respectably good painter but I'm slow, don't have scads of free time and I don't do free-hand (shields and banners).  I am seriously considering painting only test models and farming them out to a painting service.  I give up the personal pride in exchange for having them finished in our lifetimes.

On a related note, I have a friend who is a graphic artist working up some paper banners for these three factions and their primary bannermen - Karstark, Glover, Umber, Piper, Clegane, etc.  If that goes well, we'll move on to complimentary art that can be translated into DIY water transfers for shields. 

Achieving this will be plenty of project for this year. But some thoughts for what lies beyond are:

• Scale up to massed battles in 28mm using Hail Caesar and maybe, maybe Impetus which my group has not explored.  
• Pursue massed battles using "Grand Scale" - i.e. 10mm or 15mm with Warmaster Ancients/Medieval translations on the Specialist Arms board. There are two versions; one by Wellspring and another by Happymcclap.  Both have great ideas.  I've wanted to game in a more command and control scale for some time and doing it with this project appeals to me.  We'll see.

Coming soon: Photos of Stark men-at-arms conversions...

This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine...

Welcome to my new blog, in which I chart progress with my sundry projects while aggregating the work and ideas of others who seek to create gaming experiences in George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" milieu.

I welcome ideas, perspectives and comments from other experienced gamers and hobbyists with similar interests.

The best way to start out is to pay my respects to the hobbyists whose work and ideas inspired me to go down this path.

First and foremost is Franktactica at the "Figuren und Geschichten" blog in Germany.  His conversions, paint, terrain, photography are all amazingly top notch and inspirational - no matter what the period.  Hochachtung, Frank!!!!!!!!!

Amazing work! See more at his blog linked above.

Next in line is this fellow at "A Homage to Westeros" who had the same idea to use TFL's Dux Britanniarum rules to create a gaming campaign in Westeros.  He's taken his conversions in a new direction that I'm not so keen on but I love his creativity and his kindred spirit.

His original vision

My third muse on this quixotic journey is Michael at "Dalauppror" who has translated Dux Britanniarum to 15th c. Sweden in his "Dux Suecia" variant.  Again, wonderfully painted models, beautiful gaming table and terrain, nice photography photo shopping out reality - and all in his non-native language.  And he's prolific. Much to admire at his blog.  

There are other influences, in other periods and scales that I'll add soon.  In the meantime, one more image from Tomasz Jedruszek, my favorite artist for GRRM's works:

See, Greyjoy need not look like copy/paste Vikings!