This month I’ve mostly been concentrating on painting the Lannister half of the Starks vs Lannisters starter set for A Song of Ice and Fire (expect to see them here soon!). Lately however I fancied a bit of a change of pace so this time we’re going to be looking at the hardy northerners instead of their fancy-pants rivals.
So far I’ve not done much with the Starks but what I have done is tackle a couple of the key characters for the faction and a few troops. The leader of my Stark army, for now at any rate, will be Robb Stark so he seemed like a fine place to start working on the faction. When Lord Eddard Stark is called away to the capital King’s Landing he leaves his eldest son Robb to command the North in his absence. Soon garnering the title “the Young Wolf” Robb proves himself to be a capable leader and a cunning and determined tactician.
I really like this miniature, it’s not fancy but it contains a lot of personality and really suits the character of the young northern lord. However anyone who’s read the novels will know that the younger Starks seem to get into trouble the moment they’re separated from their pet dire wolves, so I reckoned I’d be wise to paint Robb’s canine companion Grey Wind as well.
He’s better sculpted than pretty much any wolf Games Workshop has managed over the years but he’s still not the greatest model, the head especially is really poor and from some angles looks quite squashed and misshapen. In the end all he needed was a fairly quick and dirty paint job, and to be honest that’s all he really deserves as well.
Just a boy and his dog, going for a walk… to King’s Landing…
Of course even these two stalwarts aren’t going to defend the North without a little help and as it happens I’ve got a whole heap of Sworn Swords on my desk ready to heed their liege lord’s call. These are not the most visually interesting sculpts by any stretch of the imagination – they’re not bad but they’re not all that exciting either. I do have a lot of them however so I went for a scheme that was quick and easy to replicate but nothing fancy.
All being well I should be able to rattle through the rest of the squad in short order – but first; some Lannisters!
Convert or Die 
April 25th, 2022 at 8:40 am
Robb is really nice and well painted my man, as are the rest but Robb has a certain swagger
April 25th, 2022 at 1:30 pm
Cheers dude! Yeah, I really like that model for Robb. There’s nothing flashy about him but there’s a composed self-confidence which is bang on for the character, with just a touch of swagger – which I guess comes with the territory when a teenage boy finds himself leading an army!
April 27th, 2022 at 9:21 am
I know it did with me
April 25th, 2022 at 2:01 pm
The King in the North!! Are you going to do headswap version for after the Red Wedding?? 😂
April 26th, 2022 at 6:38 pm
Haha! Honestly, that is something I’ve considered – not for ASOIAF per se but the in-universe rumour about a dead man with a wolf’s head leading a band of crazy northerners on a rampage through the Riverlands always stuck with me (was that something someone – probably Melisandre – saw in a vision? Or was it one of those cases of some peasant heard it from another peasant in a pub? Or just Lannister propaganda? Can’t remember now). In the context of the books I always took it to be one of those metaphorical/urban legend/unreliable narrator things rather than Robb literally stomping around as a wolf-zombie (although stranger things have happened… look at his mum…). However as a concept for a miniature it always sounded really cool – with the rights bits to work with I can see something like that appearing in my undead collection at some point.
April 27th, 2022 at 7:32 am
I’d like to see that 😊👍
April 25th, 2022 at 8:59 pm
Nice work- I’m quite keen on the woif- his bulk, colour and ‘mane’ reminds me of one of my cats….
Cheers,
Pete.
April 27th, 2022 at 7:47 am
Thank you. 🙂 I’m not sure a dog would take it as praise to be told he looks like a cat but as I’m neither a dog nor a cat, and I tend to assume you have a damn hansom cat, I’m going to take that as a great compliment!
April 26th, 2022 at 5:45 am
Lovely work on the figures and looking forward to seeing more. I took a dislike to Richard Madden who played the roll of Robb Stark on account of the fact that he was dating Jenna Coleman who I have the hots for! Sad I know. 😂
April 26th, 2022 at 4:08 pm
Shocking – can’t believe he’d muscle in on your girl like that! Who does he think he is?!
April 26th, 2022 at 4:48 pm
I know, it’s outrageous isn’t it? His card is marked trust me! 😉
April 26th, 2022 at 12:20 pm
All very nice I think, wolf included! 🙂
April 27th, 2022 at 7:47 am
Thanks very much! 🙂
April 27th, 2022 at 1:06 am
Robb was a great character on the show that was too short-lived! I’m glad to see CMON made a mini worthy of the character. I think you picked out the exact right colors for these too as they pretty much match how I would envision the Starks. Every time you share one of these minis, I kind of want to talk myself into playing this game and I get a little GoT nostalgia, so thank you for that as well 😀
April 27th, 2022 at 8:21 am
Aye, poor old Robb – I think we all thought he was going to be the hero after Ned – we should have learned our lesson! I think the take-home message of GoT/ASOIAF is “don’t be a hero and never attend a wedding”. I remember reading the part where Alys Karstark married the leader of the Thenns (not in the show) and I couldn’t quite believe we got through it without any murdering – I felt more tense than I was for the battles! 🤣
I thought that Robb in the show was great, it’s been a while since I saw the early series but I remember him being fairly faithful to the book as well. Oh and the whole “doubtless you only meant to cut my meat.” exchange with the Greatjon remains one of my all time favourite examples of being a bad ass.
Anyway, I’d better draw this AGM of the Robb Stark fanclub to a close before TIM gets upset with us. Glad you like the colour pallet, I thought this muted, cold look worked well for hardy, down to earth northerners – and contrasts nicely with the bright and fancy Lannisters.
April 27th, 2022 at 11:22 pm
Absolutely! I really thought Rob would avenge Ned and I was excited for that until other events transpired. I think by the later seasons, people did get fatigued of their favorite characters dying or maybe that was just me. As the amount of people alive dwindled, it did become harder to have people you were rooting for/were invested in. Hopefully the books will avoid that issue.
And yes, we better not upset TIM 😉 I’ll be curious how you paint the wildlings and yes, I’m already assuming you will get some! 😀 I actually like how they looked in the show quite a bit as they were a nice contrast from the Starks. Don’t get me started on how I miss Mance Rayder (or however you spell his name) either! 🙂
April 29th, 2022 at 6:18 am
Well you know the old joke that George Martin was banned for life from Twitter because he killed off all 280 characters. In some ways I felt this willingness to off major players became something of a cliché associated with the series, understandably because of the events we’ve discussed above, and this made the team behind the show happy to lean on it as a way of getting people’s attention. “Quick, ratings are slipping, this is Game of Thrones – you know what to do! Murder another major character!”. I felt this lead to a few deaths that were quite divergent from the characters motivations and arc, just to get a shock out of the audience (Stannis having Shireen burned for instance – don’t get me started on how wrong that was) or because they weren’t proving popular with the audience *swears at length in Dornish*. Book 5 has a little bit of this but it’s mostly a case of lots of characters being reported as dead rather than actually killed. In some cases we know it’s not true, some we know are definitely dead, but for most of them it’s a case of “they’re probably not dead but I can’t quite be sure of that because this is George we’re dealing with and who knows who his murderous pen will strike next”. Like a lot of things though I think it would bother me less if he hadn’t left so many characters on a cliffhanger for 45 years or however long its been since the last book came out.
Oh yeah, old Mance Rayder eh? There’s a character who’s story went very differently in the books (mind you, I think you can say that about every character…). Dunno why you’d think I’d be painting wildlings though – hordes of barbarians aren’t something I’m usually associated with are they? *subtly hides model of Mance behind a pot of paint*
April 29th, 2022 at 10:58 pm
I can believe it! I think if I read the books, my feelings on the show would be more complicated. I do think the show did a lot of great things (which I assume the books also do) but I can’t really say for sure unless I dedicate a lot of time to reading them and my to-read list is pretty long!
I liked Mance because the actor is fantastic (he’s Julius Caesar in Rome, no less!) but I also think the wildlings could have been explored in a bit more depth in the show. I would imagine the books offer more in this area or at least I hope so. I do think if you don’t paint some wildlings which really do have you written all over it, you might be letting old George himself down 😉
May 6th, 2022 at 12:08 pm
Great stuff yet again! That model for Robb has a real Boromir/Sean Bean feel to him!
May 14th, 2022 at 1:12 pm
Cheers! Funnily enough I thought that as well, I wonder if the sculptor was being a little cheeky there or if it was an unconscious influence. These models are based off the books but not the TV show (book rights vs film/TV rights, much like we’ve seen with LotR in its various miniatures incarnations). Sean Bean was quite iconic as Eddard Stark so I suspect that if they made the Eddard miniature look too much like him it would have fallen foul of someone’s legal team before it ever saw production – but making the model for Eddard’s son Robb look a little bit like Bean is a different matter. I dunno, maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there but its interesting that you noticed it too.